Today we’d like to introduce you to Dan Beaubien.
Hi Dan, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
My love for craft beer started back in 2006 when I visited my sister in Cleveland, Ohio. I had survived a harrowing flight with turbulence, no legroom, and countless prayers to any higher power who happened to be listening. When I arrived at the airport, my sister and her fiancee asked what I wanted to do. I replied, with urgency and intensity, “I could use a beer.” They took me to Great Lakes Brewing Company. I ordered a tasting flight of eight beers. I proceeded to taste, each one and immediately found myself in a reverie of flavors, textures, and aromas that I had never experienced before. I was hooked. I began looking for craft beers everywhere I went.
A few years went by and I become more and more excited about craft beer. I attended my first beer festival in the fall of 2010 (Autumn Brew Review) and started taking beer classes through Better Beer Society. As my understanding of this wonderful beverage came into focus, so did my desire to travel and experience the iconic beers available in the United States. I visited Denver, Colorado, in 2014 and that made it clear that beer travel suited me very well. I also realized that I wanted to share my thoughts with people. Late in 2014, I was presented with an opportunity to write about beer for a small, local blog called Beerploma. They had a bit of a following, and I was quite intimidated to share my thoughts and feelings about beer with an audience. However, it soon became clear that there was a desire to read what I had to say about beer.
I made sure to make my articles approachable and fun. My writer’s voice leans heavily into being humorous. It wasn’t too long after starting to write about beer that I began publishing 4 to 5 articles a month. I also began taking extensive “beer-cations” during the summer months. I would write about my experiences on the road as I traveled solo in search of beer. More and more people began to follow my writing and before long I had people asking me if I would ever consider doing a podcast about beer. While there are a plethora of craft beer podcasts, nationally, there were only a handful of local Minnesota-focused podcasts about beer. In 2016, my craft beer podcast, A One Pint Stand was born.
After writing for Beerploma as Editor-in-Chief from 2014-2022, it was time for me to start my own blog. Since I already had a podcast, it seemed only natural that I would loop the new blog into the name that so many people already knew. So, now, A One Pint Stand is where my writing and craft beer stories can be found.
The creative outlet is a fantastic way for me to help share my passion and joy for craft beer. I think that as a gregarious extrovert, craft beer is a perfect vehicle for me to connect with people. I enjoy meeting people in taprooms, both in Minnesota and beyond. Craft beer has allowed me to foster and create so many friendships that I hold near and dear to my heart.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
For me, one of the biggest challenges of craft beer has been and still is the fact that there is minimal representation of people of color in craft beer. I am Latino. When I set foot in a craft brewery, just like most other spaces throughout my life, I am one of “the only ones”. It is that way at my job as an educator, it was that way growing up in a suburb of St. Paul, and it is that way when it comes to beer writers and bloggers.
So, my perspective is often not a shared experience. I have only visited a handful of breweries that are owned by people of color. For me, the desire to feel amongst my own kind is an experience I don’t have often. I know that craft breweries strive to be inclusive spaces. I also know that there are plenty of spots in the Twin Cities where I do feel welcome and seen.
However, I would like to see more avenues for diversity in craft beer. I think that there is a lot of, pardon the pun, untapped potential for people to bring people of color into the fold when it comes to employment and patronage in the arena of craft beer.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My day job is as a teacher. I teach middle school English to 8th and 9th graders. Being around teenagers all the time necessitates me having a creative outlet. That is where beer blogging and podcasting come in quite handy. My students all call me Mr. B because my last name is way too tricky for them to pronounce. I joke around and many people would say that I am a funny teacher.
What has been quite rewarding is seeing former students come back to visit and thank me for being a teacher who saw them and believed in them. Over the last few years, education has been challenging and fraught with negativity. However, I always try to make my students smile and feel like they can always handle more than they think they can.
We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up.
One of my favorite childhood memories was the time I accidentally jumped on my friend’s dad who was sleeping downstairs because he worked the night shift. It was the summer of 1988. I was on a little league team with some friends who happened to be fraternal twins. We were goofing around in their basement one day playing WWF Wrestling on a bed in the middle of their basement family room.
A few days later, on Saturday morning, I got dropped off at their house to hang out. a while. It was raining so we couldn’t go outside and play baseball. They asked if I wanted to trade baseball cards or play Strat-o-Matic Baseball. I said, “Are you crazy?? We can’t do that. Let’s wrestle!!!” So, I shot downstairs like a missile and they were running after me down the stairs. I got to the bottom of the stairs and ignored the fact that all the lights were off downstairs. I proceeded to jump with the gusto of a thousand Michael Jordans onto where the mattress was. All the while, Ryan and Jason were behind me yelling, “Nooooo! Wait!!”
It was then that I stuck the landing. The first thing I felt was a burly patch of whiskers, which at the time, I thought was very peculiar for a throw pillow. During the next split second, my knee landed squarely on their dad’s swimsuit area. Mr. Alvarez yelled, “Get the hell out of here before someone comes and jumps on you!” I was mortified. In my house, we weren’t even allowed to say the word crap. So, hearing the old H E double hockey sticks was pert-near sacrilegious.
This memory is one of my favorites because it epitomizes the youngster’s brain. It illustrates how impulsive I used to be. Most importantly, it makes for a wonderful tale to tell all these years later.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.aonepintstand.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/a_one_pint_stand/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AOnePintStand/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AOnePintStand
- Other: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aonepintstand
