Ten Questions with Dave from Beer in Front: Podcasting and Craft Beer

The ten questions episodes are based around a simple concept:  Allowing people to talk about the things  they are passionate about.  It can be a job, hobby, cause, or anything in between.  Today I’m joined by  Dave from the Beer in Front Podcast about his enjoyment of  podcasting and beer.  So join us in learning  the why of the Beer in Front Pocast and what we can learn from Dave's  passion.  

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In life, we have two choices, to experience or to exist. Every week, each of us makes that choice to either seek a better way to live or to get by. walk alongside me each week on the strive seek find podcast as we continue to seek our own brilliant future. This episode marks the third 10 questions Episode 10 questions episode are based around a simple concept, allowing people to talk about the things they are passionate about. It can be a job, hobby cars, or anything in between. Today, I'm joined by by Dave from beer on front podcast about his enjoyment of both podcasting and beer. Now let's get started. Dave, thanks for being here. Oh, chance. Thanks for having me. I'm a big fan of strife seek find. Thank you for having me. I'm honored. Well, this could be fun, I'd really enjoy. It was funny. I was looking to make alterations in my podcast for season two. And I discovered you were already doing some of the things that I thought about doing so I I said, that's very much Dave's thing. I'm just gonna listen and enjoy your your jag off. I think it's what you call it the week, right? Yeah. Yeah. So plenty of them out there. an unlimited supply. Tell us a little bit about yourself. I am 54. Born and raised and lived in Chicago my whole life. I've worked for an airline for the past. Close to 35 years now. I've been doing that. You know, since I was 19, I started working for an airline. So I'm doing that I work at O'Hare where that's always fun. I've been a big is it a nightmare to work cat? Because sometimes it's a nightmare to fly through. Yeah, it's, it seems like every year maybe it's just me getting older. But it seems to be just worse and worse. So I don't know. I don't know if I've got seven more years in me to 62 I'm not sure. But, you know, at this point, I'm in it for the long haul. But yeah, I've been doing that, you know, working for the airline forever. I got into craft beer, which is one of my passions as well as podcasting. Been in a craft beer forever. So I just kind of decided at one point, well, let's try to merge the two and see where it takes us. So what got you into craft beer? You know, I've always liked beer. But you know, growing up, we would drink. You know what our father's drink though we would drink. You know, in my case in Chicago was old style. And my father was a big fan of stroz. So those were what I had in I remember that way back in like 1989. It was just early on in my airline career. Some friends in mind, we went for Boston for the day, like, oh, let's just go to Boston, we'll see the town. And we stopped at this place for lunch. And I'm like, well, let's have a local beer here. Samuel Adams. I'll try that. And that just blew me away. Because the color is darker. You have more of the malt taste hops, which you don't get in the bland. You know, bud Miller corps types beer. And that just started me on this long road to ruin of drinking good beer. So ever since I had my first Sam Adams Boston lager. I've been hooked on craft beer and I've always tried to find new and exciting beers to drink. So what's the best best one you found? And what are you drinking tonight? Let's hit them both. I will tell everybody listening to my shame. I did not have any craft beer left when I went to get ready for tonight. So I am drinking a Modelo. And when I'm talking craft beer I'm drinking. Not a craft beer. on me. You know the beer. The show is called beer in front so it for me it's all about enjoying the beer that's in front of you. So if you're enjoying that one chance, that's fine by me. What I'm having is called DB a D i don't know if you want to edit this out later but it's Don't be a dick. This is by a brewery. Local Chicago area brewery called liquid love and this the proceeds from This all goes to mental health causes. So DBA D or don't be a, you can bleep it out later tick. Oh, no, no, Nate. Okay, the problem. They've heard what they've heard worse, but you have gotten fired up about something. So what's the best craft beer you've ever had? What's the kind of your, your unicorn, the one that the first experience was so good that you? You wish you could recreate it? You know, God, there's so many. And that's the one good thing about, you know, now there's over 1000 craft breweries in the United States. So there's so many good beers out there. There's a couple Goose Island started maybe 15 years ago aging their stouts and bourbon barrels. And that was like a big aha moment like, wow, you know, this is a 12 13%. stout that's aged in a bourbon barrel. So you pick up all of those notes. Since then, part of me a local