Oral history interview with Julie Johnson, 2019

Erin Lawrimore: So, let's start by having say and spell your name.

Julie Johnson: Okay. My name is Julie, J-U-L-I-E, Johnson, J-O-H-N-S-O-N.

Erin Lawrimore: Wonderful.

Julie Johnson: Pretty mundane.

Erin Lawrimore: Well, this is an interview for the Well Crafted NC project. We're in Durham, North Carolina, with Julie Johnson. Today's date is January 17th, 2019. So, to start, can we just have you give us a little bit of background information? Where are you from, and how did you get here to Durham? It's a long, long path.

Julie Johnson: It really is a strange path. Born in St. Louis, and so it may be that my first exposure to beer was Anheuser-Busch when I was little, little, so the fact that my mother is about ... was about five foot two, and I'm five foot 00:01:0010, we always say body by Bud, because she was told to drink a beer while she was nursing me.

Erin Lawrimore: There we go.

Julie Johnson: We moved to California. We lived in Japan. We lived in ... we moved to Boulder, Colorado, which is still home to my heart, even though I didn't live there that long. California, again, Northern California for college. In and out of East Africa for research. A PhD at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Washington, DC, for a stint with the government, and then to Durham, North Carolina, where Duke recruited me to be the executive blah blah, administrator, something, of a research center on tropical conservation, and that was in 1991.

Erin Lawrimore: And what were you ... What was your PhD in?

Julie Johnson: Baboon social behavior.

Erin Lawrimore: And that translates to beer.

Julie Johnson: About to say ... About to say, any similarities have to be complimentary to both baboons and beer drinkers, all right? I'm on a sort of campaign that when you call someone, "You big baboon," that it's really flattering, so yes, I did that, and I was still in ... basically, in tropical development issues, and evolution, and animal behavior, when I came to Duke. And then I married and moved sideways into beer. So, my path was not and is not direct.

Erin Lawrimore: So, you mentioned kind of that Anheuser was probably your first beer. Do you remember, though, kind of how you got introduced to craft beer? Where that introduction came from?

Julie Johnson: It was late. I mean, despite all the travel, I was a graduate students for years, and I drank like a graduate student. That is to say cheaply and in quantity. I would love to tell you that while I was in Scotland, or while I was living in England, I tasted real cask conditioned ale, the scales fell from my eyes, and I thought, "Oh my word, this is so unlike the yellow stuff I've been drinking at home." Absolutely not. I will introduce someone now, who will crop up occasionally, and that is Daniel Bradford, to whom I was married for 15 or so years, starting in 92. 91? 91. And he ... When we stared courting, he was the director of the Great American Beer festival in Denver, and that was 00:04:00the first major US festival, and still the granddaddy of all festivals, so he ran that for the first dozen years of its existence, and he was still in that role when I met him. Because he was in Boulder, I'd go back and meet my family.

Julie Johnson: And I think, in common with many, many people, I got into good beer by having someone take my hand, figuratively and literally, and say, "Here. Come over here, try this. This is what to expect. This is good." Our first date, we were in Washington DC where I was living, and we went to a tasting by Michael Jackson, the famed English writer, who pioneered beer writing, and he and Daniel knew each other well, so that was my first big craft beer experience, was for a while sitting opposite the man who did it. Who paved the way for everybody else.

Julie Johnson: And then going around the Great American Beer Festival with Daniel, with the guy running it, where we could go behind the booths, and you know, he had no hesitation about simply walking wherever he wanted, and stopping people and saying, "Here. Taste this. This is Teri Fahrendorf," founder of Pink Boots Society now, but she was brewing for Steelhead [Eugene, Oregon]. "Here." He said, "Teri's stout is the best American stout right now. Try that. Here's what you should look for. You're gonna taste this, you're gonna taste this." I'm thinking, "Yeah, you're right."

Julie Johnson: And it was a really valuable lesson, because most people get into new experiences, not because their own sense of perception, discovery, is unusual, but because someone who knows more than they do points them in the right direction, and I think that set me on the kind of educational route in 00:06:00beer that ... if we wait for everyone to be inspired by beer, we're gonna have a very small club. But instead, the craft beer has been, I think, a famously welcoming movement, with a wide range of people, and as somebody said, 99% asshole free. And so, that was my ... that was how I got in.

Erin Lawrimore: It's not a bad move for Michael Jackson to be the person introducing you to craft beer.

Julie Johnson: That doesn't hurt.

Erin Lawrimore: No. Was ... Do you remember? Was it an American craft beer tasting? Or was he introducing European?

Julie Johnson: Oh gosh. No, it ... Oh, boy. What was he ... It was a sort of tour of beer styles. It was at the Brickskeller, in DC, down in the basement 00:07:00there. I had not heard of the Brickskeller. I hadn't heard of most of the styles. I hadn't heard of Michael Jackson. But to be walked through, and again, to be told what to expect, and here's the history, here's some interesting human interest about it, really ... That ... Well, it made me kind of fond of this guy I was dating. I thought, "This is interesting. This is a cool thing to be doing."

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Julie Johnson: Yeah, and then I ... Later, I edited Michael's stuff for 23 years. So, he ... But I did get the start at the top, through no quality of my own.

Erin Lawrimore: You got lucky.

Julie Johnson: I got lucky.

Erin Lawrimore: So, one of the ... I think one of the forays we will talk about, you've done a number of things that are craft beer related, but we'll start by talking about All About Beer.

Julie Johnson: You got it.

Erin Lawrimore: Can you talk about when you guys took over ownership of All 00:08:00About Beer, kind of where was it when you took over and what were your hopes then?

Julie Johnson: Okay. At that point, that was Daniel's move, because he very bravely moved here. I got my job at Duke. We set up house here, and he walked away from everything he had in Colorado, most of it beer related, and he came here to find nothing in that field, and I think he made some forays into other areas, and then he was contacted by a man called Michael Bosak, Southern California, who we can talk about at some point, but he was one of the founders of All About Beer Magazine, and he was ready to sell. And Daniel had written for him, and he basically ... I was at Duke, Daniel pretty much said, "What do you 00:09:00think? I think I'm going to buy a magazine."

Julie Johnson: Because he'd always been in the sort of education, promotion side, done a lot of writing, and he'd never been in publishing. He'd worked with magazines. So, he bought it from Bosak in 92, and set up shop in our house, and I think it was just Daniel and an assistant at first, and then finding photographers and so on, and gradually, I ... It remained in his ownership, in fact, until we divorced. It was only then that I got part ownership of All About Beer. I was working on it all the time that the had it, but it was sort of the family business. I came in kind of side ways, initially just copy editing, checking things.

