Behind everyone known for a specific thing is a person with unique interests who engages in all of the regular activities anyone else might. As people who share what we write about brewing and beer publicly, it might be easy for others assume our lives revolve around this stuff, that 100% of our time is dedicated to the Brülosophy cause. But that’s not the case, we have “real” jobs, families, and other hobbies. We’ll be taking a slightly different route for this Brü’s Views, replacing the typical opinion sharing with peeks into the other facets of what makes us who we are.

As the host of some of the most popular podcasts on The Brewing Network including Dr. Homebrew and The Session, today’s guest is well-known for his involvement in the beer and brewing world. With his extensive vocabulary and reputation for being told to “suck it” by fans, it might surprise some to learn there’s another side to the dude known to many by his initials. A huge thanks to Jason “JP” Petros for sharing his thoughts with us On Things Other Than Brewing!

On Things Other Than Brewing

| JASON PETROS |

Writing about things other than your actual job is hard, because automatically it doesn’t seem all that interesting to you. If it were, you’d do it full-time, right? I mean, isn’t that the goal, to turn your hobby into your profession? Good luck with that.

Podcasting about homebrewing was a cool thing I was doing (I never really took it seriously enough to even call it a hobby), that somehow morphed into my job. In fact I’m still not too sure how that happened, but it’s a matter of record now, so there’s no denying it. I used to homebrew as a hobby but that has almost entirely fallen by the wayside, save for the few small batches I do here and there. As primitive and social animals who can also drive cars and create nine different flavors of creamed cheese, I think we all need something to keep our minds busy during our mostly sedentary lifestyles. If we are left alone to think too much, we’ll snap and hack our families up while they sleep, or start using the word “juicy” as an appropriate beer descriptor.

For me, my escape is also sort of my real job – podcasting – though the topic is slightly different: Disneyland. I can hear you already, “What’s a grown man with no kids doing talking about a theme park for, and how’d he get so damn handsome?” First off, it’s not just a theme park, it’s bloody Disneyland. And in my defense, I have two other people on the show that do in fact have kids, so it makes my role much less awkward.

The show is called EarzUp! Podcast, and if you like my voice combined with fun facts and info about Disneyland, then you just may be able to enjoy the show. Even though as a profession I talk about a cool topic (beer), taking a break from that world for a few hours a month is a good thing. We all need something in our lives to make us less miserable and to tolerate our realities. I also started a business with my wife called Covears. We make covers for Mickey Mouse ears. Yep, more Disney shit.

The other thing I do I maintain a small personal blog called Word Salad, on account of I’m so hip and clever. It started as a way for me to find my voice on the internet, back when I thought I could change the world with a simple (but challenging) post on the complexities of the human mind. That didn’t last long, and it quickly became just about beer. After my diagnosis and subsequent cancer surgery, I wrote briefly on that topic, before agreeing with myself that I didn’t have the drive to keep up a blog, and that it was going to stay less-than a hobby. What’s a word for that? Sub-hobby? Neo-Hobby? Anyway, now I suppose it has morphed again into a sort of timeline of my battles with Anxiety. I started that just to help myself, to be honest. I found it relaxing to get all of my ideas out of my head (where they just fester and grow), but at some point I started hearing from other folks that suffer from the same stuff, thanking me for being so open about my issues, and that my honesty has helped them deal with their attacks in a better way.

When Marshall asked me to contribute to this series, I had no idea what to write. I thought of myself as a boring guy who plays video games all day long – who wants to hear about that? But when you have to sit and think about something as common as a hobby, maybe you tend to find the real meaning in what you spend your free time doing. When it comes down to it, I really enjoy helping people, and I guess that’s what my hobbies reflect. Or I’m a passionate narcissist who enjoys the sound of his own voice. Maybe a little of both.

| MARSHALL |

I recently realized that “who I am” in the homebrewing world consists only of what people are capable of piecing together from the articles I write and interviews I give– a homebrewer with a wife and some kids who somehow finds the time to brew a lot and write about it. While certainly accurate, that’s only part of the story…

When I was in Junior High, I took a test that set me on a path to where I’m at today. I committed to becoming a psychologist and, despite my growing disillusionment with the profession, graduated with a Ph.D. in 2009, soon after landing the job I’m at today. I spend 40 hours every week sitting with inmates in a prison office listening to their stories, fielding their complaints, and doing my best to see them for more than just the shitty things they’ve done. Brewing is one way I decompress, but it wasn’t my first outlet.

