{"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. I recently realised I had a full calendar year worth of such\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mediawatch"","block_context":{"text":"Mediawatch","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/interesting-finds\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/NYTXW-2024.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/NYTXW-2024.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/NYTXW-2024.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/NYTXW-2024.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/NYTXW-2024.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":18637,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2017\/01\/12\/2016-overview\/","url_meta":{"origin":18249,"position":5},"title":"2016: That was the year that was","author":"Phil","date":"January 12, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"So, that was 2016. It was... interesting. As you perhaps noticed. Plenty happening in the beer business, but no shortage of distractions in the wider and weirder world. Despite working on various of beer's front lines, I felt a little disconnected from it all last year. And so rather than\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "From the front line"","block_context":{"text":"From the front line","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/bartending\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"'Overlooked Middle Child', from the Beer Diary Brewing Department, shortly before its abandonment. 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