Julie Johnson: I was so steeped in an academic background that I never ... I was not comfortable writing for a popular audience, and the first time Daniel asked me to take on a book review, I thought, "What? Wait a minute, I can't. You mean I can just tell people this is a good book?" Or, "Here, this is a good beer. You should try it." I thought I'd have to have citations, and statistical values, because in academic writing, you would not say, "This is a good species." You'd have to give all the reasons why it was interesting, and who'd worked on it before. It was very liberating, but also kind of terrifying to get out there. Even a photo caption, "I don't know if I have any authority to say what's going on in this picture. I need a reference."

Julie Johnson: No, I didn't. So, gradually I kind of loosened up, and we 00:11:00realized that even though he is a ... He's the big picture guy, and I'm pretty detail oriented. Jim Cook at Boston Beer, hearing the two of us rabbit on at some point, said, "I see how this works. You're the RAM and she's the hard drive." I thought, "Yeah, okay. That's kind of it." So, that kind of set me up to have a greater and greater role in creating the magazine. It didn't hurt, the timing, I don't know that ... I realized around that time, I started to realize that I was not going to go face the tenure process. Kind of soul crushing process. Hats off to the people who thrive, but I ... We had just had a 00:12:00daughter. I thought, "This is ... I don't ... I'm not gonna do that. I'm not going to take that step."

Julie Johnson: And it would have involved a huge commitment of time, and effort, and ego, and everything else, to the academic life, and so I think at that point in some panic, Daniel said, "Work for the company. Do something. Create value someplace, please." And thus, I became assistant editor or something like that. To the dismay of people in the journalism school at UNC, who I spoke to at some point. My whole ... It's one thing after another where I've come in the back door. But as I said to them, you can sleep your way into this job, but you can't keep it that way. I guess that's been my approach.

Erin Lawrimore: There you go.

Julie Johnson: Made you laugh.

Erin Lawrimore: And so, I ... One of the things that we talked about before we started filming was do you remember at what point you guys kind of switched from everything's based at home, to having the offices in Durham? Or office in Durham?

Julie Johnson: Yeah. Yeah, it was the day the ad manager walked down the hall to our bedroom, where Daniel was running a high fever, and stood in the doorway and said, "All right, look, I'm really sorry, but can we give so and so a discount on a full page ad?" And Daniel went, "Get out! Get out of here! I'm sick." And I think that was the point when he realized there had to be some separation between the family business and the family.

Erin Lawrimore: And you had one kid?

Julie Johnson: We had one child, yes.

Erin Lawrimore: By that point, too, which couldn't have been easy to operate all 00:14:00of that.

Julie Johnson: Little kid, and yeah, it was ... So, it was time. We also had probably six people working there in the family room, that had been cut up with those dividers into tiny little partitioned areas, and the little bathroom was also the archives for all the back issues, and the post office, so you'd go in and you'd use the toilet, and there ... here's the postal scale, and it was ... We were breaking all kinds of laws. It was time to move.

Erin Lawrimore: And we were talking about where in Durham you were, and do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Julie Johnson: Sure, sure. City Place, downtown, across from the old Bulls park, was renovated around the time we were ready to make the move, and it's a wonderful old building that was originally the city garage, with perhaps six or 00:15:00eight ... it would have been large bays for city vehicles, and it was in ... It was boarded up all the time that in the early days we were here, and then suddenly it was renovated, like so many of the wonderful buildings here. Great care and pride went into the brick construction, so it's wonderful detail, and suddenly, like so much of Durham, you have the lovely bones of these old buildings revealed, and so we took one of those little bays, and suddenly there was room for all of us. Even a modicum of privacy, not much, but something so you weren't really two feet and a partition from the next soul.

Erin Lawrimore: Well, aside from the space issues, and the crowding, can you 00:16:00think of some the other challenges that you guys faced in those, in the earlier years?

Julie Johnson: It's ... Let's see. It's hard to separate challenges associated with the ... essentially the beginnings of the craft beer movement, from basic publishing challenges. So, craft beer, even then, in early 90 ... I mean, it was ... Yeah, early 90s, say, was 10 or so years into the thing we have today. It was still, especially in North Carolina, pretty hard to get a decent beer anywhere, and you were a little bit wacky, or a little bit pretentious, for looking for it. So, finding new audiences was a challenge. This is of course 00:17:00pre-internet, which we all tend to forget, so information is hard to come by. You can't ... You're mailing everything. You're FedExing things. You're on the phone.

Julie Johnson: If we wanted beer labels for one section of the magazine, we would telephone the brewery, and they would put labels in an envelope, and they would send them to us, and we'd give them to a photographer, and he'd photograph the labels. So many expensive steps, but this was just at the time when you could be in publishing and not be in New York, or one of the publishing hubs, where even for a small publication, it was always advantageous to be closer to more resources concentrated.

Julie Johnson: But, suddenly that was no longer essential. There were ... All About Beer is the oldest consumer ... was the oldest consumer beer magazine in 00:18:00the US, and so when we bought it, it was already 14 years old, and had a good reputation, but it also had very little competition. And that was true for many years, so winning new audiences was difficult, but we were the only game in town for consumers, pretty much. I like telling people that in the early days, it was easier to find good writing about beer than it was to find the beer itself, because for ... if you look at the ... oh, the early issues of the magazine are such a hoot. For our 35th anniversary, I was always kind of the queen of the archives. I loved the old stuff, and I had finally assembled a full collection, 00:19:00and I paged through every single issue, and kind of noted the highlights of what was going on.

Julie Johnson: And you know, volume ... the beginning of something like volume two, there's this wonderful little squib at the end that says, because they were based in California, Southern California, said, "We've heard of another, a new steam brewery opening in Chino, California. It's going to be called Sierra Nevada," and this was the first notice in print of Sierra Nevada. Of course, they were wrong about two things out of three. It's in Chico, not Chino, big difference, about 500 miles worth. It was not a steam brewery. But that was the first ... I mean, that was the first thing anybody heard, and they discovered this when they found their little, at that point newsprint version of All About 00:20:00Beer in the mailbox.

Julie Johnson: But people who were in Atlanta, and read about this new brewery, Sierra Nevada, would have to travel to California, or wait years and years before distribution ever reached that far. So, I'm ... I'll come back to this any time you want. I'm a big believer that good writing was what fueled a lot of the advances of craft beer.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Go ahead. Talk a little bit more about that, because ... I mean, there are so many great writers.

Julie Johnson: Wonderful writers.

Erin Lawrimore: That are ... Many of whom are still writing today, but some of them aren't.

Julie Johnson: Yeah, and a lot gone. Yeah. We had the early cohort. Michael Jackson got his American start at All About Beer, and wrote for us until we printed his ... the final thing he ever wrote appeared in our magazine, which 00:21:00was a real shocker. But it was 23 years. Likewise, Fred Eckhardt, the dean of American beer. Gosh. Charles Finkel, who ... I mean, these are all people who ... By now, beer, you can be a great enthusiast and know none of these names, because they are so much the other generation. You could also not know the names of Ken Grossman, who founded Sierra Nevada, or Fritz Maytag at Anchor. Those are the pioneers, but those are names that are now losing resonance for us.