Music has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. My mom listened to everything from AC/DC to Lionel Richie, which rubbed off on me. In 1992, I moved to Seattle from California to live with relatives and 11 year-old me was introduced to a whole new world of music. Many of my new friends had guitars, amps, and drum kits in their garages. Over time, I learned some power chords, taught myself to play along to a few punk songs, then eventually was gifted an old Ovation that I never put down. I graduated high school and went off to college in Idaho where I played along to Weezer and Guster in my dorm room. When I returned sophomore year, I was introduced to another guitar player named Tim, a meeting that would ultimately change the course of my life. Tim and I began writing new songs and adopted the band name Marco’s In The Army, an overt allusion to my brother, Marco, being in the Army. As a birthday gift a few months later, a buddy of mine hooked us up with 12 hours in a recording studio run by a friend of his and we laid down 4 of what we thought were our strongest songs. This was very motivating for a couple of 19 year-old dudes and received a fairly positive reception from the few friends and family who got a CD.

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So, we decided to transfer to an in-state university in Bellingham, WA where we moved into a house together with a dream to make something of the band. This lasted a year before I moved out and the band dissolved. I sold off my electric gear, bought a more apartment friendly acoustic guitar, and started writing songs on my own. This is also when I got into homebrewing. In 2004, my new wife and I moved to California for grad school, spending most of my free time over the following 5 years writing and recording songs. Homebrewing was on hiatus since it was more expensive than playing with my guitar. The songs I wrote were simple, boring even, and I realize served as a sort of temporal autobiography. Listening to them now, I experience mixed feelings of embarrassment because they’re not as good as I used to think, nostalgia because that time in my life felt so poignant, and accomplishment because of how pleased I am with the way things have turned out. The playlist below includes some of what I think are the better songs I wrote/recorded, click this link to download more if you’re interested.

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When my wife and I found out we were pregnant with our first, the existentialist in me thought it’d be neat to record video of me playing a few songs for posterity. I stopped after 7 for whatever reason, you can find them by searching That Strange Red Afternoon on YouTube.

Other than that, it’s all brewing and beer for me. Cheers!

| JAKE |

Since I started homebrewing, it’s easily become my favorite hobby, one that I spend much of my free time and money on. While brewing certainly occupies much of my life, there are other things I do that I find a lot of satisfaction in. Outside of my life as a CPA, which takes up most of my non-brewing time, things I enjoy doing include…

Road Biking

I’m lucky enough to live within biking distance from my office. When I’m not onsite or travelling for work I tend to ride my 1989 Trek 1200 the 16 miles to and from work instead of sitting in the terrible Denver traffic. My current build (though I’m admittedly slacking) is a 1983 Trek 760 which was custom painted for the original owner to look like the 7/11 racing team bike (170 model) that year. The build currently has campagnolo SR components though I’m missing hubs, brakes, and levers.

Fly Fishing and Enjoying Colorado

Colorado has so many great outdoorsy things like camping, hiking, and fly fishing. Since starting to fly fish it’s become one of my favorite hobbies, we’re blessed with some great streams like The Frying Pan, which I frequent.

The Bachelor

Not really a fan of the show per se, but I love getting caught up in the podcasts about the program. Grantland’s Right Reasons with Jacoby and Juliet was the my favorite, though spiritual successor Bachelor Party by Chanel 33 with Juliet and random guests is great too.

Packers

Being born in Wisconsin, this is in blood, I definitely care way more about how 53 grown men compete on a Sunday afternoon than is healthy. Also, my quarterback is better than yours 🙂

| RAY |

Life can’t all be about beer. I mean sure, beer is a perfectly good sidekick to other activities, nearly mandatory for some, but a man cannot live on a single hobby alone.

