ashleyrodriguez

Welcome to the Good Beer Hunting Collective podcast, the show where members of our team interview each other to get a behind-the-scenes look at some of our favorite articles. I’m Ashley Rodriguez, and I produce Good Beer Hunting's podcast.

I probably sit with our blog, Beer is Offal, more than anything I interact with on Good Beer Hunting. Not only is it something we produce totally in house—all the artwork comes through us and it’s written by a member of the GBH team, Mark Spence—but it’s also the only series we’ve captured entirely on audio. Mark has read every single one of his blog entries on our Out Loud series, where we record our favorite stories for our audience, and there’s a reason for that—Beer is Offal is special.

Beer is Offal is a food blog. That’s a simple way to put it. But that doesn’t capture all of it. It’s full of feelings, rants, brutal honesty, sometimes curveballs, and always this feeling of authenticity that I think is really interesting in the context of food writing. As Mark and I discuss in this episode, Beer is Offal is deeply personal—you get to know a lot about him pretty quickly—but it differs from most food writing in that it’s not a series of recipes, it’s not about someone trying to learn a new cuisine or venturing into traditions and styles of cooking that aren’t part of their background. It stays so close to the chest, and in that way, the lessons and ideas Mark talks about become wonderfully universal and relatable. It’s sort of remarkable how he makes that happen.

I sat down with Mark and talked about what it means to write about things happening to you right now—in real time. Beer is Offal isn’t just a collection of lessons learned, but is very much about things going on in Mark’s life, and his attempts to slowly acknowledge and work through them. Mark is admittedly not a very “emotional” person—as he says himself, he’s much more likely to be the guy in the corner of the room sticking close to his friends. So what does it take for someone like him to put all his stuff out there? How does he transform into, as he calls it, “a food and feelings writer?” Let’s find out.

Here’s Mark Spence. Listen in.

Welcome to the Good Beer Hunting Collective podcast, the show where members of our team interview each other to get a behind-the-scenes look at some of our favorite articles. I’m Ashley Rodriguez, and I produce Good Beer Hunting's podcast.

2019 was a big year for us at GBH. We published more stories than ever before, our writers took home dozens of awards, and we broke our own record for the number of visits to our site. It was truly a banner year.

One of the reasons for that is Claire Bullen, our editor-in-chief. Perhaps we didn’t give this occasion enough fanfare—I know I certainly would have participated in a ticker-tape parade to celebrate, but this is our time to do so.

Claire took over the role of editor in June, but has been on the editorial team since mid-2018. Claire is responsible for two of our 10 most popular stories of the year; she published a book in March; and shone like the beer beacon she is at this year’s North American Guild of Beer Writers Awards and British Guild of Beer Writers Awards, winning nods including Best Book, Best Technical Writing, and Best Travel Writing. It’s an understatement to say that we’re lucky to have her on the team.

One of the pleasures of my job is seeing Claire at work. Articles come in from our writers, and I get to watch Claire work with folks to produce some of the best beer writing on the internet. Every editor has a different approach to how they coach and guide writers, making small edits and suggestions as to how to really punch up an article. I saw this at work especially in a recent House Culture article we published by Helena Fitzgerald. Helena is a freelance writer who shared a beautiful story about stepping back from drinking while maintaining her love of bars, and it was lovely to see the touch points in the piece—the moments I knew Claire helped shape. I get to know Helena in this piece, but I also see Claire in there as well.

It’s funny writing this (and now saying it out loud), because I know Claire has to edit it—and I can imagine her brain working through this introduction that’s about her. It’s kind of a mind trip, but Claire makes us all better. I benefit so much from having her as editorial teammate, and I hope you see the flashes of her on our website like I do. They’re quiet and subtle, but when you find them, they shine brilliantly.

Welcome to the Good Beer Hunting Collective podcast, the show where members of our team interview each other to get a behind-the-scenes look at some of our favorite articles. I’m Ashley Rodriguez, and I produce Good Beer Hunting's podcast.

Hey! Did you hear we hired someone new?

We’re all excited to welcome Kate Bernot to the Good Beer Hunting team. She’s taking over as the lead at Sightlines, our news channel (don’t worry, Bryan Roth is still around, working on new projects and definitely making charts).