Julie Johnson: Yeah, at that ... Roger Protz, one of the best writers in the UK, who is still very active, and feisty, and wonderful. So, we had a great stable of columnists. We then had a sort of pool of feature writers that we would go to 00:22:00based on what we knew they did well, and so we'd brainstorm ideas for what wanted in the magazine, but then look for someone ... There were writers who would be very good at talking about technical issues, but putting them in a friendly and approachable way. Folks who were great at the cultural traditions, or the fine brewing traditions of various centers in Europe. Or people who were travelers. There was a column called The Beer Traveler for ages, and those folks traveled, and again, reported in and wrote wonderful columns about places that our readers did not see, and couldn't know about until they cracked the pages open. And they kept those articles.

Julie Johnson: So, it ... Pre-internet, this was the experience of many people 00:23:00in publishing, that you think the word on the page is ... That's the entry point for so many people. Now it's online, which is great, but very, very different, so ... Yeah, so some of the challenges and joys were just part of being in publishing 20 years ago.

Erin Lawrimore: Are there any specific pieces from that time that still to this day stand out in your head?

Julie Johnson: Oh, boy. I have to keep going back to Michael, because he was so unusual. He had a ... He would occasionally write features, but mainly he had a column, and he was always late. I was always competing with other editors. I knew that they were my colleagues, but they were not my friends, because they 00:24:00were gonna get me ... We needed him. He was an old newspaper man, and he would ask the question that editors hate, which is, "Really, what's the real deadline?" No! So, his columns, when they arrived, were beautiful, and he had an elliptical style that was ... It was distinct. And one out of maybe every six of his columns would make me cry, and I guess I remember his work because as much as I admire, and have laughed at, and have educated by the writings of other people, he is the only beer writer who brought tears to my eyes, so a lot of his work stands out.

Julie Johnson: One column about the ... his neighborhood, and the way it 00:25:00centered on a particular pub, and the landlord, so to speak, at that pub, who was a retired football player. Soccer. No, rugby, rugby. Rugby. And what that man's help meant, so it wasn't about a pub, it was about the life in a pub, and the life that grew up around beer, and then ... and Michael wrote this when he heard the man had died. And boy, by the end of that, it was ... It wasn't maudlin, but it was so touching.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Julie Johnson: I admired him.

Erin Lawrimore: Well, and I mean, this is coming from somebody looking from the outside, 20 something years later back, but to me, it seems like some of the earlier beer writings, they are a lot more people focused than what you find with a lot of beer writing now. Are, maybe we're coming back to that, even?

Julie Johnson: No, that's a very interesting point. You may be right that the 00:26:00life, the social life that beer, in particular, makes possible, is I think as much to be appreciated. I think we owe a big debt to the English for that, because pub culture, and it's something that's slipping, but is a place where ... that can be so welcoming, and isn't actually very much about the beer.

Erin Lawrimore: So, we've kind of talked about this a little bit. You've mentioned this already, but can you talk about some of the changes that came to All About Beer from the pre-internet time through the internet? The evolution of the internet, the impacts it may have made?

Julie Johnson: Again, that's probably more a publishing question than a beer question. It collapsed schedules. Everything could happen now. It did put 00:27:00pressure on us, because we came out ... It was bimonthly. Every two months. And we were hard pressed to be timely, but you know ... and suddenly, there were resources on the internet that were putting up news at soon as it arrived. We would collect things in a big manila folder, and every two months, our news editor would synthesize a news section, and that is how people would get news in the industry. Consumers would learn about what was happening.

Julie Johnson: It would be six weeks or more since something had happened, and someone would go, "Oh, so-and-so's coming out with a new beer." Well, suddenly the urgency is much greater, and we had to get up to speed on all this newfangled stuff. I am a reluctant member of that group now, with some Luddite 00:28:00tendencies. I remember one of our younger staff members being tasked with talking to all of us around the table one day, about this new thing called social media, and all of us scribbling madly, "Facebook," and me thinking, "That's never gonna take off. Why? Nobody's ever gonna wanna do that." Which is why I'm not rich.

Julie Johnson: Yeah, it's just this sense of constantly needing material, always needing to be on top of the news, and being tempted to rush to screen, and not to print, before you should. So, you can FedEx beer samples to print people, and 00:29:00you can send that label, that beer label, electronically, and you can slap it all online, and suddenly you look at it and you think, "Oh, we've forgotten that the quality is really crap." So, I have always liked a slightly more measured approach, where you can make sure the quality's there, and I think that's a constant tension in beer, and in publishing, and in life, that we're rushing into action before we really have had a chance to get all the ... do a good sort of deep check on accuracy and quality.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Well, and as you hinted at there, it all ... The growth of the internet also kind of coincided with a boom in the craft beer industry, 00:30:00where suddenly, there are just lots more popping up everywhere, in every corner it seems like, of the country. And that had to have impacted kind of all of the work you guys were doing, and just the amount of resources coming to you.

Julie Johnson: The stuff you had to stay on top off. Well, there are more than 7,000 breweries in the US now, and in the years before All About Beer was founded, there were about 40. So, this is just ... That's maybe four decades, but that is still a remarkable change. Yeah, I mean not all of it good. Most of it good. But it just means that, in common with all the rest of this, there's such a rush to get new things, try new things, talk about them, open new things, close them down, so things are a little less well considered, I think.

Erin Lawrimore: So, thinking back to your time with All About Beer, can you talk a little bit about the things you enjoyed the most about your work, or the things you're the most proud of?

Julie Johnson: The things I ... Oh, I was most proud of the quality. Someone sent in ... I forget. There was an article talking about the various publications, and I was the editor at that point, and someone wrote, "I imagine Julie Bradford," as I was then, "must have a sign on her desk that says, "Don't even think of bringing me bad copy."" I thought, "That's a nice thing to say about somebody." I tried to be really particular. It was my picture of the 00:32:00magazine that it would be visually appealing, easy on the eye, easy ... welcoming to pick up, so no tits and ass. Try to minimize the number of weird ads. And well enough written that you could pick it up in a dentist's office, and not be a beer drinker, and leaf through it and think, "I never knew blah, blah, blah."

Julie Johnson: So, it was going to be authoritative, friendly, approachable, attractive, and I think in many ways, we succeeded. Yeah, it was ... That was something that we were very proud of. The magazine raked in a lot of writing awards, and that was great, because that ... again, come back to you have to 00:33:00hold people's hand. You have to make this a welcoming world. The information has to be authoritative. That, because we were read by a number of beer geeks, and I knew that you can get called out pretty quickly if you make a mistake. So, a lot of our audience, I figured was fairly specialized, and let's say already knew more than 90% of the public about beer, and that meant I had to know more than 95%, and I had to seek out writers who knew more than 99%, because they could not screw up, and when they did, we heard from readers in a big hurry.

