The Museum Turns 13 Years Old, Part 1: Site Summary and Statistics

For 13 years now I've been writing posts, telling the story of breweries and their taps. On the personal side of things, it was a pretty good year as I adjusted to my new "retirement" status, and I was finally able to devote a little more free time to write tap profiles. I probably could have done more if I hadn't taken a 1 month break between February and March, but a late push over the past week helped a bit.

Unfortunately I need to work on my displays more, so I'm not quite ready to post photos or video of the Museum yet. Also, I have a big announcement: I've stopped collecting taps for now, at 1,828 taps. Without the income I had before, it doesn't make sense for me to keep pumping big money into acquiring taps. The good thing is, my desire to continue collecting also waned, so I don't feel stressed or upset about not being able to buy more. If an amazing deal comes up or I get taps as gifts, I'll still add them to the collection, and it's entirely possible that this is just a pause rather than a hard stop. Time will tell.

I was able to complete 32 tap profiles this past year, a phenomenal increase...you have to go back 6 years to find a year in which I did more. So I'm pretty happy about that.

The number of new breweries/brewpubs/restaurants profiled this past year was also up by quite a bit, almost double that of the previous couple of years...you have to go back 5 years to find a year in which I wrote more. New brewery/brewpub/restaurant profiles take considerably more time in research and writing.

For new purchases, my new-found thriftiness was evident, as the number of taps acquired dropped significantly this year as compared to last year. However, it's pretty much in line with the numbers from 2 and 3 years ago.

Finally we come to the page views. As predicted last year, I hit a million page views by June 2024, which was pretty awesome! While I didn't quite match that amount for this past year, the number of views was still better than every other year except the last, and I'm closing in on 1.2 million. Thanks once again to everyone who comes to visit the Museum!

The "Top Taps Acquired" post will be up next. I'll have that up sometime later this week, so check back to see some amazing tap handles!