My Role in The Beer Scene as a Beer Blogger

Earlier this week I discussed a bit about how my relationship with beer has been affected by blogging. Today, I'm going to take the topic a little bit further and focus on where I see my blog fitting within the greater world of beer.

Baltimore Bistros & Beer didn't initially start off with a heavy focus on beer. I knew I wanted to work in that direction over time, but I wasn't quite sure how I should position myself as beer blogger. When I did start writing about beer I decided I wanted to use this space as a way to learn more about what was going on locally. If there was something going on with beer around Baltimore, I wanted to talk about it here. That was the only role I was looking for initially, mainly because it felt manageable.

But like most beer drinkers I drink a lot more than just local beer and found myself wanting to talk about beer made both far and wide. Opening my blog up like that led to me looking at not just beer the drink, but beer the industry and I started noticing a lot of things that grated on my nerves. And I wrote about those topics. I didn't want to be a cheerleader blogger, the kind that only says nice things so they can get retweets from the breweries they're glowing about. I wanted to use my voice to say "Hey, I see a problem. Let's fix that". I felt good about doing that and I thought that was going to be my role in beer as blogger going forward.

But you know what? That role wore me down. I started to see myself becoming very cynical about the beer scene and noticed that my eagerness to run to the keyboard to write was happening less and less. It even got to the point where I wondered if I should even blog about beer anymore. Why focus on something that annoys me to much?

The reason I continued writing about beer was the same reason that got me started. I really do love beer. I love talking, thinking, and drinking beer. Most of all, I appreciate the relationships beer and this blog has fostered over the past 2+ years. So where does that leave my role in blogging now and moving forward?

This blog exists for me. Blogs are meant to be personal. You can talk about other subjects, but if you're not exposing a little of your soul while you're writing then I don't want to read that. I'm not writing to better beer. I'm not writing to call out breweries for throwing candy into casks. I don't care about the incorrect labeling of beer styles. I want to talk about me, the beer, and the fun I've had drinking it along the way.

This post was put together for The Session. A once a month gathering of beer bloggers across the world discussing a common theme.