Julie Johnson: "You did the conversion of barrels to gallons wrong on page 45." 00:34:00Got me. So, it had to be a better standard of writing than a lot of writing you see in popular publications about beer, that is less specialized, and where the audience is perhaps ... where less is asked of the audience.

Erin Lawrimore: Right. Well, associated with All About Beer is the World Beer Festival.

Julie Johnson: Yes.

Erin Lawrimore: Do you want to ... Let's talk about kind of the impulse behind creating that, and particularly creating it here in Durham.

Julie Johnson: In Durham. Durham.

Erin Lawrimore: In 1995.

Julie Johnson: I know it.

Erin Lawrimore: Is that the right year? Hopefully that's the right year.

Julie Johnson: 96 was the first one.

Erin Lawrimore: 96.

Julie Johnson: And so, we had acquired the magazine late in 92. Had a daughter in 93. This is all on Daniel. This is all on him. He essentially wanted to replicate the Great American Beer Festival, because over the years, he had tried 00:35:00and ... so many ways of organizing a festival, and there were some really clear ways he did not want to see a festival run, so he had 12 years to learn that. So, as far as a model, he had a good one. Why here? Because we were here.

Julie Johnson: We were still sort of new to Durham. I was still sort of at Duke, and yet our focus was not very much on Durham. It was a national magazine, though small. We were not writing about North Carolina issues.

Erin Lawrimore: There wouldn't have been much to write about.

Julie Johnson: There wasn't much to write. Although, we'll get around to that, I was asked to do just that, shortly after that, which was amazing. It was really, I think Daniel's desire, to have some kind of local identification, only partly 00:36:00for the sake of the magazine. It was partly for pure kind of romance and heart. So, the first festival was held in the new ballpark, on the concourse only, and gosh, not many breweries, but it was just ... It was ... I won't say unheard of. There was another festival going on at that point, the Southeast Invitational in Chapel Hill. That festival, however, sailed a little close to the edge, as far as following all the rules and regs, and Daniel was determined from the first that everything would be done by the book, because he wanted to be able to keep doing it.

Julie Johnson: And the ABC was just baffled. "You're gonna do what?" People are 00:37:00gonna pay one admission ticket, and then drink everything they want? So, that's a hard sell, and so with that, you have to explain measured pours, and volunteers, and educational programs, and safety, and moderation messages, and how you handle the traffic to slow down consumption and get people to concentrate on tasting and learning, rather than this. That kind of arrived with Daniel, as a model. It took I don't know how long to put it together, but yeah, that first festival, I believe it sold out, but obviously you don't fit ... You can't fit a whole lot of people around the concourse.

Julie Johnson: I think by the ... No, the next year ... Either the next year or 00:38:00the one after, so number two or number three, we were going to have it out on the street, on Blackwell Street. There's a little scheduling problem, and the city scheduled a religious revival in the park while ... at the same time that the beer festival was outside the park, and the holy people went, "No! You can't do that! We will not have them!" You know, it'll confuse people. I said, "This is so easy, up at the entrance, at the parking deck, you have two signs. It says heaven and hell." And the good city fathers were just in a complete stew, and 00:39:00desperate to find a way out, they offered us the old ballpark, which we couldn't afford, but they had to offer us something at price we could, and we took it.

Julie Johnson: So, that's how we got to the old ballpark, instead of competing with the hymn singers.

Erin Lawrimore: Well, I mean even at that time, though, I mean downtown Durham was not exactly what downtown Durham is today. You know, was that ... Did the city ... It sounds like they were accommodating, but was there kind of a push back from the city at that time?

Julie Johnson: It just had to be navigated very carefully, because this is the South. It's alcohol. You know, it's things we ran into again and again with Pop the Cap later, people going, "Oh, this'll be a disaster. There'll be drunkenness 00:40:00and debauchery everywhere." So, you know, we were very, very careful to ... I mean, we had taxis, free taxi rides if needed. I mean, all kinds of fail safes built in. Lots of meetings with the city council. We had to agree with one gentleman on the council that we would have an anti-drunkenness ... a whole, we would distribute blood alcohol content cards, and print that in our program, and so there was ... They were very ... It was difficult to climb through all the hoops, but we did.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, and it ... Well, and it sounds like ... I was in Durham at this time, and some of the places, like Sam's [Sam's Quik Shop], for instance, that is now known as having lost of craft beer, was where you went for Guinness, 00:41:00because that was your fancy beer.

Julie Johnson: That's right.

Erin Lawrimore: Did you find that having a festival like that in Durham, it was challenging just in terms of drawing people in, who didn't really know what to think about craft beer? Did you find that to be a challenge at all?

Julie Johnson: I don't think so. There was just a lot of interest, because there was ... apart from the small event in Chapel Hill, this was totally new. So, I think it was very attractive to people. We got good sponsorships. Sam's has always been helpful. In later years, I came to think of that as my library. If I wanted to know what was happening in the state, I'd walk the aisles at Sam's. So, they were ahead of their time, and they happened to be in Durham, so a very 00:42:00good resource.

Julie Johnson: In the festival, as in many other things, we depended on a really great volunteer group, force ... all the pouring at the festival was done by volunteers, as was the infamous brew crew, who was that bunch of guys who ran bags of ice, and kegs, and things around. They were a law unto themselves. But it ... there was a great willingness to step up and make it an effective event, to volunteer.

Julie Johnson: At that time, now this became, this was interesting. At that time, the brewers donated their beer, so if you were going to come to the festival, we would say, "Okay, two sessions. Two four our sessions. We have an 00:43:00audience of about this many people. If you bring this much of your beer, we will provide ... We've got the facility. We've got the programs. We bring the people to you. You bring the beer, we bring the audience, and we bring the educational component, and hopefully they go away knowing more about beer, and what they would like." And as time went by, we did things like we would also throw in accommodation, but it was a kind of joint marketing effort, really, for breweries both from here, and from away.

Julie Johnson: As competing festivals grew up, I think brewers got overwhelmed with invitations to participate. You had ... It's tiring. You travel. You have 00:44:00... and they were being asked to provide free beer for all of them, and there was some grumbling, which I understand, that ... and then, a festival started paying for the beer, but you gotta ... Oh, boy. You've gotta manage your budget pretty carefully. We did, too, but that was after I had left the company, so in more recent years, the festival bought the beer. And that makes it now more inviting for brewers to participate, because they're not losing money quite so badly.

Julie Johnson: But it actually makes the budget pretty tricky, because you're renting the athletic park, and you have to hire security, and print tickets, and get glasses, and it's a big money event, and to have to also buy the beer, and 00:45:00by then you can't take back your invitation for accommodations, so it ... But the ticket price can't be crazy, so it ... I think festivals are challenged these days. It was nice to be the first. One of the earliest, anyway.

