Joe Stange - Craft Beer & Brewing

<p>The pandemic has been a weird experience for everyone. Everything suddenly stopped, things went quiet, we became trapped in our homes for months on end. Even for the most stable among us, the experience was unsettling. For my guest today, the pandemic was anomalous in an entirely different way. Newly returned to the US after more than a decade living abroad, writer <a href="https://twitter.com/Thirsty_Pilgrim">Joe Stange</a> and his two children moved to a family farm in rural Missouri and then found themselves sort of stuck there as COVID hit. After years in bustling, major international metropolises, his life became about quietly homebrewing in a barn and helping his kids deal with school via Zoom. </p><p><br></p><p>Joe is one of my favorite people in the beer world. He’s a writer’s writer. Clever, smart, thorough, and thoughtful. At times intense, focused, but also given to a sort of knowing humor, he’s an entirely enjoyable drinking partner. While Joe is serious about beer, dedicated to it in a way that is not just ephemeral or about the alcohol or the scene, he also knows its place and not to take it too seriously. </p><p><br></p><p>Joe is a trained journalist, having received a proper education at one of the country’s best journalism schools, Mizzou, and trained at the Associated Press. And while his background provided him with a solid foundation on which to build his freelancing and writer career, it was his wife Kelly’s career that in a roundabout way led to his work as a beer journalist. </p><p><br></p><p>Kelly has long worked as a diplomat with the US Department of Agriculture, helping to promote and protect American interests abroad. And her work has taken their family to Brussels, Costa Rica, Berlin, and now Bangkok. It was this first location, Brussels, where Joe really became involved in the beer world. </p><p><br></p><p>He developed a love of Belgian beer and began writing about it, eventually leading to his work as a co-author with Tim Webb of the excellent Good Beer Guide Belgium. Jo