Books and Brews — Where Beer and Literature Meet!
Books and Brews — where beer and literature meet!
A beer hater doing a podcast about beer…well, life is full of interesting twists! That’s what makes it fun! I hate beer—well, most beer. My first taste of beer was at a frat party during my freshman year at college. I couldn’t understand how anyone could keep drinking this stuff! I rarely drank it in the twenty-plus years from then until 2016. Yet here I am co-hosting Books and Brews, with Michael Agnew, Minnesota’s first beer cicerone—the beer equivalent of a wine sommelier.
In 2009 I published Blue Bells of Scotland, the first in a five-part time travel story of an arrogant modern musician caught in medieval Scotland. Briefly, I had a publicist who had the idea of a podcast, found a willing radio station, found Michael online, and pitched the idea to him. “The minute someone said ‘really early in the morning,’ I would have hung up on them,” I told him later on one of our episodes as he recounted my publicist’s first phone call to him. Nonetheless, he agreed to it.
The idea was pairing beers to an author’s readings, as sommeliers pair wine to entrees. Our program was 8 am on Saturday morning at AM 950 in Eden Prairie, MN. I was up by 6:30, started my day interviewing authors and drinking beer, then raced half an hour home to brush the beer off my teeth and breath before teaching piano to school children by 10 am. We had a blast. I loved having Tom Dahill, an Irish musician, and his musical partner Virginia in the studio, when we talked about his book Danny Who? and played music together.
We had great guests. But AM 950 was charging me to provide content for them, despite also getting income from advertisers for my time slot. I was willing to do it for a short time to get some exposure and experience. But we shortly ended that ‘deal’ and went out on our own.
For four months, we did Books and Brews Live! at Barnes and Noble. In this incarnation, people could join us to hear authors read live and to sample the beers with us. As the interviewer, I was okay with this but Michael was, understandably, frustrated by Barnes and Nobles’ requirement that he choose only from their six beers on tap at their in-store restaurant. Half the time, they didn’t have the beer he chose anyway, and half of those times, they didn’t have his second choice, either. It entirely defeated the point of talking about the wide world of beer and craft brewing.
We had a brief hiatus while we worked out our podcast. In April 2019, we launched Books and Brews with Laura Vosika and Michael Agnew. For almost a year, we met our guests in person, usually at Michael’s house, sometimes at mine and on rare occasion at theirs. Michael paired beers to their readings. A dark, ominous reading might draw a dark, heavy beer. A reading about summer might get a light ‘lawn mower beer.’ A reading about an earthquake got a beer named Earthquake! Michael even came up with a few ‘beer cocktails.’
We met many authors and poets and learned a lot—about the historical forty thieves of Saipan, poetry on mental health, the duties of a military wife in the 50s, a woman who didn’t eat for seven years, morticians who see the dead. When we moved to zoom interviews in April 2020, our world literally expanded and we were able to interview authors from around the country and the world. We talked with a man who died—and lived to tell the tale.
We talked with a Scottish author who brought her (stuffed) Highland cattle to the interview, just as I had! (Michael brought his Minnesota State Fair frog!) We met a magician-author and talked to another author who writes exclusively about the world of magicians. We talked with Sandy Hanna who, as a girl, inadvertently had a front row seat to Vietnam’s military coup in the 1960s.
Through it all, I’ve learned a lot about beer. I’d tasted nothing beyond cheap beer at frat parties. Books and Brews taught me what a wide world beer really is. Michael has talked with our listeners about the history of beer, methods of brewing, ingredients, and more. I have greater appreciation for my son’s love of brewing his own beer. A favorite memory was Michael describing how a tavern keeper would shout out just before opening a keg and everyone would race to thrust their mugs under the tap. I think Michael has gotten a kick out of introducing me to new beers, out of my ‘IPA face’ for beers I can’t stand, and in finding beers I really like. He became good at knowing if I would love or hate a beer.
Reading and writing are so important because they opens new worlds to us. We learn something every time we read a new book. Learning expands our universe and our minds. There are people who love books. There are people who love beer. I’ve loved bringing the two together and learning more about a world I never comprehended and I hope our program does the same for lovers of both books…and brews.
Laura Vosika is the author of the beloved Blue Bells Chronicles, in addition to other works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and a collection of music. She is currently working on several other novels, a non-fiction book on raising a large family, and Theology of Music with her husband Dr. Chris R. Powell.
Laura grew up in the military, visiting castles in England, pig fests in Germany, and the historic sites of America’s east coast. She earned a bachelor’s degree in music, and worked for many years as a freelance musician, playing trombone for pit orchestras, ballets, and symphonies, and flute and harp for other venues. She spent three years as a member of the Buz Whiteley Big Band and Farragut Brass Band in Bremerton, WA.
After earning a master’s degree in education, she took a job as a music teacher and band director. She has also taught private lessons on wind instruments, piano, and harp, for more than thirty years.
In her spare time, Laura likes to play piano, harp, and flute, do sudokus, and learn Gaelic.
Laura co-hosts Books & Brews with Michael Agnew, Minnesota’s first beer cicerone, interviewing a new author every month; and Wordsmiths & a Wolfhound: happiness through the arts and self-sufficiency with her husband.
She lives in Tennessee with Chris and Liadan, their Irish Wolfhound much like the great hunting hounds that once roamed the Laird’s halls. Together, Laura and Chris have 10 children.
Find out more about Laura on her website https://www.bluebellschronicles.com/
BLUE BELLS OF SCOTLAND
Shawn Kleiner has it all: money, fame, a skyrocketing career as an international musical phenomenon, his beautiful girlfriend Amy, and all the women he wants– until the night Amy has enough and abandons him in a Scottish castle.He wakes to find himself mistaken for Niall Campbell, medieval Highland warrior. Soon after, he is sent shimmying down a wind-torn castle wall into a dangerous cross country trek with Niall’s tempting, but knife-wielding fiancee, pursued by English soldiers and a Scottish traitor who want Niall dead.Category: On Writing
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