Erin Lawrimore: Do you remember some of the breweries and beers that came in for that early ... the first, or the first couple of festivals?

Julie Johnson: Yeah. The first festival ... We managed to ... I don't know quite how we did this, but we ... People would bring beer from out of state, that was not sold here, and we found a way ... It was all legal, because you were gonna get raided if you ... But it was ... That was one thing that was very inviting to people, was it was an actually an opportunity for them to taste the beers 00:46:00they'd read about, and I think the star, probably, in the first festival, was New Glarus, from Wisconsin. So, Deb Carrie came here, she had the Wisconsin Red, which was this lovely, fruited, deliberately soured beer that bested Belgian competitors that year at GABF. Gorgeous cherry flavored beer.

Julie Johnson: And so that was probably the most unusual, and also the one where people thought, "I never thought I would get to taste this." So that was really great.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, and that kind of segues into something else that you've mentioned already, but you know, North Carolina at that time had some pretty restrictive laws, in terms of beer, and ABV, and whatnot, and you mentioned Pop the Cap a second ago in passing, so I guess for those who don't know, can you 00:47:00describe the Pop the Cap initiative, and what it was fighting against?

Julie Johnson: Yeah, indeed.

Erin Lawrimore: Or hoping to change, we'll put it that way.

Julie Johnson: Yes. Oh, we were fighting. It was a fight. A little bit of kind of history, that at the end of prohibition, states individually legalized alcohol production and sale, and the wording of that legislation had long-term consequences. So, some states simply said, "You shall make beer. It is an alcohol derived from grain, run about, go on, make beer." Other states, like North Carolina, defined beer very closely, and it says, "It is a barley based, or grain based beverage of between .05," yeah. Between half a percent, and six 00:48:00percent. Initially, five percent alcohol by volume.

Julie Johnson: I would say about half the states put in an upper limit to the definition. And so, by the time we were here, North Carolina had a six percent limit to the strength of beer. There was a ... There was some rumbling about this, because people were aware that in adjacent states, there was a much wider selection of beers. There was also an awful lot of confusion about what beer strength, what qualities it really confers. Also, people ... I grew up with the myth that Canadian beer was stronger. "Oh, strong beer." Well, there are two ways of measuring. You can measure by volume, you can measure by weight, and 00:49:00those are numbers ... They ain't the same thing, and so Canadian beer was generally measured by weight, and so the same strength appeared ... had a bigger number.

Julie Johnson: So, people didn't quite understand that from state to state, and there became a kind of infatuation with the idea of strength, per se, which was a real challenge for us. But the fact is that there are certain beer styles, with very long pedigrees, that as part of their nature, finish at higher alcohol strength, and that is as much a part of their character, flavor, as ... I don't know, as it is of a cabernet, compared to a Riesling. They just end up in different places, and the result was that there were entire categories of beer 00:50:00that were not ... could not be made or sold here. Wonderful styles. Barley wines, and Belgian Dubbels, and wee heavies, and Imperial Russian Stouts, and it's this long list, and so when people started complaining about the alcohol limit, what they were really complaining about was the restricted choice.

Julie Johnson: People who were brewing here kind of wanted to make these other styles. They also wanted to nudge the alcohol up a little bit. There were people outside the state that were not willing to bring in their portfolio of beers to sell here, until that they could bring the whole thing. They weren't gonna do them piecemeal, so breweries who we heard about, and could ... You'd have to go to Virginia to buy those beers, or somewhere else, and trek them in.

Julie Johnson: So, it was just a very limited experience. There's also still a fairly long anti-alcohol legacy in the state. Moonshining and the like. Complicated relationships with religion, so all of these together made anything enjoyable about beer kind of not terribly nice. There were periodic petitions that went around the ... a lot of it around the home brewing community, to try to assert to the legislature that we should have, we should lift that limit, we should have stronger beer. And those kind of didn't go anywhere, partly because all they really were was some table thumping, and the best argument people came 00:52:00up with was, "I am here, and I should have the beer I want."

Julie Johnson: And that ain't gonna fly. If you're a legislature, a legislator about to take a big, big risk, supporting a bill, that's not gonna convince you, and so we had to find different ways. Anyway, that's the problem that we were facing. So, how did Pop the Cap come about?

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, how did you guys first ... I guess, come together as an organized unit, as opposed to individuals pounding on the table.

Julie Johnson: Pounding on tables. Right. My fault, maybe. The N&O was very forward looking, peculiar, in signing me up for a weekly beer column in the late 00:53:0090 ... in the 90s, some time. Nobody had a weekly column. Denver had maybe a weekly beer column, and Portland did, but Raleigh, North Carolina, to have suddenly out of the blue, to be contacted and asked to write a column every single week about beer, was remarkable. And there wasn't that many ... It was a reach. I wrote about all manner of things, and I got a little desperate sometimes.

Erin Lawrimore: Were you focused on North Carolina beer, or just beer in general?

Julie Johnson: Impossible. One could not do that.

Erin Lawrimore: That's what I figured.

Julie Johnson: Yeah, so I wrote about where I traveled, I wrote about the GABF [Great American Beer Festival] and which award winners you could find here back in the state, maybe one, two. What beer to have with Thanksgiving. I just revisited that subject. How to convince someone who doesn't like beer that they 00:54:00should try it. And periodically, I would get crabby, and write about the six percent law, mainly because I really needed subject matter, and I wrote about it a couple times. I wrote about this fellow who was organizing the petition, and then the final column of 02, which would have been the first one published in 2003, was a proper rant, which I think I sent to you, and looking back, I realize what I did in that one was to end it with what amounted to a call to action.

Julie Johnson: And so, other columns I'd written in the years before were just grumpy. Like I was rather fond of words like boneheaded. Great word. "Boneheaded law, blah, blah, blah, blah. Why is it that in other states, in other states for 00:55:00new years, people are cracking open giant magnums of Abbey Dubbels, and little discreet bottles of Samichlaus, and here, here, we got nothing." So, that was the tone of most of them. That's not really very constructive, but instead, I actually ended up with, "We need to get six words taken out of the law. Here are the six, here's how we do it. We need to make a," we could, at that point, look to other states that had tried. Georgia, notably, tried and failed a couple times before they finally succeeded, and they were very generous to us.

Julie Johnson: I had an idea of what didn't work, and I laid it out, and I basically said, "So," I didn't quite say who's with me, but, "Is this the year 00:56:00we're going to modernize North Carolina beer laws?" And then I hit send, and they printed it. And then people started emailing. "Okay, what are you gonna do about it?" "I was never gonna do anything about it, I was just gonna get a column out of it."

Erin Lawrimore: Can you talk a little bit about some of the folks who, I guess, stepped forward and followed through?

