Craft Beer

Podcast #196 — Cheers to Beer Tourism and Travel!

In this beer-focused episode, John Holl, editor of All About Beer, gives us his take on beer tourism and tips on how to beer travels. I talk about my experience planning my Asheville, NC taproom visits with ChatGPT. We also dive deep into the new JD Power Airport Satisfaction Survey and do a quick update…

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Podcast #187 — Moving to a Non-Hub Airport; What Makes A Great Taproom?

The last episode recording in Chicago before we relocate the TravelCommons studios, and our lives, down to Nashville. We close out our threads on in-flight mask mandates and hotel housekeeping, and critique an academic paper about the moral hazard of frequent flier elite status. I talk through the changes I’ll have to make when flying…

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My Best Restaurants, Bars and Taprooms of 2021

It’ll take travel guide books a while to catch up with all the restaurants and bars closures caused by the COVID lockdowns. To help fill that gap, here are the best places I’ve ate and drank at during my 2021 travels. I’ll update this after each trip, so keep it bookmarked. Chicago NoodleBird at Fat…

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Podcast #181 — Travel Potpourri; 2021 Traveler’s Gift Guide

No travel since the last episode, so just talking through a random potpourri of travel stuff. There’s more travel planning; this time for a couple of weeks split between London and Wales which means sorting through a new set of COVID travel requirements. We look at some stats — Uber’s latest financials and how deeply…

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Podcast #174 — How the Pros Plan Their Taproom Tourism

Looking at the Beer section of this new website design, I saw I needed more content. So I got hold of Rob Cheshire of the This Week in Craft Beer podcast to talk about our approaches to taproom tourism and to trade taproom travel stories. I also talk about mask hassles on a couple of…

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Podcast #174 Uncut — Taproom Tourism

Started trying to edit down my 90-minute Zoom call with Rob Cheshire, long-time TravelCommons listener and host of the This Week In Craft Beer podcast, and decided to post the whole chat as an “Uncut” episode. Think of it as an AMSR video for beer nerds. For those without loads of spare time, the *much*…

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Podcast #173 — What’s New in Travel Insurance; Keeping Ahead of Expiring Miles

As travel bookings beginning to rise with vaccination rates, we talk with Michael Giusti of InsuranceQuotes.com to find out what’s changed over the last year. I make the rounds through all my frequent traveler programs to reset impending expiration dates. We also talk about yet another travel data breach, a favorite beer bar is a…

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Podcast #157 — Notes from the Baltics: Riga, Latvia and Tallinn, Estonia

Selfies with Friends in Tallinn Wrapping up my time in Charlottesville, VA with some “bleisure” travel, as well as some pure leisure travel with a quick trip in the Baltics. And a listener talks about the reason for his out-and-back day trip from Washington, DC to Hong Kong. All this and more at the direct…

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