John Marioni

Beer geek, beer nerd, beer tweeker, beer nut, beer dweeb, beer dude, beer bubba, beer goon, beer sympathizer, beer dork, beer brother, card carrying beer communist, beer freak. Call me what you will. I have heard them all from friends, family, and co-workers over the past 22 years. I am a beer fanatic. Beer has been a passion of mine for many years which has presented me with numerous unique experiences and had profound influence on my life to date. The highlights of my "beer career" so far include: working in a brewery in Germany, drinking beer one on one with Michael Jackson, home brewing for 18 years, getting a major article in Brew Your Own magazine - and the cover, taking part in Asahi's Dry Beer marketing taste test in Japan, and touring over 150 breweries around the world.

Stats:

• T-shirt size: large
• Favorite hometown brewpub: McMenamins in Mill Creek, WA
• Beer drinking philosophy: pour it straight into a glass, inhale it deeply first, then gulp it - don't sip, drink it with friends
• Home brewing philosophy: Experiment wildly; worry minimally, use lots of hops.
• Favorite beer styles: IPA, Oatmeal Stout, German Pils
• Favorite aspect of home brewing: the smell, the anticipation of greatness
• Average per diem beer consumption: 25.37 ounces (I keep track of every ounce in a spreadsheet)
• Average per annum home brew production: 30 gallons
• Average per annum home grown hop yield: 2 pounds

1973:

• Consumed my first full beer at the age of 10. Did not really like it...but did not hate it! Dad gave it to me.

1978:

• Started drinking beer in earnest (high school keg parties).

1980:

• Started appreciating beer. Even though I was under the legal drinking age (Uh, like 16), I had my parent's consent since both are passionate wine connoisseurs (maintaining a home cellar of roughly 1000 bottles).

1981:

• Conducted regular blind beer tastings with my friends at my home (my bedroom) with my parents consent. We actually had an underground gang called "The Fiends" dedicated to drinking imported beer (there were no micro brews at that time). Thanks to the Liquor Barn chain of stores in California, we had access to our favorites: Dinkle Acker Bock, Tooth Sheaf Stout, San Miguel Dark, Ritter Brau Bock, Noche Buena, Pilsner Urquel, Paulaner, and Samuel Smith. We would actually sample them blind and compare notes. At the end of the session we would pour all left over drops from every bottle into a single glass and draw straws to see who "got" to drink the concoction.

1982:

• Wrote a term paper and gave an oral presentation on the history of beer which earned me an "A" in my High School (senior year) English class.
• Drove with a friend that summer from San Francisco, California to Ensenada, Mexico to (legally) drink beer.
• Founding member of the UC Davis Pound Club - a club dedicated to drinking large quantities of beer per sitting.

1983:

• Started studying the German language at UC Davis in order to read the labels on my favorite German beers (yes, this is true) and to prepare for my inevitable travel to Germany - to drink beer.
• Import beer bottle collection hits 200 - all on display on shelving in my bedroom.

1984:

• Started home brewing (in my mom's kitchen) and tested the mother/son bond when I poured boiling wort into an empty glass carboy which promptly broke and sent a gallons of dark sticky wort (stout) gushing across her pristine kitchen.

1985:

• Through a friend of my German professor, I ended up with a 5 month gig in Germany at the Bauhofer Brauerei - a small (40 person), family owned brewery in the Black Forrest. I performed nearly every function including scrubbing vats, lager tanks, equipment, floors, etc., skimming the foam off the green beer, transferring the beer through the filters and into the lager tanks, collecting, transferring, and pitching the yeast from one vat to the next, hand filling kegs, loading the trucks for daily delivery, making deliveries within a 50km radius to restaurants, cafes, hotels, factories, etc. I received 2 cases of my choice (Pils, Export, or Maibock) per month to take home as part of my pay.
• Gave copies of my home brewing books to the braumeisters as gifts, which were received with a good chuckle.
• Backpacked through Europe - toured Heineken brewery in Amsterdam, and various small ones in Germany.

1986:

• Graduated with a degree in International Business
• Interviewed with Paul Shipman, the president of Red Hook Brewery in Seattle and turned down a minimum wage labor job - (regret to this date)
• Interviewed with Bert Grant in Yakima (Grant's Brewery) but thought twice about living in Yakima, WA - no regrets.
• Ran into Michael Jackson (the beer guy, not the pop star) while interviewing at Merchant Du Vin in Seattle. While I did not get the job, I did get invited on the spot to a private beer tasting one on one with Michael and got a free autographed copy of his book. The guy quite simply has the hands down most enviable job in the world.
• Home brewing every Thursday, winning local competitions (in Santa Cruz, CA )
• •  Drove with a friend that summer from San Francisco, California to Vancouver, Canada touring every brewery big and small in our path including: Anchor, Budweiser, Sierra Nevada, Weinhards, Olympia, Rainier, Pyramid, Redhook, Grants, Molson, Mendecino. Attended the world Expo in Vancouver, B.C. - spent most of time at the beer garden.

1987:

• Moved to Japan where there are only 4 beers, all lagers, and home brewing is illegal! (working as the only male at an airline stewardess training school helped make up for it!)
• Toured the Suntory brewery in Kitakyushu

1988

• Took part in Asahi's "Super Dry" test marketing taste test campaign in Kitakyushu, Japan, the success of which culminated in the colossal "Dry" beer boom around the world and which allowed Asahi to take a significant chunk of market share away from king Kirin.