Julie Johnson: There was a ... Yeah, there was a meeting on a Saturday, at the All About Beer offices downtown, and to our surprise, it attracted 40 or so people. What originally just spread through email to a few people, suddenly went on the notice boards for home brewing groups, and suddenly all these people rolled in. There were three of us ... It's very difficult when you start kind of 00:57:00naming people, because there were some stalwarts who were with this group for the full effort, but Sean Lilly Wilson, who went on to found Fullsteam [Brewery, Durham], and Eric Galamb, who's an environmental scientist in Raleigh, who ran a home brew supply on the side, and I, came out of this as the officers.

Julie Johnson: And so, the three of us were involved from there on out, in a series of strange activities. What do you do, right, when you committed to changing this law, and we really didn't know how one did it. Although, to look to Georgia, and it became clear that we would need help getting the legislation put in the right place, and here the fourth person who should be named is 00:58:00Theresa Kostrzewa, who is a lobbyist in Raleigh, and she took us on, I think ... I think Eric was the one who probably knew of her. I think she kind of took us on for a giggle, because she represented some powerful interests, and I think she maybe just found it an intriguing challenge, because she wasn't gonna get rich off us, and she wasn't going to go on to greater legislative glory by championing these admittedly kind of ragged looking beer people.

Julie Johnson: But she was the one who got with us on strategy. Who to ally with, who to be a little careful of, how to present things to the legislature, how to educate them, so we kind of divided our time between ... there'd be broad 00:59:00educational efforts, and then efforts with the legislature, and then the scramble to raise money any way we could, because we had to pay Theresa, and Sean Wilson came up with the name Pop the Cap, and I was thinking about this. The three of us brought very different skills. Sean had just graduated from Fuqua [Fuqua School of Business, Duke University], in business, and he has one of the best marketing minds I know. He's just so ... Thank heavens he opened Fullsteam, because his brain throws off more ideas, he had to have a place to put them all, right?

Julie Johnson: Eric is methodical, well connected in Raleigh, and I think had the best understanding of the legislative process, and so he came from that world, and the home brewing world, which is not what Sean did, and I'm on the writing and the writing side. So, we were a really good trio.

Julie Johnson: Oh, we did things. We would get donations from breweries out of state, not only of beer that was not available here, but beer that was not legal here, but you could do it privately. So, we had a ... North Coast was fabulous, out in California, because that brewer's younger ... his family's from Cary, and he really wanted ... He would leapfrog the company, the country, with his new beers, but he wanted to bring the real goodies, and so he would send us ... He sent us cases of Old Rasputen, all this amazing stuff, and we threw a reception at Theresa's house for legislators, and only men came. And they stood around, and drank the beer, and talked about their bass boats, for God's sake. You guys 01:01:00are no use, right?

Julie Johnson: And we thought, "We gotta reach the women, too," and even though we did not particularly want to divide it up that way, we ended up putting on a different event for women in the legislature, and staff, and they came, and the atmosphere was totally different. They came and they sat down, and they basically said, "All right, we're here. Okay. Tell us about your beer." "Well, here's," it was a real beer tasting. "Here's this beer. Here's a cheese which is delightful with it," so one more story, can I do this?

Erin Lawrimore: Oh, go ahead. We'll take all the stories.

Julie Johnson: This wonderful lady, who I hope is not mean to say, she looked the most recognizably republican, of the group, she was by far the best dressed, and hair, and very gracious, and she came up to me at the beginning and said, "Well, I do appreciate the invitation to come here. I don't particularly care 01:02:00for beer, but I was curious, and I was just so pleased to be invited." So, gracious. She comes up to me at the end, and she has a glass of Barley Wine, and she said, "Well, I don't see why I'm not able to buy this."

Erin Lawrimore: Barley Wine's a good entry point in a lot of cases.

Julie Johnson: I think it probably tasted like bourbon, with a couple of rocks in it, right? And so we had her on our side, so.

Erin Lawrimore: Who, so who in the ... Did you have particular people in the legislature who were kind of champion the cause? Or was it more just begging everyone as a whole?

Julie Johnson: We had House Bill ... Can't remember the number, and I'm embarrassed that I do not remember who the principal sponsors were. One fellow who later got into some trouble.

Erin Lawrimore: But not beer related.

Julie Johnson: Not beer related, no. We had a number of hearings. We started 01:03:00drawing some opposition, because we knew ... I mean, in my original layout of what one had to do, the most powerful group in the state is the wholesalers. People have no idea. At the national level, it's the brewers. At the state level, it's the wholesalers. And the wholesalers here were dominated by Anheuser-Busch, by their various franchises, and we knew from the start that they had to be either on our side, or neutral, because if they said, "Mm-mm (negative)," the legislature was gonna ... that was it. And in fact, had they wanted this through, it would have been done.

Julie Johnson: So, that was a ... They were always a challenge. We got some opposition from distributors, and from wholesalers, principally from people who 01:04:00didn't care ... who didn't have access to that niche. There were ... Tryon Distributing in Charlotte, Brad Johnson was a great supporter, principally because he saw where this was going, and he had some links to good breweries outside the state, and he was ... he had them all queued up to come in. He knew where this was going to go. And these guys with these big Bud houses, they basically looked at the whole AB list and said, "I haven't got any, why should I ... why should we spend any political capital on this? We don't work in this niche," and for a while, they agreed ... They just said, "We're taking a pass on this. Have fun, but."

Julie Johnson: We got some nasty resistance from the Christian Action League. 01:05:00Mark Creech, who really, wow, wow, wow. Well, he played to the people who feared that what we were bringing in was basically Budweiser on steroids. But also, he is ... He's a professional, "I hate booze," guy, and you know, that's what he does for a living, so he got nasty.

Julie Johnson: We had hearings, and this is where I like to say that I'm our secret weapon, because if you're having a hearing on changing beer laws, who do you expect to see testifying? You probably expect a strapping, square jawed guy to come in, maybe 25. You do not expect a rather respectable, aged over 50s 01:06:00woman to be the principal person, and I think when we deployed me effectively, we played right into the basic courtesy of even those people who opposed us. This was a really nice thing about dealing with this in North Carolina, is no one would be mean to us. If there was ... If you had to call me ma'am, you had to listen to me. So there was a lot of that.

Julie Johnson: Gosh. In the summer of 05, then, things were coming to a conclusion, and there was a change in the leadership at the wholesaler's association, from a president who agreed to be neutral to us, abruptly to one who was against us. And the time was tight, and it ... and suddenly there 01:07:00emerged a very weird alliance between the head of the wholesaler's association and the teetotaling reverend, to sink us. And it was really down to votes on a couple of days, where we saw representatives of that side down on the floor jawing with people, and thinking, "Gotta vote. We think we have the votes, but they are ... We're losing them right now."