Kate brings years of experience to the team, which she put to good use pretty much from the moment she started. On day one of Kate’s new job with GBH, it was announced that Ballast Point Brewing Company would be sold to Kings & Convicts Brewing Company, a brewery in Highwood, Illinois. I live in Chicago and I had to Google where that was—and collectively, so did the rest of Beer Twitter, essentially shutting down the Kings & Convicts website when the news broke. Kate had to write her very first article for us about one of the biggest news stories in beer EVER.

As you probably know if you keep up with our site, Kate crushed it, reporting through all the noise that the news stirred up, and finding out some key facts that made clear how this sale was possible. Talk about on-the-job training—within hours of reporting for duty, Kate published one of the most comprehensive breakdowns of the Ballast Point sale out there. And today, we’re gonna learn more about how that story unfolded.

Likewise, we’re gonna learn more about Kate herself—for all the messages and emails flying around during that Ballast Point article, this is the first time I get some time to chat with her. Along with her stellar work for previous beer publications and her penchant for asking simple and straightforward questions, we quickly learned we at the office were making one fundamental mistake.

Witches are having a moment in the current cultural zeitgeist—it’s impossible to ignore. And, as Beth Demmon says, the resurgence of witchcraft and wizardry have a sort of nostalgic feel that appeals to the older millennials among us. 

Beth is a freelance writer, and published her first piece for Good Beer Hunting, called “Witch (Craft) Beer — How a New Wave of Brewers are Incorporating Magic into Beer,” on October 31, 2019 as part of our Mother of Invention series with Guinness. In the article, Beth talks about modern-day brewers who utilize magic in their approach. They range in type and tradition, from those that practice “chaos magic,” or what Beth calls the punk rock version of The Secret, to folks who rely on ideas and practices passed down from generation to generation, and who employ specific rituals to brew their beer. 

It might sound gimmicky, or perhaps a little silly, but we examine why that is. Where does the gimmick come from? Likewise, the stories that Beth tells and the people she interviews reveal a level of intentionality, respect, and regard for history that transcend whatever preconceived notions you might have about the idea of magic. And they also reveal a lot about the way we view women—past and present—in the context of beer brewing. 

We also talk about what it means to tell this story, as she says in the beginning, as a non-witch, and how to handle things like tradition and ancestral knowledge respectfully. We also talk about what a little bit of positive thinking—and perhaps a little magic—might have to do with Beth’s recent beer fortune. We start at the very beginning of this piece.

Welcome to the Good Beer Hunting Collective podcast, the show where members of our team interview each other to get a behind-the-scenes look at some of our favorite articles. I’m Ashley Rodriguez, and I produce Good Beer Hunting's podcast.

There’s always more to every story you read. As a writer, I’m perpetually intrigued by the choices other writers make—what to include, what to cut—and I’m especially interested in people who are super clear about who their work is for. Part of that is selfish: I host a podcast, called Boss Barista, that I describe as a feminist coffee podcast—I like to let people know what they’re in for from the get-go, and that they’re probably not going to hear light coffee chatter. And for the first time ever, I got to talk to someone who uses the exact same language to describe their own project.

Beca Grimm is an Atlanta-based freelance writer and co-founder of the zine Dope Girls, which describes itself as a feminist cannabis culture zine. Beca also lends her talents to Good Beer Hunting, writing articles, also called Dope Girls, about the issues surrounding cannabis as it becomes legalized around the country. Along with her latest article, which profiles Lowell Farms: A Cannabis Cafe in West Hollywood, Beca tackles really fundamental questions surrounding the growing cannabis market. She also keeps one foot on the ground, reminding us that, as the cannabis market grows, there are people whose voices are often not heard. Dope Girls is an attempt to elevate those voices, as they talk about issues of gender, race, and clemency in their articles.

Along with these serious issues, during this conversation, we also talk about the grind of freelancing, and what it’s like to hound editors for money or feedback, and wax poetic about being a freelancer for GBH. Spoiler alert: it rules, partially because of our amazing editorial team, whom Beca talks about, and partially because you can actually count on getting paid. But moreso because the connection between cannabis and beer isn’t a far one, and as Beca discovers, there are more similarities than she ever imagined. Here’s Beca.

Welcome to the Good Beer Hunting Collective podcast, the show where members of our team interview each other to get a behind-the-scenes look at some of our favorite articles. I’m Ashley Rodriguez, and I produce Good Beer Hunting's podcast.

