Author: Sean Inman

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NAGBW – Handcrafted Careers

I along with several fellow NAGBW members heard a lively virtual happy hour led by podcaster and writer Dave Infante with guest, the sociologist and author Dr. Eli Revelle Yano Wilson.  Wilson’s latest book is Handcrafted Careers: Working the Artisan Economy of Craft Beer.”

Here are my takeaways from the discussion:

  • there are three main pathways for careers in beer, creative, service and hard labor
  • the first Wilson describes as having a lumpy / organic feel to it since it does not hew to a traditional career path
  • the people on the creative path are the ones that tend to be idealized and they skew white and male
  • the service path interestingly is around 50% female
  • as breweries open second and third locations, the workers become less craft obsessed
  • what is the end point point for each of these three pathways and why is it good and bad
  • the last two pathways tend to have employees where the attitude can be, “it’s good for now” while employers tend to look for people they can just plug in rather than grow
  • the author was on the initial team of the Wurstkuche in the Arts District here in L.A.
  • You can find Wilson’s books HERE
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Sean Suggests for November 2024

It has been a bitter November so let’s dive into some hops to console ourselves.  And let’s keep it in the Los Angeles family and within low 7% abv too.

Los Angeles Ale Works Steady Coastin’ West Coast IPA – 7% – “Crisp with notes of juicy melon, berry, sweet fruit, and fresh pineapple.”

Brown Soul Brewing Juguito Hazy IPA – 7.1% – “inspired by our very own Chef Hugo, who many have come to know affectionately, as “Juice”, this hazy IPA packs a punch”

Ambitious Ales Frodo Foggins Hazy IPA – 7.2% – “we took the base of our NZ style Pils and beefed it up into a mighty foggy one! Pillowy soft with lots of juicy character the Freestyle Hops Motueka and Kohia Motueka Hop Kief are bursting with notes of lime sherbert, starbursts and tropical fruit.”

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A Warm Fire

I am a big proponent of zagging instead of zigging when it comes to brewery merchandise. There is enough shirts, hats and glasses out there.

And for a while, when bottles of glass were in vogue, there was a definite uptick in candles in sawed off bottles. Most were not beer scented so I did not have much interest.

But maybe this candle from Stone Brewing might make a good gift alongside some Old Guardian barleywine as a pairing idea…

You could also check out the apple tinged candles at Benny Boy Brewing and Cider right here in Los Angeles. They have actual dried apples in them and they have them in various cider “flavors”.

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Book Day – HopLit

People do love beer and books as a pairing.  Trustworthy Brewing in Burbank has a book club and when I was in Denver visiting breweries, Novel Strand Brewing had a full year of books.  

And you can also join David Nilsen and Emily Swank on Instagram Live for HopLit.  What is HopLit you ask?, It is “a casual book-and-beer hangout where we talk about what we’ve read recently, what’s on our TBR piles, and what beers we’re enjoying along the way!”

Follow Emily @thebeercanon on and @davidnilsenbeer on their Instagram accounts to get in on the reading action.

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A Book & A Beer – Wool by Hugh Howey

Season 2 of Silo is coming out on Apple TV and like many streaming shows, I have yet to view Season 1.  To compensate, I read the first book in the trilogy, Wool (followed by Dust and Shift in one word cryptic book titles).

Hugh Howey, the author, has a great story about the genesis of this series that was a self-published novelette that suddenly gained digital traction to the point where he all but had to embiggen it.

It joins the Fallout series in a post-apocalyptic setting with survivors hiding underground along with a lot of secrets.  I will do my best to not include spoilers in this mini recap.  The heroine of the story, Juliette is part of a mechanical team for the silo who gets the tap on the shoulder to literally go up in the world to become the sheriff.  Factions develop between the mayor, the mechanics, the supply crew and the IT department and there is a lot of going up from floor 100 to 34 to 1 and back down again that will make your legs feel tired just from reading.

For a nearly 600 page book, the pages fly by.  I could see why this was plucked for a TV series.  The trilogy could supply plenty of story for a showrunner.  However I felt it was a bit too fast paced and the silo feels so big just for the sake of being massive.  I felt good about the characters to start but they got a little plastic as the book wore on.  In a weird way, I would say this book could have ended earlier.  Maybe make a foursome of books.

I do not think, I will be picking up books two or three.

For beer, I would suggest pondering what beers you would take into a bunker when the world inevitably ends. And then which ones would be everyday drinkers and which you would save and / or hoard and not share a drop of.