My passion for beer began in college. It was the early nineties and I found myself in the midst of a microbrew revolution. The variety and the flavor that was suddenly available captivated me. Where mass market beers were indistinguishable from each other in their blandness, microbrews were infinitely unique. This uniqueness went beyond style and flavor with each new beer coming complete with a personality, story, and local history. Beer became an adventure.

Although I was in college when I developed a taste for craft brew, unfortunately my wallet didn’t develop at the same rate. I was always broke back then and my first attempt at homebrewing was actually a plan to get better beer cheaper. I soon learned that saving money wasn’t the real point. Brewing at home was about craft and love of the beer.

I think my favorite homebrew was my first one. My roommate at the time split the costs of a basic brew kit with me and we created a Porter. It was surprisingly good for a first attempt. We named it after a mutual friend who had stopped by during the brewing process. Although it couldn’t have been predicted at the time, that friend would become my wife years later. I kind of like to think it was that first brew that planted the seed.

I started Beer Haiku Daily on June 16, 2005. It was supposed to be a little side project used to experiment with web technology. Now that little experiment is over two years old and the site should have 1,000 haiku by March.

Why haiku? I lived in Japan for five years when I was in my teens. It was during that time that I was first exposed to haiku. I learned to love the structure, brevity and evocative quality of them. Much later, probably after a night of drinking good homebrew and telling tall tales, I dreamt up the idea of combining haiku and beer. Even the next day the concept seemed so absurd that I decided it was a perfect idea for a Web site.

The best thing about haiku is that it forces you to pare down to only the most essential words to express the essence of an entire story. The reader will always have to draw on their own experiences to fill in the blanks and complete the story. Using fewer words to express something really appeals to me in this over communicated world.

If there wasn’t a relationship between beer and haiku before my site, there is now. Beer is an acquired taste and has always been the drink of the people. Haiku is also accessible to all but the appeal and appreciation increases with time. Beer is made of just a few simple ingredients and yet there are infinite variations, styles and flavors. Haiku only uses a few words, yet it can be used to express nearly any human experience.

As for the perks of beerhaiku, it was one of my life’s ambitions to have people send me free beer to drink and that has happened. I’ve also gotten haiku from a large variety of people including poets, humorists, beer drinkers, average folks, brewers and some of the best beer writers around.

Because of my off-kilter niche, I like to think I have brought a new world of good brew to some people that may not have expected that when they stumbled upon my Web site.

Here are a few of my favorite haiku:

after enough beers
my intelligence dazzles.
others are jealous.

after a hard day
he savors a private stout
then lets in his friends

stuck in a strange town
new beers seem to welcome me
soon I feel at home

Now that the site has been up for well over two years, my main goal is to keep it going. It’s a challenge coming up with a new haiku everyday, but it is a nice challenge. I think it keeps my brain active. In the future, I am considering branching out from haiku. I think it would be cool to build a repository of references to beer in all kinds of art from today and
throughout history.

Beer has been around and revered for thousands of years. I imagine having a Web site that exhibits paintings, lyrics, prose, quotes, and sculpture directly or indirectly celebrating our favorite beverage. It would be a big undertaking and I haven’t quite figured out how to pull it off yet. At any rate, regardless of any features I add to the site, there will always be a beer haiku daily.