Welcome to Episode 1! Yes, technically this is the second podcast, however the first one was more of a beta test, or something. The audio quality on this episode is much clearer than before, and we planned out a little bit more of an agenda to discuss.

This episode focuses on Untappd, bottle shares, and the “ticking” culture that has exploded in the craft beer community. We’ll probably offend/upset some of you with some of our thoughts (by “we,” I mostly mean “me”), but do keep in mind that our intent wasn’t to bash Untappd or anyone who uses it. We instead just wanted to bring to light how easy it is to forget the reason why any of us drinks beer: to enjoy drinking beer and having fun with friends.

This episode features the beer Monk’s Indiscretion from Sound Brewery in Poulsbo Washington. Read my previous interview with co-founder Mark Hood here.

Please send any and all feedback to us @hookedonhops on twitter, on Facebook.com/hookedonhops, or feel free to email me or Armando at luis@hookedonhops.com or armando@hookedonhops.com. We’d love to continue recording these and if we can make it more enjoyable or interesting, then we’d love to know how.

I started using Untappd about 5 months ago and last night I reached the milestone of having had 100 different beers. I looked through the list and saw that I have had beers from 42 different breweries from 6 different countries.
The 100th was not as eventful as I was originally planning on it being, but I am glad that it was from a Las Vegas brewery that I had not tried before, Joseph James. I tried their Hop Box IPA, it was super hoppy but not at all bitter, much more of a hop aroma. I had seen it around town before and was very excited to give it a try. I was first introduced to this brewery when I tried their root beer at Ho Foods (Whole Foods). Just from that root beer alone, I could tell that this brewery knows what they are doing. I look forward to trying more beers from this brewery.

People travel all over world to come to Vegas. The city tries hard to make these visitors feel welcome by having a little bit of their home somewhere in town. There are “mini-cities” amongst the hotels, there’s a buffet for nearly every ethnicity of food, and various attractions featuring animals from all around the world.
But what about beer? I’ve found a few shops and bars in town with large selections of beers so I presumed that this town had the beer scene covered. However, as I started following different out of state breweries on Twitter, as I regularly read other beer sites and as I’ve gone to bars in other states, I’m hearing of so many breweries that I have never heard of before. After a while I begin to wonder why it is I hear so much about a particular brewery, but have never seen it on tap or even for sale anywhere.
Recently, the Brewers Association released a list of the top 50 breweries of 2010 (based on volume of beer sold). Of this list of 50, only ~20 of the highest selling breweries distribute in Nevada. Looking through my Untappd profile, the only beers I’ve had that were not of the 20ish breweries that I’m referring to were either:
A: purchased while I was in another state
B: shipped to me from another state
C: from one of Las Vegas’ local breweries or
D: not an American brewery.
That being said, Las Vegas is not a destination for craft beer. The beer that is distributed here, is definitely very good. My 3 top breweries distribute here (Stone, Dogfish Head and New Belgium), but there is still so much more that this city is missing out on.