I boycott FB so that wouldn’t work for me. Where’s my crotchety old man cane!? Brewcat has a great point that the nature of the forum being connected to Northernbrewer.com is that there is an easy flow of new people with basic questions and the RDWHAHB nature and knowledge of the people who post here has been a lot of fun to be a part of. I was going back through my posts out of curiosity before I posted this and noticed Flars answered my very first starry-eyed newbie question back in '13. Nice to know some things never change and the helpful nature of this forum has been incredibly consistent. I’ve gained an awful lot of knowledge from the people here since then and tried my best to help pay that forward. The reality is the people make the forum and I have no intentions of going anywhere.
We do seem to be more relaxed over here. I was just over at another form having a back and forth with a brewer who seems to think you can only brew good beer in a closed system.
Here’s the only other place I visit. I stumbled on it years ago during a search for some technical info. There’s low noise because all the members have been brewing for YEARS, I mean YEARS. But, if you have a highly technical question, it’s a great place to ask as many have also brewed professionally or have education in certain disciplines. For the record their not against non highly technical questions, it’s just that these guys know most about brewing that they skip the secondary or not questions, but will help with even simple issues. We are always looking for new members and would love to have more action.
HBT, AHA, BeerAdvocate, Brews-Bros. Of these, HBT is the only one that still gets a buttload of traffic. The others, like this one, are fast approaching imminent death.
I have to say, I like this forum for two reasons. First, it’s not too crazy big. HBT was overwhelming to browse. This is right-sized for my attention span. Second, the temperament is great. The meanest I ever saw on this forum was the infamous “grainy Breiss” thread. I went back to read that, and it was the least vitriolic forum thread ever.
There’s a small handful of highly opinionated folks on AHA who think it’s their way or no way. However overall I think the folks there are pretty great. BeerAdvocate used to be full of cranky-pantses but now due to very low traffic it doesn’t matter much anymore. NB remains just about the friendliest forum of all.