Chicago brewery revolution, I think has really upped the barrel aging game, and they put out beers year round, that are just tremendous. They're high alcohol, you have one or you share it with, you know, a friend. It's a good sit outside, maybe have a cigar type of beer, but it's just phenomenal. Oh, that sounds good. I mean, that sounds locally, I mean, obviously a much smaller beer scene. And it sounds a little bit like what we get out of barbarian brewery as far as big beers, you almost need to share them. But they've been hitting it pretty hard on this. They've moved into pretty heavy into the sour game last time I was there. But in all honesty that may have been before COVID. Okay. Well, when we're done, you know, well, I'll get your address I'll the next release from revolution, I think is going to be in the next month or two. So I'll grab one and I'll send you out again to try. Outstanding, Allah, I'll ship you one of the hell so I was okay. I'm a big fan of Alice. So how long have you been doing the podcast, the beer based podcast, I started and just bad luck, bad timing, whatever you want to call it. I literally started it. Like a couple weeks before COVID hit. And my plans were, you know, it's called beer in front, just enjoy the beer that's in front of you. Instead of you know, people always looking for the trendy thing. Sometimes the beer that's right in front of you, is a great beer and just enjoy that. And I wanted to have friends on meetup with friends go to places, and then COVID hit and it just totally changed everything where now it's just a one person show. I do it from my second bedroom. Now the things are starting to open up. I do want to branch out a little bit more. But right now it's just a, you know, a one person show where I talk about beer. And I'm sure I don't know, you know what your podcast experiences. But, you know, I thought to myself when I'm starting, oh, I could do 30 minutes standing on my head not a problem. And then you do it. And it's like, I've got four minutes. So I branched out into local beer news, Chicago area news. And then I started calling out hypocrites, and I just, you know, have my jag off of the week segment. So you had to branch out a little bit just because I overestimated my gift of gab. Yeah, so did I I thought I told my wife when I was getting ready to head to the first episode. About that same time I said that. I hope I can keep it to 30 minutes because that's supposed to be a good length. Yeah, I think it was seven and a half with me stretching and everything where I could find is like, and even now 90% of my episodes are under 15 minutes. Yeah. I've got them up a little bit higher. But yeah, the initial ones which actually I removed. One day, the sound quality wasn't as good as it is now as I'm getting more into this. But yeah, they were like you know, 10 minutes and I'm trying to fill time with instead of talking about beer, I opened the beer, pour it to like maybe get an extra 20 seconds of the podcast. I may have done that with clinking glasses when I was doing the whiskey with Work wars episodes. So what about this? You obviously have a passion for beer, and you enjoy that what you're doing with the podcast? But what about it really? Feed your creative energy? How does these things work together to totally feed the creative, the creativity within it. I've always had people say, Oh, boy, you have a great voice, you should do radio, or I would write lengthy emails to people and they're like, boy, you have a gift for this. And I'm very self conscious. I like, don't believe any of that. And just, you know, I was thinking, and it was just kind of on a whim. I'm like, you know, I should start a podcast talking about beer, because a lot of the other ones that I've noticed where people were just getting so technical about the beers and there's a place for that, but I didn't see a place for just enjoy a beer. I mean, a good beer is a good beer, it doesn't have to be the trendy thing that's $20 a bottle that you have to wait in line two blocks long to get. Sometimes Sam Adams is a good beer. So I'm like, Well, let me try to do the two I could talk. I could, you know, write the podcast out. I could talk about beer, which is what I love. So let me try to do that. And, you know, it's knock on wood. It's, it's been going pretty well. So I'm happy. Oh, it's an outstanding podcast. And I'm going to urge my listeners to give it a listen, because I certainly have fun checking it out. What are you doing to improve your craft? I mean, the beer love is, you know, you're always going to love that. What are you doing to get better for the rest of the experience? Well, for the podcasting itself, like I said, My initial episodes were, I mean, they were just, I mean, I'm an amateur to begin with. But this was really bad. So now I'm, I'm a lot better with my editing, my sound production. That is 100 times better. And I'm always looking to get better to make a more professional sounding podcast. And even lately, I've, like I said, it branched out a little bit, I've been able to talk to local politicians