Since as long as I can remember, I have been obsessed with water – wild, untamed, and mysterious – I can’t drive by a pond or walk over a bridge without pondering what lies beyond the boundary layer where gas and liquid meet. It isn’t truly the water itself that captivates me, it is the fish, and the prospect of taming them, if only momentarily. So, after graduating High School, this boy who’d once fished all afternoon to fill a kiddie pool with over a hundred bluegill only to return them all to the lake afterwards, that boy grew up and decided to try fly fishing. It only took a few tries and I was hooked for good, though after awhile I drifted away from it because the novelty was gone.

Later, when I picked it up again, spurred on by the purchase of some new gear, the hobby grabbed me in a different way, a way that didn’t click until I heard the phrase on a recent podcast– I learned to substitute subtlety for novelty. Instead of the excitement for everything new about the hobby, I dug in deep, sought to master the craft, art, and science of it. And so it was, I took to reading ichthyology texts, studying entomology, and learning to turn bits of feathers and thread into imitations of stonefly, caddis, and chironomids. I perfected the techniques for “ninja” fishing the tiny trout streams here in Southern California, more sneaking around and hiding than what normal humans would identify as fishing, the small trout being as wily and suspicious as they are beautiful.

I came to love the pursuit– off-roading, hiking, backpacking, challenging myself in the backcountry, and visiting some of the most beautiful places nature has to offer. All for the chance to reach into cool, clear water, hold for a second the momentarily tamed salmonid, then release it once again to the depths of its liquid home.

And I started writing. More photos, whimsy, and opinion than anything approaching advice or how-to. I still own my domain, AdiposeFin.com, but today it points nowhere besides a rarely used email account. Someday, surely, I’ll redirect it to something interesting, at least to me, but for now it sits, for as it does, life got in the way. Between having young kids and a work schedule that has me zig-zagging across the western US and Canada, the time demanded by each opportunity to head for the mountains is weighed against the other responsibilities.

And so, in between the too infrequent days on the water, I drive by ponds, walk over bridges, and daydream about what lies beneath the surface film.

| GREG |

To understand my progression of hobbies, we must first go back a few years to when I had one true obsession:  the outdoors. I was completely and utterly hooked on all things wilderness. Hiking, camping, backpacking, rock climbing, mountaineering. You name it, I was probably doing it. I’d most likely be outside right now perched on a rock somewhere if I could, but life is unpredictable and I had the misfortune of getting seriously injured.  I’ve now been dealing with chronic leg pain (with a dash of carpal tunnel) for a few years and I have no idea when, if ever, I’ll be healed. I’m far too stubborn to accept a lifetime of disability, so I’ve decided that for as long as it takes, my primary hobby is necessarily going to be physical therapy. Boring, grueling, and seemingly endless, but also incredibly rewarding physical therapy.

It’s not like I can spend all my time doing rehab exercises though, so I’ve recently picked up a few entirely new hobbies to keep myself somewhat sane. Since I happen to be an engineer who loves to build random gizmos, my first idea was to apply my skill set to getting my non-functioning body outdoors. So I did the obvious and built myself an insanely powerful electric downhill mountain bike.

Fast, dangerous, probably illegal, my bike has kept me blissfully mobile while my malfunctioning leg remains uncooperative. Constructing my bike reignited my passion for building things, so I was eager to explore another hobby that would similarly challenge me. One day a friend mentioned that I should try beer making, and the rest was history.  It wasn’t long until brewing became one of my passions and brew equipment had completely taken over every inch of my cramped apartment.

I’ve dabbled in few other new low-intensity hobbies over the last couple years as well. I’ve always been a video game nerd, but repeatedly pressing buttons unfortunately hurts my wrists now. Luckily, I’ve discovered the perfect alternative: board games!

Board games and brewing, two perfectly synchronous hobbies. If you haven’t played any modern board games, I highly recommend giving them a shot, they’ve progressed far beyond the dark days of Monopoly (yuck!).

Lastly, I’ve recently had the time to rekindle an old passion of mine– music! I’ve been banging on drums and claiming it was music since I was in elementary school, but my love of drumming slowly began to wane during college. I hadn’t played for years when a friend mentioned he was in a Celtic band and could use a drummer. I knew nothing of the genre, but playing Irish, Scottish, and pirate songs to rowdy drunken audiences? Hell yeah, sign me up! Due to my injury, I’ve had to re-teach myself how to play bass drum using my left leg, but I don’t mind the challenge. Our band is called The Peatheads, a reference to peaty Islay Scottish Whisky, and playing with them has been an absolute blast. We need to get some updated recordings, but you can hear a few songs of ours here.