Julie Johnson: It was a matter of days, and all of a sudden, it was Bev Purdue who was wielding the gavel at that point. Like, "Bang, bang, bang," and great rush. "House Bill blah, blah, blah, yay or nay." And before, sort of before we 01:08:00could hoist it in, the votes go up, and down on the floor, the guys who are still trying to get them to change. We all look up, and it's passed. You think, "Holy crap. It's just happened." You know, we just changed a law.

Erin Lawrimore: Do you remember after that, did you have a celebratory plus six percent beer somewhere?

Julie Johnson: I went to Sam's, and I bought a Chimay, and John boy gave me a hug and he said, "Oh no, honey. I'm gonna give this to you." I said, "No, I'm gonna buy it, because that's what this is about. I'm gonna come here and buy this beer from you." Because everything ... It was there. I mean, the beer was ready to roll out instantly, as soon as this passed. Everyone ... If it hadn't passed, God knows what would have happened, but they were ready. They had stock. They'd signed the stuff. They were ready to go, and yeah, we ... I think we 01:09:00drank a fair amount of six percent beer for a while.

Julie Johnson: Tony Kiss, up in Asheville, very good beer writer up there for the Asheville Times. At some point I talked to him. He said, "You know, I keep drinking Chimay. It's what, lunchtime," and I thought, "I don't have to drink a Chimay for lunch. I really don't. It's gonna be there. I'm still behaving like somebody who's gonna have it taken away from me, or I'm gonna leave the state where it's legal, and I'll be back in early 2005 North Carolina. I can now drink something because I want it, not because I'm in a panic."

Erin Lawrimore: And, I mean ... I don't even know if this can kind of easily be put into words, but can you talk about what Pop the Cap meant to North Carolina 01:10:00beer today?

Julie Johnson: In a lovely way, now not much. We're years ... We're 10, we're 12 years out, and everyone ... You just take it in your stride that this is now a state of many creative breweries, who can pick a style, and make it, and bend it, just because they can, and that's what they want to do, and maybe that's what some drinkers would like to have. So now, it doesn't mean much, and that's cool. It's like the brewery founders who I was mentioning earlier, and the great writers, that's all in the past, and there's a little bit of me that goes, "Oh. I want you all to know about these great historic figures." Well, we got really good beer.

Julie Johnson: You know, we'd gone from early days of Pop the Cap, there were 10 breweries that I could call on to help us out. I don't know quite how many there were in the state, but you know, there was early, there was Weeping Radish at Manteo, and then there was Highland, and a few others, and some who've gone, some who are still around. But those were ... They were reliable, but they ... It's 10 fingers, and now, we're up 200 or so breweries. I can't keep track, and I have no desire to. I don't have to anymore. The good guys won. You can get good beer in a filling station. Good beer a at a C store. This is mind blowing.

Julie Johnson: You could go, "Back in the old days," you'd go into a good 01:12:00restaurant, and they would hand you a leather bound book of their wines. Pages and pages, and then the beers. Their beers would be ... If they strayed into the exotic, there'd be a Guinness. But apart from that, it would be six variants on the same bleeping beer. It would be the full test, and the light versions, of Budweiser, Miller, and Coors, and they thought they had a variety. Well, we have Guinness, madam." You think, "Why do you not recognize that beer is as complex, as diverse, and has as wonderful a legacy as wine? Great. Goes with foods." 01:13:00There's plausibly a beer for anybody who's interested.

Julie Johnson: You don't like this profile? How about this? And can be appreciated as a food, and a beverage, and the fact that people don't think that way, I don't mind taking a little credit for, that it's there. People appreciate it. You're no longer thought to be some pretentious goon if you go in and say, "I'll have an IPA, please." Okay. Maybe if you say, "I'll have a ... I'd like ... What do you have? What are your sours these days?" They say, "Pretentious goon." I love them.

Erin Lawrimore: Well, and I mean, you mentioned a while ago when you were talking about Michael Jackson, the English pub and pub culture, and I think that's another thing that's changed in North Carolina, too, is you ... While you can just go buy it at a gas station, a lot of communities are using pub ... tap 01:14:00rooms as a third space, an important third space.

Julie Johnson: Tap rooms are a very interesting development, because if you want to drink beer that someone had made on site, it would be at a brew pub, which is a real bear to run. You're running a restaurant with a brewery, and the fact that we can now have tap rooms has opened up possibilities for all kinds of people, and as you say, a community space, a place that's welcoming to families. One of my soap boxes, one of many, would be the value of normalizing beer, at some point I think ... The Bulls, or some team, I don't ... had an adult section where you could get beer. I thought, "That's such a terrible idea. Let's cordon off all this bad behavior, so people can lower themselves appropriately, and 01:15:00behave badly." As compared to the English pub, or the German beer garden, where beer is part of a social experience, and I think we can enjoy some of that experience ourselves, in some of these tap rooms.

Julie Johnson: Now, there's always a place for a good dive bar, where frankly you should not ... You are gonna go and behave badly. You really should not bring the kids. So, there's some discussion right now about ... Is it too damn much to be doing children's birthday parties in tap rooms? Yes. I'm not kidding, this discussion's going on online. Like, "I ran into a two year old's birthday party at my favorite brewery. I can't. I'm never going back."

Erin Lawrimore: It is a way to survive a two year old's birthday party better.

Julie Johnson: Oh yeah. Good point. So, but you're right about the third ... it is evolving into a third space for many people, which is lovely.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. So, kind of taking the big picture view, thinking about ... I guess the time you've been working in, adjacent to, with, about the craft beer industry, can you think of just some of your fondest memories? What are some of your favorite things that just overall, you have been able to do?

Julie Johnson: It's the people. Like that Jackson article, it's the people who surround beer. I will confess, I'm not beer exclusive. I'm not going to try everything. That's not why I'm there. I'm there because I love good conversation, I love the stories, as I say, it's an industry that is said to be 01:17:0099% asshole free. It might be down to 95, but ... Really collegial group of people on the beer producing side, who ... and I hope this can last, who pool resources in hard times. If you're out ... There's great stories. Brewery X runs out of bottles, and another brewery in the same town gives them bottles. Sam Adams, when there was a hop shortage several years ago, just let it be known. They said, "We've got a solid hops contract. We're fine. If you're in trouble, get in touch."

Julie Johnson: Businesses don't run that way, and this is one group, one area of 01:18:00the business world, that has come up precisely because they work together. As I say, it may not last. We've got 7,000 breweries. There's competition for tap space, and shelf space, but the background, the pedigree is, it's one of collegiality. So, yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, and that kind of segues into the next question I was gonna ask, which ... You know, where do you see the industry going? Which I guess can take a two-parter, where you see it, and where do you hope it is going in the next ... I don't know that you can look more than five years in this industry. It changes so quickly, it seems.