from the area. So I'm always looking to do something to do better, I'm not satisfied with the last episode, I always feel, you know, I could do something better. So I think that's the one thing that's like motivating me to get better every week. And if I recall, if and correct me if I'm wrong on this, I just seem to remember one of the politicians that you were interviewing, it was very much, it was very much activism based. Yeah, something, an area that you were interested in and wanted to make sure that people were being held to the point so to speak. Yeah, she was a, an William, she's a state of Illinois. She's our representative, or she's my representative here. And since the interview, I met her, and I've met my state senator. And you know, one day down the line, I hope to get her on as well. So I mean, that's the one thing I'm not. And I don't think with anyone, you should never, ever rest on your laurels, you should always try to do better than next time, even if it's, you know, in podcasting, or if it's in anything, you could always do something better. So that's the one thing with podcasting that I try to get better every week. That's great. And I, you've already made suggestions to me to help me improve along the way. Even how we're recording tonight is much better than what I'd done when I tried this before. So I appreciate that. Who do you idolize in the field, either field and kind of Who are your mentors? I really, I mean, this was all I don't I listen to podcasts from my friends, like yourself. There's others. In the Twitter community, the podcast community, it's a great group of people, very supportive of each other. So I try to listen to my friends. I don't listen to the big shows. One, there's not enough time in the day to listen to every podcast, not even from your friends you pick, you know, certain episodes. But I don't really I think the community in itself. As a mentor, you always, you know, see people talk about this thing they do or that thing they do and you try to like, Huh, let me see if this works. So the community is itself, the podcasting community, the independent podcasting community is terrific. And I would say as a whole, we all mentor everybody, we're all looking out for our friends. I agreed i a funny thing last night, randomly, I got a DM from a guy follow on Twitter, local podcaster had never met, reached out. And we were talking, we ended up talking gave me a call. And in the process, now we're recording this weekend on a podcast. But I said, so he says, Who are you recording with this week? And I said, Oh, you know, Dave, with zero front, he goes, bear in front, excuse me. But he goes, Yeah, I love that guy. I mean, I've never met this guy in real life. But we all have the same podcasting community that seems to be very, very, very, very supportive, as long as well, to steal from the name from your beer. As long as you're not a deck, you're getting it down with most everybody in that group. Yeah, everybody looks out for each other. There's room for everybody. In the podcast community, you know, no one, you know, everyone wants each other to succeed. And that's the one thing I do like about it. Had the people that people that kind of stuck their nose in that don't seem to be that way? Don't ever seem to last long, they tend to disappear quick. Yeah, or, you know, we just, you know, or in my case, I blocked them. You know, I don't have time for this in my life. Let's move on and you know, just associate with the good people. Exactly. So, probably an odd question. But what do you think your greatest accomplishment is, in this field? Where which episode? are you most proud of? Or is a couple I I'm proud of the one that I did with the state representative. I didn't think I and even like the times where I reach out to other people. I admit, I am a small podcast. So I always say that, you know, I don't claim to be Joe Rogan or an NPR podcast. I'm just a small local guy. But she was willing to come out. And that really made me proud. The last one I did, I'm taking a hiatus in the month of August. Mental Health reason, just taking a little break, kind of recharge the batteries. But my last episode, I talked to two women from Los Angeles in the LGBTQ plus community. That was a great episode. So episodes like that, that are just more than me talking about a beer. Those I think are my best accomplishments. Being able to pull down somebody outside of you know, myself, or you know, one of my knucklehead friends to talk about a beer. Yeah, that's. And when we're doing this, that's what we're hoping for a we want, we have something to say and be. I don't know about you. But I always liked the fact that when I started this, I ended up. I want to have fun with it. But I always seeking something that has, I want to feel like what I'm doing has a purpose. