Featured Beer Blogger: STAN HIERONYMUS
DRINK WITH THE WENCH PRESENTS:
The Beer Blogger Interview Series
Curious what goes on in the minds of your favorite beer bloggers? Well, The Beer Wench is and she has embarked upon a mission to interview as many beer bloggers that she can — from all over the world. Are you a beer blogger? Do you want to share your story? Send me an email!
Beer Blogger Interview
Full name: Stan Hieronymus
Twitter handle: @StanHieronymus
Name of blog: I think Appellation Beer is the one you want to talk about. I also blog at Realbeer.com, use a blogging format to support my most recent books (BrewLikeaMonk.com and BrewingwithWheat.com) and set up TheSlowTravelers.com to chronicle our family adventure (our daughter quickly became the star there).
Current location: Corrales, New Mexico.
Background “Snapshot”
1. Where did you grow up?
Champaign, Illinois, basically on the University of Illinois campus.
2. What sports if any did you play growing up, through college and beyond?
Cow tipping.
3. How old were you when you had your first beer?
I honestly can’t point to a single beer. The first time I became aware of the smell of beer I was seven years old. Once a year my father and friends returning for the University of Illinois homecoming football game would play poker in our basement – which smelled of stale beer and cigars for many days after.
4. If you can recall, what is the story of your first beer? Where did you have it? What style and brand was it?
See above. The only style or brand we concerned ourselves with in college was “quarter pitchers.”
5. Where, if applicable, did you go to college? What did you study? What additional activities, organizations, sports did you partake in during college?
University of Illinois. I majored in political science and economics. I starting working part-time at a local newspaper when I was in high school and became hooked on journalism the summer after my freshman year in college, working full-time (mostly in sports) from my junior year on. Collecting stories and repeating them is such a hoot . . . if people are reading them. People like to read about sports and beer; sewer boards not so much.
Craft Beer Epiphany
Every craft beer enthusiast has at least one pinnacle craft beer experience that completely changes ones perspective on beer. I refer to this mind-blowing moment as a “craft beer epiphany.”
1. What was your first craft beer epiphany? Recall as many details about it as you can:
Sorry, I don’t have a single one. Perhaps I’m a little slow on the uptake or the ’60s had blown my mind before I got around to beer. For instance, I never realized Pabst was “hip.” It was the “green beer” fresh from vats in Peoria Heights brewery (long closed) around the corner from the bar we frequented after our newspaper shift ended at 1 or 2 a.m. German beers, which we could get relatively fresh in central Illinois, and then cask-conditioned ales in England eventually informed me I didn’t necessarily have to be a wine drinker the rest of my life.
2. Have you have additional craft beer epiphanies since the first? Detail as many of them as you wish:
My wife, Daria Labinsky, was the first beer writer in our family, pitching a story on Florida’s brewpubs (all six of them) to “American Brewer” after we quit our “real” newspaper jobs in 1992 to travel and write about whatever paid the bills. When we returned to Illinois after a month in Florida that included volunteering at a golf tournament – getting up close and personal with the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Fred Couples, John Daly and others – even my most golf-crazy friends didn’t want to hear about that. They just wanted to know about the beer story Daria was working on. So I guess the epiphany was about people and beer rather than about beer itself.
Don’t get me wrong. I love drinking beer, talking about beer with friends, discovering new beers. I couldn’t count the number of “wow” beers I’ve had. I can remember just where I was when I tasted particular beers. But in total has come the realization eventual realization (so not really an epiphany) that the beers we end up with are an expression of a brewerís intent, not necessarily an extension of his or her will but one where he or she had a clear idea of how it was going to turn out. It needn’t always be a “wow” beer. You might taste a hefeweiss in the south of Germany and marvel at the extra rich mouthfeel, then listen to the brewer explain something he does different – I’ll stop short of the technical details – in bottle conditioning.
Beer Blog Background
1. How long have you been writing your beer blog?
Since November of 2005.
2. What inspired you to start writing your blog?
To start a discussion about why the beer from here tastes different than the beer from there. And perhaps why it tastes different now than it did then. Quite honestly, probably less than half the posts have stuck to the mission. If I were one for resolutions a good one would be to consult the mission statement before writing. But I’m not one for resolutions.
3. Why did you choose the name of your blog?
To make it clear that wines and cheeses arenít the only products that can claim terroir.
4. What are you personal goals for your blog? What do you hope to achieve with it?
To find a cure for cancer.
5. What is one of the coolest things that happened to you as a result of being a beer blogger?
Having Jonathan Surratt write and ask if I understood how “trackback” worked. This was before he called WordPress his bitch.
More seriously, blogging is just another form of media for a beer writer. I’m not a beer blogger one day and a beer writer on another because something appears in print. Every once in a while somebody who writes about beer in a publication that is printed on paper types a screed berating beer bloggers. That’s plain stupid. Certainly blogs have shortcomings. Most are one-person operations, and I don’t think there is a non-fiction writer alive who doesn’t benefit from interaction with an editor, then the help of a copy editor. But some of the most thoughtful writing about beer appears in blogs. And to bring this back to your question (sort of), if we relied only on print that thoughtful writing would be stuck away in a diary somewhere.
6. What are you top 3 favorite beer blogs/beer websites?
I subscribe to more than 60 beer rss feeds and check the beerinator listings often, but nothing excites (or scares) me as much as when I see Martyn Cornell has a new post. I’m always thrilled when I see he’s not commenting on something stupid I’ve written. (I’m saving the other two choices for favorite brewery.)
Beer Talk
1. What are your top 3 favorite beer styles?
Saison, American IPA, Reinheitsgebot.
2. What are your top 3 favorite breweries?
An impossible question. At this moment, in alphabetical order: Lost Abbey, Marble Brewery, New Glarus Brewing, Private Landbrauerei Schˆnram, Russian River Brewing.
3. If you could work with or for any one brewery, which one would it be and why?
I wouldn’t wish me on any brewery.
4. Are you a homebrewer? If yes, what is the most unique and interesting beer recipes you’ve brewed as a homebrewer?
Yes. A gruit flavored with stuff from our yard.
5. Do you have any beer certifications (BJCP, Cicerone, Siebel, American Brewers Guild)?? If so, what are they?
BJCP (National).
6. What is your favorite beer and food pairing?
We are big on cheese night in our family. Beer follows pretty naturally.
The Personal Side
1. What is your current day job?
I don’t understand the question.
2. If you could change your career at this very moment, without any restrictions on what you could do, what would you want to do and why?
If it turns out there’s something I’d rather be doing I may just go do it.
3. Are you married? Children?
Happily. Two children, Ryan (older, out on his own) and the world famous Sierra.
4. Outside of beer and writing, what are some of your other hobbies?
I’m what librarians refer to as a lifelong learner. Last year it was RV maintenance.
Off The Beaten Path
1. If you were a style of beer, what style would be and why?
Lambic – Often described as sour, and an acquired taste.
2. You were caught smuggling beer illegally, which has now been made punishable by death. Right before you are sent to the executioner, you are offered one last beer. What beer would you chose and why?
Miller Genuine Draft. “Please, shoot me.”
3. If I contracted you to brew a beer (or design a beer recipe) called “The Beer Wench” — what style would you chose and what, if any, extra ingredients would you add?
American Wild.
4. If you could be a superhero, what would you want your superpowers to be?
Make everybody in the world a better speller.
5. What is one of the craziest things you have ever done and lived to tell the story?
Spending 14 months living in a 140-square-foot box with an 11-going-on-16-year-old. (See www.TheSlowTravelers.com.)
6. What are your thoughts on bacon?
It would make a lousy day job.
