{"id":18249,"date":"2016-07-10T13:03:09","date_gmt":"2016-07-10T01:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=18249"},"modified":"2016-07-10T18:21:25","modified_gmt":"2016-07-10T06:21:25","slug":"hats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2016\/07\/10\/hats\/","title":{"rendered":"Full disclosure: one free hat, etc."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"My<\/a>
Well-travelled and well-faded<\/figcaption><\/figure>I’ve just got the one actual<\/em> beer hat \u2014 which does stand in stark contrast to my predictably-overstuffed t-shirt drawer.\u00a0My Dogfish Head cap is a beloved and battered souvenir of a ridiculously enjoyable afternoon spent bartending at Beervana 2010,<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> relatively early in my full-time-beer-person career. As I was doing my taxes this week, generally feeling fortunate to’ve been able to patch together a modest living doing work I enjoy, I thought I should lay out my\u00a0metaphorical<\/em> hats \u2014 in the spirit of delight (my plan, such as it is, is vaguely working!) as much as disclosure,<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> though I’m a big fan of both.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So for the record, while you’re not getting actual amounts,<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> it makes for a nice summary to note that my recent<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> rent and food and beer and books have been proportionally underwritten by: my bartending ‘day job’\u00a0at\u00a0Golding’s Free Dive<\/a> (82%); my former actual day job at Garage Project<\/a> (whose final paycheck fell over the boundary into the next tax year, 9%); hosting tastings and tours for Craft Beer College<\/a> (5.5%, including some we did for ‘the other CBC’, Craft Beer Capital<\/a>); writing beer label text for ParrotDog<\/a> (2.5%); and two small gigs at festivals (helping with NZTE\u2019<\/a>s presence at Sydney GABS<\/a>, and giving a talk at the GKBF<\/a>: 1% combined). And that’s it for plainly-financial entanglements, lately \u2014 unless you want to hire me for something…<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"ParrotDog<\/a>
A rarity: a freebie \u2014 my first label-writing commission<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>But then, that\u00a0was<\/em> a free hat,\u00a0so cash money isn’t the only relevant thing. I decided a while ago to stop taking samples from breweries, and that remains my policy.<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> If something\u00a0shows up at work, for work, I’ll try it but refrain from commenting on it until I’ve\u00a0also<\/em> had it in my own time.\u00a0The discovery and the price of a thing are part of the experience and there’s a real ickiness about the way beers get talked about in some circles, as if it were spontaneous, a few days after I’ve seen offers of freebies go out. But I’m not dogmatic about turning down everything: some brewers are friends and some beers are given in gratitude for something I’ve done\u00a0other than this<\/em> (he says, pointing to the blog).\u00a0Likewise, I don’t have to pay for after-work beers at Golding’s, and that gives me a chance to try a great-many things I might not, otherwise \u2014 but I feel they’re earned, if not paid for as such.\u00a0In any case, I’ve started noting down who buys the beers I drink (if it’s not me) so there’s a papertrail of sorts<\/a>. And so it is with events: I’ve got no interest in going on a junket in exchange for giving a write-up, but I have taken some free tickets to festivals and things while still paying my own travel and whatnot.<\/p>\n

Either way, I’ll consider myself to’ve fucked up if it’s not obvious to you that money comes in from someone I’m writing about or if I got access to something other than via the usual means available to the beer-drinking public.\u00a0It’s possible \u2014 likely, even \u2014 that all this doesn’t matter to you, dear reader, but it does matter to me.\u00a0The beer business, broadly construed, really is proving a wonderful place in which to spend my time but there’ll always be an awkwardness to juggling various bits of paid work in an industry even when you\u00a0don’t<\/em> throw in a habit of commenting on the thing as a whole. And I do have a weird kind of optimism that if we were all a little more careful, here, we might actually burn out the nonsense of advertising masquerading as sincere conversation. I figure it’s best just to\u00a0point to my collection of hats, so to speak, even though I do my best to only wear one at a time. Hopefully I don’t make a hypocrite<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> of myself. But I warmly invite\u00a0you<\/em> to be the judge of that.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve just got the one actual beer hat \u2014 which does stand in stark contrast to my predictably-overstuffed t-shirt drawer.\u00a0My Dogfish Head cap is a beloved and battered souvenir of a ridiculously enjoyable afternoon spent bartending at Beervana 2010, relatively early in my full-time-beer-person career. As I was doing my taxes this week, generally feeling … Continue reading Full disclosure: one free hat, etc.<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":17491,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2015\/09\/21\/beer-media-baseline\/","url_meta":{"origin":18249,"position":0},"title":"The beer-media baseline","author":"Phil","date":"September 21, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I spent a few hours on Saturday in the beer-bunker that is Hashigo Zake, in the company of two-dozen-or-so like-minded folks and enjoying the Brewers Guild Awards beaming at us from Auckland over a mercifully-dependable livestream. It was a properly marvellous occasion,\u00a0and the Guild (with new host, Hilary Barry) put\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mediawatch"","block_context":{"text":"Mediawatch","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/interesting-finds\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Screenshot from tv3.co.nz","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Story-taste-test-300x218.