A (Not-so-Brief) History of 33 Books Co., Part 1 November 05 2014

This month marks the 5th anniversary of 33 Books Co. Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing a few stories about the history of the company, and doing a few special giveaways. If you'd like to stay abreast, I would suggest you sign up for the 33 Books Co. infrequent e-mail newsletter or liking 33 Books on the Facebook.

The story of 33 Books Co. could begin a few places.

In 2001, when I moved to Portland, Oregon, and first experienced its amazingly vibrant beer culture. That was also my first visit to the legendary Horse Brass. I opened the beer menu and thought to myself, "40 beers?! There's no way I could ever drink that many!" I had a lot to learn about my new home.

In 2006, when I founded a blog called BS Brewing with a few close friends. An early beer blog (yes, that's a thing), we gained some notoriety for our beer-related stunts, like that time we home-brewed in the middle of the Metolius River, near Bend, Oregon (home of Deschutes Brewing). 

But I mark its origins definitively at Friday, September 25, 2009, the day when I first walked in the doors of the Great American Beer Festival in Denver. Ostensibly there to write a blog post about the world's largest beer festival, I was awestruck. More than 2,000 beers. 700 brewers. Four dudes away from their wives. You can probably imagine what happened - pretzel necklaces and other unmentionables.

The carefully curated, tabloid-sized, color-coded spreadsheet that I had labored over for days beforehand ... it disappeared somewhere between a bourbon-barrel-aged this or imperial dry-hopped that.

I returned to Portland with a monster hangover, some great memories, but few notes with which to write that blog post, which never did get written.

When I returned home, I started set out designing screens for an iPhone application that would help me navigate GABF 2010, but became quickly bored with something that felt a little too close to my day job (I was the Creative Director at a small interactive design shop).

 

But a seed was planted.

Next: the power of pocket-size publishing!