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| MATT |

What do I do other than beer? Well, enough to keep my schedule pretty full, and when I can, I bring the beer along with me.

On top of being a proud parent to a budding artist of a daughter, I’m also an adopted parent to three rescue dogs and a rescue chinchilla (namesake of my “Hopchilla DIPA”). I have a soft spot for animals and try to volunteer as much as possible to help various rescues in the area keep animals out of the local shelters and in new homes. How? Well, since I ran out of space to adopt animals (hit my limit in Florida), I now brew beer to give away at fund raising and adoption events. Nothing like some fresh beer to help coax the adoption decision along.

Professionally, I’ve been an international economic development officer for quite some time. As someone that has helped three different countries grow their GDP, its probably no surprise that I’ve used the craft beer boom to help do it. Million dollar brew plants? Hop contracts for days? Yep. Collaborative brews? Many of them. Because beer works for both sides of the trade equation. Actually, I learned the beer business from retail, to production, to being a home brewer with some great help I’ve had along the way from international brewers.

Finally, what made me a published writer– poker! Up until the UIGEA passed and internet poker was made illegal (at the same time as online horse betting and fantasy sports were made legal), it was the golden age of poker. Enough money and interest going around that a part time hack like me went from humorist and blogger to journalist and interviewer, writing for magazines and websites in the US, Canada, and the UK. A regular podcast guest on shows like Poker Road and Twitter Poker Tour, I got to know a lot of great people. Turns out, a lot of them like great beer, which we still connect over in all corners of many countries.

| MALCOLM |

What I do outside of brewing has many parallels to why I enjoy brewing so much. Out of curiosity, I scrolled through my web search history as well as the pictures that have piled up on my cell phone SD card. I won’t share everything I’ve browsed, wife may read this, but it seems I have about 5 or 6 recurring topics– my daughters, cooking, beer related items, and just about anything that ferments. The 5th item was pictures of the aforementioned topics, I love photography. Finally, number 6 has to be music and dancing. My wife and I met while dancing and I still like dancing with her. Just writing this makes me want make more of an effort to do so.

Another thing I love is history and technical topics. When I research beer and food, I often find myself falling into a rabbit hole of how and why various methods have come to be. I am intrigued by the habits of man and how our behavior is influenced by our environment, and how we perhaps influence our environment.

Most of my interests have some overlap, or maybe I just make it so there is. I cook and brew with my girls, take pics of them helping and of the food/beverage we’re making, I research the food’s history and culture, and do the same for any beverage I make. For beer articles, I like to include a couple tidbits I hope readers will find interesting. The history helps motivate me and give me a feeling of connection with the past, which fuels a more passionate involvement.

My interest photography started while traveling about in the military. I wanted to capture the moments so I could enjoy and share them when I was older… and sober. Just as with brewing and cooking and parenting, as I get more educated and better practiced, I find I actually know very little. So much of what I previously thought may no longer be so, or at least not entirely. Through sharing photos of friends and fam (the more serious kind versus just a snap) on various forms of social media, I’ve even been asked to shoot for a few events. With a few exceptions, I typically decline. However, I’ve been fortunate enough to befriend a few talented photographers and, similar to brewing, being around those who truly excel has allowed me to get a sense of where my abilities truly are. I feel good enough for my family and a few friends, especially posed shots, but do not have the equipment, expertise, or experience to handle, say, a wedding (a bride!) and the expectations therein.

Now, cooking? Ha! I have Cook’s Illustrated, Kenji Lopez-Alt, and Alton Brown as hot buttons on my laptop. I love food, just as I love beer, not only for the joy consuming it brings, but also for the history behind it, the process of making various items, learning the why and how certain techniques work (or if they are truly necessary!), but finally, and perhaps most importantly, the joy sharing the results brings.

I would absolutely love to do a series of food and beverage (e.g., coffee) themed Brülosophy-like experiments to test various theories, but alas, “management” here wants to concentrate on beer… I’ll continue to wear “management” down!

That’s us, how about you? Is brewing your only hobby or are there other things you enjoy doing? Feel free to share more about yourself in the comments section below!

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