About 2 Beer Guys

Following is the story that has been added to the about page on our website, but I wanted to share it with our blogging community first. I hope you enjoy!

Let me guess what you’re thinking. 2 Beer Guys seems like a pretty good excuse to just drink a lot of beer. If that is what you’re thinking, you’d be right, but that’s not the whole story. Besides, believe me when I tell you that it would be MUCH easier to just drink the beer instead of maintaining the site with all of our stories and reviews. However, as you’ll read below, there is a lot of passion behind what we do.

At the beginning of 2006, Sean and I were at Harpoon for a fundraiser for our friend’s ride in the Pan Mass Challenge (PMC). Harpoon is an event sponsor for the PMC and, as such, was allowing Jess to host the event there. In addition to learning more about the PMC and its cause, we learned quite a bit about Harpoon beer, specifically from Jaime Schier, Harpoon’s Quality Control Manager.

Now, both Sean and I were beer drinkers prior to attending the fundraiser. Mostly, we drank whatever was on sale at Market Basket or Shaw’s that particular week. After listening to Jaime speak so passionately about his beer however, we gained a new appreciation for hand-crafted beer; specifically local craft beer.

This set us off with a new-found curiosity, and we set out to try some of these lesser-known beers at the end of the aisle that we’d never paid attention to before. We picked up a few bottles of this and that, took them home, and with a review sheet that we found online, started to dissect them. That day, 2 Beer Guys, and a new passion, was born.

Now, a year and 300 beers later, we still have a lot to learn about beer and the craft beer industry itself, but we are now in a position to help others take a similar journey to the one that we are on. One particularly nice thing about the beer industry is that, in most cases (pun intended), you get what you pay for. There are a few exceptions, but more often than not, the price of the beer will reflect its quality. We’ve also found, of course, that the smaller the brewery and the smaller their distribution, the more the beer costs as they need to recoup their expenditures over less volume. In some industries, this does not necessarily mean a better product but in beer, it usually does.

Another reason this cause is important to us is supporting local businesses. There are literally scores of breweries in New England that we had no idea existed a year ago. After countless emails and face-to-face visits with brewery employees, we’ve learned that beer industry people are some of the most courteous around. Everyone we come across is passionate about their product, and is more than happy to share their time with us to talk about their beer and their philosophy. This has certainly made our task enjoyable, and we thank each and every person we’ve spoken with over the past year. It is in this thought that are more than excited about sharing our experiences with you, so that you can gain an understanding and an appreciation for the local beer market.

With all this in mind, go out, explore, and find passion in a bottle of craft beer.