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I probably sit with our blog,\xa0Beer is Offal, more than anything I interact with on Good Beer Hunting. Not only is it something we produce totally in house\u2014all the artwork comes through us and it\u2019s written by a member of the GBH team, Mark Spence\u2014but it\u2019s also the only series we\u2019ve captured entirely on audio. Mark has read every single one of his blog entries on our Out Loud series, where we record our favorite stories for our audience, and there\u2019s a reason for that\u2014Beer is Offal is special.

Beer is Offal is a food blog. That\u2019s a simple way to put it. But that doesn\u2019t capture all of it. It\u2019s full of feelings, rants, brutal honesty, sometimes curveballs, and always this feeling of authenticity that I think is really interesting in the context of food writing. As Mark and I discuss in this episode, Beer is Offal is deeply personal\u2014you get to know a lot about him pretty quickly\u2014but it differs from most food writing in that it\u2019s not a series of recipes, it\u2019s not about someone trying to learn a new cuisine or venturing into traditions and styles of cooking that aren\u2019t part of their background. It stays so close to the chest, and in that way, the lessons and ideas Mark talks about become wonderfully universal and relatable. It\u2019s sort of remarkable how he makes that happen.

I sat down with Mark and talked about what it means to write about things happening to you right now\u2014in real time. Beer is Offal isn\u2019t just a collection of lessons learned, but is very much about things going on in Mark\u2019s life, and his attempts to slowly acknowledge and work through them. Mark is admittedly not a very \u201cemotional\u201d person\u2014as he says himself, he\u2019s much more likely to be the guy in the corner of the room sticking close to his friends. So what does it take for someone like him to put all his stuff out there? How does he transform into, as he calls it, \u201ca food and feelings writer?\u201d Let\u2019s find out.

Here\u2019s Mark Spence. Listen in.