Julie Johnson: I know it. I see beer becoming refreshingly commonplace, good beer. I think that's great. There's interesting stuff. We're there, and it will 01:19:00get more so. It's a crowded field. This is where my fears about the collegiality breaking down come in. The generation of founders are transitioning into retirement. A few breweries are in the hands of the next generation, but these guys have been carrying big sacks of grain for decades, or some of them have, so when it's ... The exit strategy is one that is complicated. Kind of hard to handle well, because what you tend to do if you succeeded that long, you sell your brewery to a bigger concern, or a hedge fund, or Anheuser-Busch.

Julie Johnson: So, there is consolidation going on. It offends the loyal beer drinker, little like finding out your band has signed with a big label, and you 01:20:00used to hear them back when they played down in the little club, and now they're playing in the stadiums, and how can they sell out? It's the same sentiment. I knew them back when. Those very same people, though, who want breweries to stay small, and your secret, also want the small secret beer from the next state over. But just for me, right?

Julie Johnson: So, we can't ... We can not have small, local, and intimate, and have access to other people's small, local, and intimate, and hope that the brewers, and the companies thrive. So, there's some inherent tension in there. Few hurt feelings.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Well, and you know, I think on a ... Kind of related to that, I think the West Coast is still the US trendsetter in the beer world. But they do have competition.

Julie Johnson: Oh, yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Now, from other areas, or at least other breweries in other areas.

Julie Johnson: Absolutely.

Erin Lawrimore: Do you ... How do you see that kind of evolving? Or have you seen it? How have you seen it evolve and evolving?

Julie Johnson: I would still ... I would hate to think about opening a brewery in Portland. Where people would be, "Oh yeah, right. Another." So, as it becomes crowded, you have to present your customers with something even more gee whiz. We do veer into silliness over some of the things people do to get drinkers' attention. And occasionally into badly brewed beer that's meant to be just to catch attention. So, they're ... You can be encouraged to do foolish things if you're, as I said before, if you're acting too fast, and if you're not acting 01:22:00with integrity, and with an eye on quality, I still think that's the best way to succeed. That said, if all you see on the shelf is IPAs, it's kind of hard to justify making an IPA, and maybe you make peach popcorn beer. I don't know.

Erin Lawrimore: Someone's probably doing it.

Julie Johnson: I know. As soon as I ... We used to joke about ... You can't ... It's beyond a joke now. I remember cracking people up by saying, "Oh yeah, I think ... Just wait. This year, this is gonna be the year of imperial stouts in a can, ha, ha, ha." Yeah, well. What's the next style they're gonna revive? Oh, how about Gose. Ha, ha, ha, ha. I wrote about that for humor, like, "Wanna hear something weird? Gose. Or how about Kvass? Sour, salty beer? Yeah, right."

Julie Johnson: Yes. It's like Tom Lehrer in his satirical songs. You ... 01:23:00Suddenly, you can't make fun of it anymore, because it's really happening. Or like modern politics. Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Well, and you know, we talked about the industry, but specifically with craft beer journalism, or writing, where do you see that trending? We talked about the magazine, and you mentioned-

Julie Johnson: Oh boy, yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: ... the sadness of it going away.

Julie Johnson: It sure has. It's-

Erin Lawrimore: But, and it's-

Julie Johnson: It circles the drain.

Erin Lawrimore: And it's not the only one. I mean, there are a lot of other people who've had long-term blogs and things like that, who are shutting it down, now.

Julie Johnson: You don't make money. And again, this is a journalism, this is a writing problem. Not a beer problem. There are people who will work for free. There are people who have the gall to ask you to write for exposure. So, yeah. I think that's a crisis in any form of communication, where we would hope to have 01:24:00something more sophisticated, and grounded in research and scholarship, which All About Beer was. If there are people who are willing to do content providers, instead of writers, instead of authorities, the world of the content provider is one of badly debased writing and information.

Julie Johnson: And so, I don't know about that. She said, "And get off my lawn."

Erin Lawrimore: Well, back to happier beer. Do you ... So, thinking about maybe beer you've tried recently, do you have any recents that just kind of blew your mind, or that are favorites of yours? Be they from around here, or global.

Julie Johnson: You know this is a question that I've been dodging for 25 years.

Erin Lawrimore: It's the hardest ... We ask this question of everyone that we interview, and it's always the hardest question for people to answer, which is 01:25:00why we stopped saying ... phrasing it as, "Your favorite recently," as, "One of your favorites," or, "Some of your favorites."

Julie Johnson: You're smart. And of course, the reason it's difficult is my ... one of my glib answers used to be, "What time is it," because what am I in the mood for, there's such a range of great beers, and also it's a matter of friendship, too. Just like singling people out of Pop the Cap, and by naming four, I've just dissed 40, and the same would be true of beer. I will pick out a favorite beer experience that I can happily share with you. When I go see my daughter in Asheville, I try to be an undemanding guest, but there is one stop I insist on, which is New Belgium, to go out and sit on the deck, and look down over the water, and drink La Folie on draft, which is probably one of the first 01:26:00traditional, deliberately soured beers in the United States. Created by Peter Bouckaert. He's taught scores of people what a good sour beer could be.

Julie Johnson: I know people dispute sour beer, but it's a term people understand, and it ... 20 years. Maybe 15, 20 years on, is a divine beer, and so I will not hesitate to say, had that over Christmas with my kid, and it's the same blissful experience that it was at the GABF when Daniel steered me towards it many years ago, and I thought, "This doesn't taste like any beer I've ever had, and I will suspend disbelief and just enjoy it."

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Well, that kind wraps up my list of questions, but is 01:27:00there anything we didn't talk about that you would want us to talk about, in terms of kind of getting the full picture, the full story?

Julie Johnson: Full picture, full story. The thing I used to like best at festivals was seeing people pour beer out. Because it meant they ... You know, and that is still kind of how I feel about it. It means you've taken a risk, you're stepping a little outside what you're used to, and you've tasted it. You have thought about it. You thought, "This one's not for me, but maybe," you know? You've learned something. You go away knowing something, and the next thing you try, you will also kind of take seriously. Not too seriously, but seriously enough to stop and talk it over, and you'll pay the brewer the compliment of remembering what it's called, and going and getting it. So, experimentation, and education, and appreciation, are kind of what I look for in 01:28:00these experiences.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. That's my favorite part of the festivals, too. I think one of the benefits is they do give you that opportunity to see-

Julie Johnson: It's great.

Erin Lawrimore: ... and taste things that you would not pick up at the grocery store.

Julie Johnson: That's right. You wouldn't.

Erin Lawrimore: At the gas station.

Julie Johnson: You wouldn't risk a whole pint.

Erin Lawrimore: Or six pack, or anything like that.

Julie Johnson: You just go ... Yeah. It's great.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Julie Johnson: People trying. Yep.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, and I think that kind of circles back around to everything we've been talking about, is a lot of it goes back to that kind of growth and experimentation, so I think that's a great way to kind of close everything out.

Julie Johnson: I think so. Thank you.

Erin Lawrimore: Awesome. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it.

Julie Johnson: You're welcome.