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So that if somebody wants to learn to podcast, what advice would you give? What steps would you give? Or if they want to get into craft beer? What steps would you Where would you have them start? If they want to get into it one? It depends on where in craft beer. I mean, it depends on where you live. I think most places now have, you know, little craft breweries. I think the one stat I read is 90% of the country has a craft brewery within five miles or something like that. It's you don't have fire to look. You know, ask around. Ask your friends, you know, what do they like? one you have to know what you like, and go from there. And there's always people that are willing to help you whether it's the person at the beer shop, you go to, you know, you might say hey, I really like this beer and they might recommend something else in that style. Or, if you like, you know this helis try this lager or try this one and you'll notice the differences in them. With podcasting, I just kind of did it. I probably should have done more research should have asked more questions, but I kind of just jumped into the pool. And it's not necessarily a wrong thing. But you know, do as much research as you can ask questions, people will answer them for you. There's no such thing as a stupid question. There's always somebody in the community that will help you. You know, but you could do, you don't have to spend a lot of money to podcast, I do mine on anchor doesn't cost me a penny to do it. My first microphone was pretty cheap. So you could get into it really cheap. And take the time to edit your sound is the most important thing. I edit mine. I cut out more arms, I spend more time cutting out my arms, and you know is that I do actually recording the podcast, but pay attention to your sound. Because a lot of people if the sound is bad, they're just going to turn you off. So that's one thing focus on your sound. Totally, that's good advice. It's not something that I'm great at at times, because I get in a hurry. But it's something I'm working on. I got an upgrade this one of these days, I'm still using my starter mic. If you if someone came in tomorrow and told you that you had to shut down the pod, he couldn't do that. Or that. What would you do that for that same release of creative energy that you get out of your podcast? I would probably start writing or write a blog about beer and get my thoughts out that way. Yeah, if I couldn't do the podcast itself, I would probably write about beer. I don't know if I would do write about jag offs or anything like that. But I would probably do more of a beer blog if I couldn't do this. Yeah, you'd still get out creative energy that way. That's good. So now it's time to really push your your podcast tell us a little bit more about it. And what else anything else you'd like the audience to know, as we kind of round our last out our last question here. Well, the podcast is called beer in front. It's available wherever you listen, Apple's Spotify, Google, Amazon, you know, all the major players, you can find it there. Like I said, I didn't take the month of August off. So there's nothing new coming out until the first week of September. I have a couple special episodes coming out. I think you're familiar with Heath from the E 14 podcast. I think we're mutual friends on social media. I talked to Heath a couple weeks ago, I'm going to piece together a special episode, we're talking about military issues, things like that. And I'm going to have an episode coming out probably after I come back from the hiatus about the year 1971 and all of the great music that came out. So that one I'm really looking forward to there were so many great rock and roll albums that came out 50 years ago. But yeah, the podcast is beer in front it's available everywhere. I do have a website that is really mediocre but it's beer in front calm and working on that but it's you know, hard to juggle everything when you're working 40 hours a week etc. But you know on Twitter, it's beer in front, Instagram beer in front. So type in beer in front and you'll be able to find me I've got the beer in front stickers sitting up in front of me on my sticker board that I keep where I record my if yours right here as well. I appreciate you coming on and sharing your passion today. And what eight listeners What are you passionate about? What would you like to share? Let me know. Alright, well chance I want to thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. I like strive seek find a lot say that 10 times faster if you had a couple beers but I'm a big fan of strive seek fine. I appreciate the work you're doing and I appreciate you having me answer. Thank you again, appreciate you. And that concludes this edition of strife seek find. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, or would just like to support the podcast. Here are a few ways you can do it. You can leave a review on Apple podcasts or pod chaser that will help bring more listeners to the podcast. If that isn't your style, you can buy me a coffee or purchase some mirch links are in the podcast description. Finally, if you have ideas or feedback, please reach out to the Strive Seek Find page o Facebook, or to @chancewhitmor 5 on Twitter. Until next time, eep seeking your own brilli nt future. Have a great day.