1989:

• Moved to Germany, beer mecca, where there are plentiful pilsners, bocks, alts, kolsch, and real hefe weizens. No need to brew your own when the beer is so good, so plentiful, and so very cheap. Lived in Bonn, traveled many times to Berlin, Munich, Dortmund, Dusseldorf, Koln to sample the styles.

1990:

• Married in Germany - no champagne at that reception!
• Honeymooned 4 months through Europe including East Europe on a quest for excellent pilsner - found it.
• Moved to Hawaii for graduate school - wrote marketing term paper on Japan's "dry" beer craze - got an A.

1991

• Graduated valedictorian with a Masters in International Business (nothing to do with beer of course - though writing papers about beer helped achieve the end result) - back to Japan for an internship.
• Toured a Kirin facility in Tokyo .

1992:

• Back in Seattle and home brewing big time
• Working for high tech software company with customers including Whitbread, Molson, Coors, South African Brewery - who are using the software to improve quality and consistency of yeast strains, quality of grain, and quality control on bottle cap manufacturing and beer keg manufacturing.

1994:

• Traveling on business to Japan, Korea, China, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, England - sampling beer
• Conducted a blind beer tasting where we gathered roughly 20 different beers. The problem was that the beers included lagers, ales, stouts, light beer, non alcoholic beer, etc. and we were comparing one to the next - not real practical or fair - but fun. The interesting result was that Red Seal Ale (North Coast Brewing) scored the highest, Samuel Smith Pale Ale got second, Fosters Lager got dead last, the non alcoholic beer got third to last (it beat Fosters and Michelob). Others in the running: Heineken, Coors, Guinness, various micro brews

1995:

• Still home brewing big time, winning ribbons at local competitions, state fairs.
• Started growing hops in the backyard (Cascades) and started culturing my own yeast.

1996:

• Worked the Alaskan Brewery booth at the Herb Farm Father's Day Microbrewery Festival (50+ Microbreweries - have attended every year). Got kicked out for serving beer and drinking beer after the official closing.

1997:

• Got into Brew Your Own magazine with my home made bottle tree.
• Got mention in Brew Your Own magazine for humorous beer label
• Converted part of the garage into a brewery - took 10 months and only about $1000. My kids refer to it as "Beer Land". It has 20 gallon brew capacity, ventilation, custom brew sink, kegerator, dedicated counter, shelf, cabinet space, and a hand made stained glass overhead lamp shade with the words "More Beer" on it.
• Harvested 2 pounds of Cascade hops this year.

1998:

• Got on the cover of Brew Your Own magazine! September issue: a picture of me holding a handful of my homegrown hops in one hand and a glass of home brew in the other while standing before my converted beer keg brew kettle. It was a nice 15 minutes of fame which did get me some unsolicited invites to home brew parties.
• Wrote feature article in same issue on Garage to Brewery conversion.
• Went to Paris for two weeks of which 3 days were dedicated to a side trip to Belgium for the specific and sole purpose of sampling as many Belgian wit biers, krieks, dubbles, tripples as I could pack in - which was 17.
• Visited the Confederation of Belgian Breweries as well as the national beer museum. Did some shopping at the "Temple of Beer".

1999:

• Took a second place at the Red Hook Brewery sponsored Cascadia Cup Home Brew Competition for my Apricot Wheat Beer.
• Went to England on business (twice) which included several side trip brewery tours (including Samuel Smiths, John Smith's, and Larkins Breweries), hop kiln tours in Kent, and lots of pub crawling: Newcastle, York, Kent, Tadcaster, Sevenoaks, and London .
• Entered a total of 56 individual 50 word or less essays in the Guinness "Win a Pub" contest - did not win.

2000:

• Brewed 20 gallons of home brew in the month of January alone!
• Started traveling domestically with a new company - about 30% - seeking out every brew pub I can manage in each new town I visit. The count is 120 US brewpubs in 25 states, and 16 breweries in 6 other countries.

2001:

• Still traveling and visiting brew pubs (12 more) around the USA . Made first attempt at wine - a big Italian red - Luna Rossa, and also a Chardonnay. Drank home brewed IPA while making them.

2002:

• Visited 16 new breweries in the USA and one in Japan.
• Visited Sapporo Brewery headquarters in Japan and toured the beer museum there.
• Met a fellow home brewer in Japan (where it is illegal) and sampled his pilsner - pretty sour and weak but a good guy, owns his own bar, and gave me lots of Japanese beer paraphernalia.
• Attended St. Edward's Park Annual Father's Day Brew Fest - tasted 12 new Northwest beers.
• Attended 3 rd Annual Cask Beer Festival in Seattle - Killer!

2003:

• Joined the Cascade Brewers Guild in Seattle
• Visited the country's only hop museum in Yakima , WA
• Completed an 11 week Beer Judge Certification Program
• Poured beer at the Hop on Equinox Beer Festival in Seattle
• Attended the Summer Brew Fest in Seattle
• Visited 10 new breweries

Overall, I am biased by and partial to the spicy, flavorful, and hoppy brews found all up and down the West coast. While I have my favorites, I do understand and appreciate each beer style, and I certainly believe that all beer has a time and place. I definitely enjoy every drop of every beer along the way.

I suggest that the above resume more than warrants consideration for "Beer Drinker Of The Year". I realize that I am not the only fanatic to be found; that there are others out there with a similar bond to the brew. What may differentiate me from the others is that to me beer is much more than an awesome beverage to pour into ones body. It is a lifestyle, a guiding force in my life, and a preoccupation which defines my very being. December 28, 2003