What happened to Braukaiser.com?

[joshbuhl]

Braukaiser.com only has empty pages now and has for a couple weeks now. Does anybody know what’s happened to this great resource?

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

Currently, the "Wayback Machine" has archived it (link to braukaiser home page).

It's one of a number of sites from the 2010s that have gone 404 over the last couple of years.

Also, over the last couple of years, it appears there has been
1) a meaningful increase in bot traffic (I've read reports of 10x more traffic from a couple of years ago), and
2) a meaningful decline in advertising revenue (I've read reports of 90% decline).

 

[dmtaylor]

Kai Troester who owns Braukaiser.com was a homebrewer who apparently lost interest either in homebrewing or in being in the spotlight about 15 years ago. What he chooses to do or not to do now is anybody's guess.

 

[Bobby_M]

Kai Troester who owns Braukaiser.com was a homebrewer who apparently lost interest either in homebrewing or in being in the spotlight about 15 years ago. What he chooses to do or not to do now is anybody's guess.

Shut your mouth! Has it really been that long? I don't recall which one, but I caught one of Kai's talks at a homebrewcon when it was still called the NHC.

 

[joshbuhl]

Hmmm…well port 80 and port 443 are both still open on the server (216.37.42.224), but no content is being served. Pretty odd.

 

[duelerx]

Kai was ahead of its time, great loss in the community

 

[Bramling Cross]

Kai was ahead of its time, great loss in the community

Yup. I read his stuff with awe back in the day. Prior to his writing, I was of the mind that if your homebrew tasted alright you were doing alright. It never really occurred to me that homebrew could be taken seriously and deliver results that could go toe-to-toe with commercial beer. His writing was always very approachable. It wasn't always an easy read, but if you were willing to put the work in, his articles were very rewarding and practical.

 

[Bassman2003]

Shame but hosting does have a cost and these things do not last forever unless somebody pays for them. I liked Kai's approach and seemed like a nice guy. The resource will be missed.

 

[mashdar]

Shut your mouth! Has it really been that long? I don't recall which one, but I caught one of Kai's talks at a homebrewcon when it was still called the NHC.

I seem to recall his homebrewcon presentation was 2014, and his blog was active through early 2015, so I'd put it at 10 years. IIRC.

edit: server is still serving PDFs, so apache or w/e must be down.

NHC presentation was 2013
https://braukaiser.com/documents/Troester_NHC_2013_Step_Up_Your_Starter.pdf

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

The resource will be missed.

As noted in #2, the site was captured/archived by "Internet Archives". I was able to navigate to various pages in the archive without problems.

edit: server is still serving PDFs, so apache or w/e must be down.

So there may be a glimmer of hope for its return.

Recently, howtobrew.com (with 1st edition content) was 404 for a while before coming back with 3rd edition content.

OTOH, some other classic home brewing sites have gone 404 - and Internet Archives didn't capture them well.