What is the current state of beer education and where is it headed? Chris Shields, the Director of Education at Ohio’s Rhinegeist Brewery joined the Drink Beer, Think Beer podcast to talk about his role and the importance of moving beer knowledge forward.

Being Better Informed

“I think one of the things that is really challenging in beer education now is we’ve mostly grabbed the people that are going to be extreme beer [geeks],” he says. “Ofcourse, there’s people coming to beer and going down the rabbit hole deep every day, as they discover craft beer. But what’s really important is for us to get people to discover craft beer, and to recognize that not everyone is like me, and wants to spend their free time reading books about beer, or memorizing style guidelines.”

“I think that styles and style guidelines are very important, because they provide context. But I think we need to also understand how to talk to people, and how to convince people that beers that don’t fit style guidelines are also worthy and great,” he says. “And how do we talk about those? And how do we get people excited about those? How do we get people excited about adding beer into their repertoire?”

“We need people that can go into a bottle shop, grocery store, look at a tab list, look at a restaurant list and one see some variety. But to understand how to choose and choose mostly right for them.”

Hear the whole conversation on the Drink Beer, Think Beer podcast. Download via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or wherever you download shows.

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