New Podcast Features Local Breweries

A local entrepreneur is showcasing the Four Corners craft beer scene with a new podcast series. You're watching the Local News Network, brought to you by Kroegers Ace Hardware and Sky Ute Casino. I'm Connor Shreve. RadCraft owner, Emily Hutto, is unveiling the Industry Relief podcast, which chronicles the Zoom calls she orchestrated with craft beverage makers during the pandemic.

It's called RadCraft Industry Relief because we wanted to provide some relief and some space for people to discuss and converse and also to laugh. We had a standup comedian come on one time and we had a live music performance from the gentleman who actually ended up performing our podcast theme song years later.

The six-episode podcast series totals just shy of two and a half hours. It includes guests like craft beer maven, Julia Herz, to Ska Brewing Marketing Director, Kristin Muraro, and Dolores River Brewing Company owner, Mark Youngquist. Themes of those original pandemic calls cover topics like marketing, mental health, and HR. Hutto says the virtual get togethers helped her feel connected.

In order to make the podcast, I interviewed a lot of the folks who showed up as regulars on those RadCraft Industry Relief calls, and it's been the reconnection with them and asking, "what are you doing three years later?" that has also helped me stay abreast of what's going on in the community as best I can. It's changing really fast.

In turning the calls into a podcast, Hutto says she wanted to do justice to the context.

I wanted to tell a story about what was going on in the industry at large and what it meant and why that was important, instead of to just ask people, "well, how is your life a little different "three years later?" So to kind of dig into the depths of the content of the story that I wanted to tell, it took a lot of time and energy to stay connected with people and have hard and real conversations.

And though the podcast isn't a specifically local podcast, it does feature many Four Corners institutions. That's a function of the place our breweries occupy in the national beer zeitgeist. Hutto says it's hard to ignore our region's craft beer scene.

I'll also add the rural component to the beer scene down here. You have to work harder and travel longer to get great beer, and so there's a connectivity to the people who make it, like we're all in the same club. I don't make it beyond poorly in my garage sometimes, but we're all in this club of making and being part of the beer scene.

Some of the podcast episodes dig into the art and music hub that is the Four Corners largest brewing company, Ska. They also highlight Dolores River Brewery's evolution and its founder, Mark Youngquist.

Mark, in the sixth episode of RadCraft Industry Relief, explains his long history in Dolores, which is 22 years long now, and he also has a longer history in the craft beer scene in Colorado. He was a bit of a Colorado beer celebrity before he moved down to Dolores and started his own thing in what was then a much sleepier town.

Find the Industry Relief Podcast on the RadCraft website. Learn more about this story and others at durangolocal.news. Thanks for watching this edition of the Local News Network. I'm Connor Shreve.