DRAFT Magazine

In our first Q&A on DRAFTMag.com, we talk with Craft Beer Radio’s Jeff Bearer about the four-year run of his show, his plans for the future, and drinking great beer.

Can you tell me a little bit about Craft Beer Radio?
I discovered podcasts in March of 2005. It was a couple months before iTunes added it and you had to get extra software to get to it, but I thought it was the coolest thing because you could get good talk radio on whatever topic you wanted. You could listen to it wherever and whenever you wanted. That really resonated with me.

Being into beer, I looked around for craft beer podcasts. There were a few out there — and some of them are still doing it today like Good Beer Show, which was probably the first — but that was an exception. I found that a lot of the beer podcasts weren’t what I was looking for or they didn’t know what they were talking about. There were times when I found myself screaming at my radio because they weren’t putting out accurate information. There were many that I couldn’t listen to because they were just drunk fests. I got to thinking that maybe I could do a beer podcast and do a better job at it. I asked my buddy Greg [Weiss] and we put out our first show June 3, 2005.

How has the show changed since you started?
I think the biggest thing that’s changed is the amount of prep work I put in. When I first started doing the show, I was spending between 20 and up to 40 hours a week prepping and doing research for the show. Since then, I’ve had a kid and haven’t been putting as much time into the show.

We’ve done different segments here and there. We used to do a listener participation/trivia contest called “what beer am I?” We kind of ran out of good ideas. It was written in the ever-clever first person from the beer’s point of view. It was fun for a while and it just kind of fizzled out. We used to always prepare what happened in beer news and listener emails, but those two things fizzled when I had the baby and I didn’t have as much time to dedicate to the show.

As far as the beer content goes, we’ve definitely learned a lot more about beer. I was a beer geek coming in. Greg wasn’t. He was more of a newborn when he started, so listeners have heard most of his education happen on the show.

What is your listenship look like in terms of numbers?
We are close to 3,000 listeners per show.

When you started this four years ago, did you think it would last this long?
That’s a good question. Once it got started and we got the first 15 or 20 under our belt, then I can definitely say I’m not surprised it lasted this long. When we were doing our first one or two, I didn’t even know if I could do a good show. If I couldn’t, I wasn’t going to keep doing it, but it turned out we put something together that a lot of people like.

How much longer can you keep producing the show?
The way we do the show now is that Greg and I get together and pick some beers. We still try to stick to a style- or a theme-based show. The next one we’ll be putting up is a bunch of beers all from Australia. It doesn’t take all that much planning, and it’s not like we’re going to run out of craft beer anytime soon. I hate to say this because it sounds like we’re really letting the show go, but we’re really on autopilot. I’m not spending any time looking for advertisers and I’m not spending time compiling the news segments anymore. It’s pretty self-sustaining. As long as I find enough time to edit the show and post it, we can keep doing it. That’s not too much of a drain on me.

Do you have any favorite shows?
When we’re doing the show, Greg and I have come up with the First Law of Craft Beer Radio: the quality of the show is directly proportional to the quality of the beers. Maybe it’s just worked for Greg and I, but when we can really enjoy what we’re drinking, it just feels like we’ve hit a home run. I don’t know whether that carries through for people who are listening, but I’m sure our excitement makes the show more enjoyable to a degree.

I just got back from Philly Beer Week and I did a whole bunch of stuff there. I’m pretty proud of most of the interviews I did there, mostly because in the past, I haven’t been very good at interviewing people. I’ve always felt that I had decent questions, but asking them, especially if they are hardball questions, I hadn’t been that good at. I was proud of the work this year, however.

Any beers you want to have on the show?
Isabelle Proximus is a beer that I’ve only had the tiniest sample of and it wasn’t in an environment where I could really evaluate it. That’s one beer we’d like to try because it has such a beer geek buzz.

I save all the best beers on the wall behind my bar and I’m looking at them now. We’ve done some of the world-class stuff. I’m looking at the Dark Lord. We have a bottle of Utopia sitting over there. A lot of the beers that would be sitting on your average person’s beer list, we’ve been lucky enough to try, mostly because our listeners have sent us samples.

This is an interesting thing that I hadn’t anticipated. Yes, we get beer from breweries on occasion, but we get by far more beers in the mail from listeners who want to showcase their local breweries. We get people who send us Wisconsin beers or Michigan beers, and we’ve done several shows where we’ve done state spotlights.

You have a “Donate” button on the site. Does that pay for your expenses?
No, it doesn’t cover everything. We do have a fair amount of listeners who subscribe on a recurring basis, paying $2 a month or $4 a month. It gives us some good income. It doesn’t pay for all the beer that we drink and the trips, like going to Savor and The Great American Beer Fest. I’ve kind of been wanting to promote that more because if we drew attention to it, more people might be happy to donate. Greg doesn’t. He thinks that we shouldn’t ask for money. It’s kind of an internal battle that we have to figure out where we stand. We do appreciate every dollar that people send to us. We don’t want to make it a pay only one and we’re not going to, but it definitely helps.

– Noah Davis is editor of DRAFTMag.com.