Stubborn German launches new beer, bourbon, brewing podcast
I’ve loved podcasts for years, especially good beer podcasts. And while there are literally hundreds of them out there, I’ve found myself gravitating more locally, looking now for more hometown voices talking about hometown beer.
Recently, I stumbled onto a really great podcast that you should check out.
The Stubborn German Podcast
The podcast, now with 7 episodes launched on April 8 of this year and is hosted by Stubborn German owner and head brewer Chris Rahn. I reached out to Chris to find out more about the podcast and his vision for its future.
5 Questions With Chris Rahn
What was the inspiration behind starting your own podcast?
“I had a friend who was doing a podcast called Get a Load of This ask if I would be a guest on his show last year, and they wanted to record it at the brewery to be able to include all the background noises and, well be closer to beer.”
“A couple of months ago, as I looked through my calendar from last year, I found that day and decided to ask if they wanted to record another since it was a pretty good time. They agreed, but then brought up the subject of starting a Stubborn German podcast! I was pretty hesitant at first, since I’m an open book anyway, and I always feel like, someone just needs to come up to the brewery and say hello to me, and I’ll talk beer or whiskey with them for seemingly hours. But they planted that seed and I thought it might be a fun thing to try, and if it doesn’t work out, no big deal.”
What do you hope people will take away from listening to the podcast?
“The goal is to make content at the very least be loosely affiliated with our brewery/town/etc. We don’t talk exclusively about the nuts and bolts of making a good beer and designing recipes. It’s more light-hearted than that, even though I have been known to go down that rabbit hole occasionally and get pretty detailed. We want people to know that when they listen to the podcast, it’s just like listening to any given conversation that happens at our bar on a nightly basis. We have an amazing pool of interesting patrons that support us regularly and we intend to highlight the fact that when you come in here, you never know just who you might be sitting next to, sharing a pint and some conversation with.”
What kind of equipment are you using?
“I honestly have no idea. It’s a laptop, a few microphones and headsets, and a folding table, lol. That’s not my department. Jarod is the man twisting the knobs and pulling the levers behind the scenes and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone better at that job.”
Are you having fun? What has been the reaction?
It’s been a blast! I feel like it’s my responsibility to keep up the great content we’ve started with and keep trying to make the next episode even better than the last, exactly the same way that I approach brewing my beer at Stubborn German. The reaction has been really strong. We’ve received personal messages from people ranging from “I listen to podcasts every day” and say ours is amazing, to people saying “your’s was my first every podcast” and they say they want to find more podcasts with similar themes. It’s been really rewarding to hear feedback like this and my friend that encouraged me to start this podcast says that our download numbers are incredible, so I guess there’s that, lol.”
Preview of upcoming episodes and topics?
I have a whole list! We’ll have lots of guests such as fellow brewers, distillers, business owners, local chefs, homebrewers, bourbon enthusiasts, maybe a couple “regulars” from our bar, members of our staff, etc. We also will occasionally do shows with no guests, but where my wife Tammy might jump on and we discuss a particular business topic that we feel we have a unique perspective on or just a light-hearted story of when we were trying to get this place open back 5 years ago.
“More specifically though, we’ll have Josh Perschbacher on, who is a Navy Veteran who is a good customer here and also just won an incredible national level award that will be announced in the coming days. We plan to have a celebration day for him and the award in the coming weeks, so we’ll be asking him all about that as well as his non-profit called, the Vetwork, which helps new veterans transition from life in the military to life as a civilian.”
