Brad Grider of Beer Geek Radio gives a Mona Lisa smile over some peanut butter beers
Two days before Christmas I drove out to a deserted office park in Rancho Cucamonga, drank two peanut butter beers at a conference room table with two hilariously offensive dudes and called it reporting. Being a legit beer journalist kinda rules (except, of course, for deadlinezzz).
A few days earlier, I received a last-minute note from my editor at the IE Weekly saying that the story on Beer Geek Radio I had pitched for a small feature in preview of their year anniversary party on January 5 was cover worthy–did I think I could get copy in by December 28? I didn’t think I could do it, but of course I love a challenge (and, for some reason, making more work for myself over the holidays?) so I accepted and made plans to meet up with the BGR dudes to interview them and be a guest on an episode of their show.
Since I had only met Brad at the Eclipse release party and that got pretty hazy after the first 30 minutes, I wanted to sit and do the interview first. The guys were almost as foul-mouthed as me and I loved talking candidly about our opinions on the beer scene. I was also surprised to learn about all the new breweries that are opening up in the Inland Empire since I had only been to Hangar 24 and attempted once to go to Packinghouse, but it was late on a Sunday night and I should have known they would be closed.
After an hour-long talk with the microphones off (during which we drank a Lips of Faith Super India Pale Ale, Zombie Dust and a Velvet Merlin), two bottles of peanut butter beers appeared on the table and they turned on their equipment. I’d never recorded a podcast or even spoken on record before, but with two cool dudes keeping things casual, It wasn’t nearly as nerve-wracking as I had anticipated. We drank the Terrapin peanut butter porter and the Rogue Voodoo Donut Memphis Mafia ale, spouting real-time opinions to each other and bantering off of how gross the latter was.
Brad put the episode up a few days later while I was hours deep into writing the meaty cover story about his show and listening to it and feeling a part of something bigger was super motivation to finish the damn thing. They always did say I have a face for radio…haha
I’ll post the cover story when it hits the streets January 3, but until then, go to PodOmatic and check out episode 33 of Beer Geek Radio featuring commentary from yours truly (warning: I sound like a man).
the beerologue 