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":17268,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2015\/08\/19\/beervana-2015-litany\/","url_meta":{"origin":18249,"position":1},"title":"Beervana 2015 \u2014 a litany of gratitude","author":"Phil","date":"August 19, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I am a very happy beerperson.\u00a0That was a huge festival season \u2014 the run-up to Beervana last weekend was filled with plenty of other more-or-less-related Things To Do\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and now it's over but for the mopping up and the inevitable retrospectives. I feel like I was a little close to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Metablogging"","block_context":{"text":"Metablogging","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/meta\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Garage Project bar (Beervana, 15 August 2015)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Beervana-2015-Garage-Project-bar-wide.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Beervana-2015-Garage-Project-bar-wide.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Beervana-2015-Garage-Project-bar-wide.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Beervana-2015-Garage-Project-bar-wide.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":18356,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2016\/08\/29\/yall\/","url_meta":{"origin":18249,"position":2},"title":"A festival for the rest of y’all","author":"Phil","date":"August 29, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"So that was the week that was. The week that was a while ago, now. How time flies when you're quietly recuperating. Weirdly, given the work I gravitate towards, I'm a natural introvert and crowds of lovely beer nerds are still, you know, crowds. I think exhaustixhilirated just about covers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Observations"","block_context":{"text":"Observations","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/reports\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Light-up signage at Beervana 2016 (Wellington Stadium, 12 August 2016)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Blow-your-bulbs-at-Beervana.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Blow-your-bulbs-at-Beervana.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Blow-your-bulbs-at-Beervana.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Blow-your-bulbs-at-Beervana.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":20383,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2023\/07\/19\/fixation-local-consistent\/","url_meta":{"origin":18249,"position":3},"title":"Fixation: not really Melbourne’s, and not particularly consistent","author":"Phil","date":"July 19, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Melbourne's Own Consistently Excellent Beer, the billboard read, provided you walked back and forward a bit or at least leaned side to side, since it'd been stuck up on a surface that was too tightly curved. I'd seen variations on that poster campaign before, but now it made me mad;\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Observations"","block_context":{"text":"Observations","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/reports\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Fixation Brewing billboard on a bollard at the University of Melbourne, which reads 'Melbourne's Own Consistently Excellent Beer'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Fixation-billboll-or-bollboard.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Fixation-billboll-or-bollboard.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Fixation-billboll-or-bollboard.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Fixation-billboll-or-bollboard.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Fixation-billboll-or-bollboard.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Fixation-billboll-or-bollboard.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":26266,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2025\/03\/21\/beer-nytxw-2024\/","url_meta":{"origin":18249,"position":4},"title":"99 clues about beer in the Times \u2014 a 2024 crossword survey","author":"Phil","date":"March 21, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Since noticing a reference to modern hazy IPA in the New York Times crossword, and wondering what that \"meant\" in terms of beer's currency in the popular culture, I've been keeping a tally of what else comes up. 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I know why I haven't been around more often; a mix of factors internal and external that'd be familiar-enough to anyone else who does this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Metablogging"","block_context":{"text":"Metablogging","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/meta\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Alt","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/GFD-Craft-Beer-Bar-wide.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/GFD-Craft-Beer-Bar-wide.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/GFD-Craft-Beer-Bar-wide.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/GFD-Craft-Beer-Bar-wide.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/GFD-Craft-Beer-Bar-wide.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18249"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18295,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18249\/revisions\/18295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}