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CONTACT:
Lucy Saunders
beercook.com
4230 N. Oakland #178
Shorewood WI
53211 USA
lucy
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Brian's Belly grills with beer

One fine summer day not too long ago, three arguably overweight guys were sitting around a picnic table enjoying lunch.

As usual, they were enjoying their meal with a frosty brew. "Beer" they though, "you enhance our food and our lives- is there anything you can't do?" Apparently not, because these three now run Brian's Belly, a website for the beer lover and home beercooks.

Brian's Belly is a place for guys that know how to fire up a grill in their backyard and know how to boil water but never strayed too far from the cooking basics or the frozen food section at the grocery store.

The site emerged as a cornucopia of the all meaty, cheesy, frosty goodness that founders David Lauterbach, Brian Bailey and Mark Higgins felt were representative of men who enjoy grilling and beer. Along with countless friends, writers and affiates to their website, they have formed a group known as the Belly Buddies.From left, David Lauterbach, Mark Higgins and Brian Bailey

"We envisioned a site where a guy could go when he wanted a good, tasty, simple recipe. We also envisioned a site where we could make enough money to support our drinking habit," says site producer David Lauterbach.

"But back to the recipe thing. Not everyone instinctively knows how to cook, but everyone has the ability to cook when it's broken down into the basic steps and explained. It may seem obvious to some people what to do when they read 'first, caramelize the onions' but certainly not to most- so we try to break it down for them. And we try to keep it real and keep it funny... most recipes won't yield a boring meal, but you wouldn't know that from the way they're usually written- so we make them fun to read."

Yeah" adds Belly Buddy Mark Higgins.

"We like to joke that every single one of the recipes on our site has beer as an ingredient," adds website namesake Brian Bailey. "We will list a six pack in the ingredients but five of them are to be consumed by the chef while they're cooking, only one will make it into the chili."

New York City's outer boroughs may seem like a strange place to find three guys that know anything about deep frying a turkey or southern BBQ, but they don't let location stop them.

Brian explains: "As the site has expanded, we've been finding buddies all over the country that have the same likes and dislikes when it comes to beer, food and humor."

The bodacious beer reviews and cutting-edge articles found on their tongue-in-cheek website earn many kudos from laymen and professionals alike. But the boys insist that they aren't letting all the popularity brought on by their website go to their heads.

"Yeah" adds Belly Buddy Mark Higgins.

"We insist that we aren't letting all the popularity go to our heads," says Dave as he takes a swig of imported German beer from his solid gold stein. "We are continually learning how to cook- right along with the visitors that come to our site."

"When a professional chef emails us and says he thinks we're doing a great job, we feel great," says Brian. "When the same chef wants to write something for us and help add to our knowledge base, we feel even better... we know that when we add his article we're going to learn something and teach something at the same time. We know that the site will do someone else some good... and that's what it's all about. Oh, and of course the more people that visit the site, the more money we can make to buy beer." Affiliates include fur-bikini clad ChillinVillins, the Tabasco Store, and Hammocks.com. Such is the life of Brian's Belly.

"Yeah" adds Belly Buddy Mark Higgins, "Yeah indeed."

- contributed by David Lauterbach, July 2002


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