If you’re part of the beer world, you’ve probably heard folklore about our Founding Fathers—the men who signed the Constitution, the first American presidents—brewing their own beer. That’s an appealing story, a fun tidbit you might tell a friend when they ask you about your own brewing adventures.

And yet, how critically have we regarded this story? Think about the timeframe folks like George Washington or Thomas Jefferson were operating in. Both men, the first and third presidents of the United States, respectively, were slaveholders. And it’s much more likely—guaranteed, even—that their slaves, not them, were the actual brewers.

Dr. J Nikol Jackson-Beckham pulled at the thread of this tale to point out its logical fallacies, and to shine a light on the actual brewers, specifically Peter Hemings, in her piece, “Missing Ingredients — The (Incomplete) Story of Thomas Jefferson’s Unsung Brewer,” which was published on our website on December 12, 2018.

The path to this story wasn’t quite linear for Dr. J, as she’s known throughout the beer world. Dr. J, who has a PhD in Communication & Cultural Studies, and who uses her training to study the beer world, started having inklings about this story as she was still working on PhD, but couldn’t quite find a place for it. We’ve all had this happen—a brilliant idea strikes us while we’re working on a different project, and we can’t exactly articulate where it belongs. So it stayed with her. For almost a decade. Now, in our conversation, she shares more about its long evolution—and its rewarding payoff.

This is the Good Beer Hunting Collective podcast. Here’s Dr. J.

Welcome to the Good Beer Hunting Collective podcast, the show where members of our team interview each other to get a behind-the-scenes look at some of our favorite articles. I’m Ashley Rodriguez, and I produce Good Beer Hunting's podcast.

What does beer have to do with politics?

It’s a simple enough question. And some would argue that beer has nothing to do with politics—the two should remain totally separate. Here at Good Beer Hunting, that idea has never really sat well with us. So instead of staying away from politics, we invited it in.

After a particularly low day—the 2016 election—GBH founder Michael Kiser was talking to his neighbor, David Faris. David lived just above the GBH studios, then in Logan Square in Chicago, and was absolutely devastated by the results. So, after a few beers, they decided they wanted to create something new.

In January of this year, David and Michael, with some help from me along the way, launched Electing to Drink, a podcast that invites progressive thinkers, writers, and elected officials to talk about the topics they’re excited about while sharing a beer with us. Part catharsis, part town hall, what makes Electing to Drink so special is David. He’s uniquely positioned to go into the depths of political discourse while still making information accessible and useful for most people. This isn’t a show where David invites progressive big wigs to yell ideological nonsense at you—it’s a show where you can sit back, grab a drink, and feel like you’re amongst friends, just discussing some of the most important ideas driving society.

Here’s David Faris, host of Electing to Drink. Listen in.

Welcome to the Good Beer Hunting Collective podcast, the show where members of our team interview each other to get a behind-the-scenes look at some of our favorite articles. I’m Ashley Rodriguez, and I produce Good Beer Hunting's podcast.

I live in Chicago, and there’s this liquor—maybe some of you have heard of it—called Malört, which is made from wormwood. If you ask anyone in Chicago what their local spirit is, they’d point to Malört; they might even trick their out-of-town friends to take a straight shot of it when they come to visit. And everyone knows how hard it is to drink Malört. The bottle’s label quotes creator Carl Jeppson as saying: “My Malört is produced for that unique group of drinkers who disdain light flavor or neutral spirits.” It goes on: “It is not possible to forget our two-fisted liquor. The taste just lingers and lasts—seemingly forever. The first shot is hard to swallow! Perservere [sic]. Make it past two 'shock-glasses' and with the third you could be ours... forever.”

Some would say that this sentiment is a perfect encapsulation of the people of Chicago. Perhaps not for everyone on the first sip, but they grow on you with time. Others might find that comparison silly, but it’s interesting to figure out what a city’s chosen liquor says about its history and spirit (no pun intended).

In this episode of the GBH Collective, I interview Gray Chapman, a freelance writer and frequent GBH contributor. She’s launching a new series for us called Beer and a Shot, which will profile the relationship between bartenders, spirits, and their relationships to the cities they inhabit. In this ongoing series, made in partnership with Miller High Life, Gray will write about a different city and a different bartender every month and will show how a place’s personality can be discerned through its choice of spirit—a couple ounces at a time.

This is Gray Chapman, GBH contributor. Listen in.