I received an email from Jim Curtis of Chicago who writes:

Hey beerbloggers,

My name is Jim Curtis and I'm a homebrewer from the west suburbs of Chicago. I have a general beer and brewpub info site at www.beer100.com. I have just quit my government job and opened a brewing shop in Wheeling, IL. The site for that is www.perfectbrewing.com

Just thought you might be interested in a guy who quit a job that was easy money for life to sell bags of hops and barley.

Cheers,
Jim

As a lapsed rural Canadian homebrewer of some note in the circles whose thirst I fed and no farther, I was dependent on beer making mail order supplies which I shipped in from either 150 miles away or even 2000 miles away. My main supplier was Saskatchewan's Paddock Wood and the shipping of quality goods made all the difference - especially PWB cleaner and San Star sterilizer. I notice that Jim stocks both - that's good. I quite like the set up of the web page which allows, for example, one page buying of a large variety of grains as opposed to use of a page per item. Mmmm....Vienna malt...120L crystal malts. I could grind up some of that to sprinkle on ice cream right now.

Reports from the frontlines, Jim. Send us a story about a trip to the wholesalers or your efforts to build client base. It is all good and interesting stuff.