EP-155 Alex Kidd of Don't Drink Beer

In craft beer, so many of the conversations we lead are less about the beer
we’re drinking and more about how we identify with it, or the person who
made it, or who owns that company and how that reflects back on our own
self-image. Craft beer is a foggy mirror that way. And we get caught up in
so many contradictions, hypocrisies and, in some cases, some serious
self-hatred as a culture.

Basically, we’re a consumer base and an industry ripe for satire.

Today’s guest is one of the most effective in that regard, sometimes
holding up that filthy mirror to the populace, other times to himself.
Don’t Drink Beer is a weird website that started on the fringes and worked
its way to the middle using satire and self-reflection as a way to expose
some of the more insane things we do as beer makers and drinkers. The
trading circuit, the line-waiting, the valuations we put on certain bottles
while ignoring others, and the oft-enraging debates that start in Facebook
groups and forums.

Don’t Drink Beer is a persona that often catches its intended audience off
guard. And sometimes plays straight into it. And after following it for
years, the pattern reveals it for what it is—the evolution of a comedian.

Alex Kidd, the guy behind the site, is a professional comedian. He studied
and practices law in California, and as you can tell from some of his more
elaborate beer reviews, he's also a studied writer, reader, and music
history sponge. And describing him this way, so earnestly, just feels so
wrong.

He was in Chicago this past week on tour with a comedy show about beer
called Barley Wine is Live, for which we’ll talk about the inspiration in
the interview. But we also talk about the long history of Don’t Drink Beer
and its relationship with Chicago and the Midwest, as an antagonist of
sorts from the West Coast. Oh, and where all this is going, if it
is, indeed, going anywhere.