CL-030 Stan Hieronymus has a lot of bottle openers to tell you about

Welcome to the Good Beer Hunting Collective podcast, the show where members of our team interview each other to get a behind-the-scenes look at some of our favorite articles. I’m Bryan Roth, and I’m the Sightlines editor for Good Beer Hunting. 

Whether you’re a beer drinker or an industry pro, chances are you may have heard someone talking about “innovation” in beer. Usually, that means a brewery is releasing a new beer, sometimes a new style it hasn’t made before, or using a novel technique, or ingredient. It’s a word that gets thrown around a lot for a product that’s existed for, well, thousands of years. That’s not to take away from all the incredible changes, old and new, that take place in beer—but in today’s Collective podcast, we’re talking about literal invention.

In his latest piece for Good Beer Hunting, Stan Hieronymus shares the story, “There’s a Beer Patent for That — A Brief History of Curious Beer Ideas.” It’s his second story for Good Beer Hunting’s Mother of Invention series, which is told in collaboration with Guinness. In his story on patents, Stan looks at the history of beer, and the variety of people who have applied to get their creations protected through a longstanding government process. It's a way to ensure that a creator’s ideas and intellectual property stay with them.

Stan pored over a treasure trove of beer patents to find the examples he shares in his story. Many were tracked down thanks to fellow writer Jay Brooks, who maintains a running collection of beer-related patents on his blog. Along with discussions with GBH editorial director Austin L. Ray (which also led to a previous piece on hop oils), it was Jay’s digital cache that set Stan on his way in telling this story.

This is the Good Beer Hunting Collective podcast. Listen in.