Here is (I hope) the only post about myself. Male, 55. Craft beer nerd. General-purpose nerd, even. Gamer. Cyclist. Wannabe vandweller.
A “zythophile” is defined as “someone who loves beer and all things beer-related,” and I like to think that is a fair assessment. I went down this particular rabbithole in ernest in 2013; but I can pinpoint nearly to the day when I first really discovered what “craft beer” was.
This was the summer of 2005; I was in Richmond, Virginia with my father, attending what had to be close to the sixtieth annual reunion of his WWII army division association. Earlier in the year, I’d gone with him, his best pal from that era, and many other veterans and their families to eastern France, to the town his division had liberated from the Germans in March 1945 – the sixtieth anniversary. One of the other veteran’s sons and I had become friends, and so that fellow and his father were at the reunion as well; not hard for them as they all lived not far away, elsewhere in Virginia.
One evening, my friend (Neill) took me out to a nearby establishment, the Capital Ale House. (If you get the chance to visit this spot, go! Amazing taplist.) At this point, I had been drinking Fat Tire on the regular for some time, but pretty much without variation. I pore over the unfeasably large taplist; it must have been fourteen or sixteen legal-sized pages, printed front and back. And at one point, I spy something that looks interesting, sure I’ll try that – Duchesse de Bourgogne, by (as I would later learn) Brouwerij Verhaeghe.
I take my first sip of that and… wow. What is this? This is amazing.
But, that particular hook didn’t quite catch in my metaphorical cheek, and I continued on with my Fat Tire-drinking ways for a few years, until the craft brewery boom in the early 2010s in Colorado really started to take shape. My small town outside of Boulder, in short order, became home to three, then four breweries; later on, a handful more would open in the area. And around this time, I also invested a chunk of change in a small brewery in a nearby town.
In the years that followed, I’ve hauled my carcass (and sometimes other people’s as well) to around four hundred breweries across the country. I’ve met countless people; beer-slingers, brewers, owners, patrons, you name it. The number of unpleasant people in that collection, I expect I could count on one hand. I’ve helped with packaging days at six local breweries.
One of the aspects of the craft beer industry I love is how, for the most part, everyone is a booster for everyone else. Craft beer is around 8% of the total market – there’s room for everyone to grow, and most folks realize it makes sense to not compete with each other aggressively; that all ships may rise.
Craft beer is going to be the primary focus of this blog. The other is going to be “Van Life”.
There is a whole subculture out in the world, a subculture most folks are probably unaware of; nomads, wanderers rolling around the roads here and there, finding shady spots to park out off the beaten track, living their lives quietly, unencumbered by many of the travails of modern society. “Vandwellers”, they’re often called. The term covers a fairly wide spectrum; from the retired couple in their RV, to a software developer or gamer in their Ford Transit, to the outdoor enthusiast or musician tooling around in a kitted-out old Ford Econoline. There’s no one definition that anywhere near properly describes this crowd as a whole, or even in part.
Vandwellers will sometimes gather in caravans, travel around and camp out together for a week or so, and then go their separate ways. There are regular gatherings in various parts of the country, usually dependent on the season. Many of the vanlifers out there – the people who are out in the world three hundred and sixty five days a year – have regular, let’s say “migratory patterns” and will wind up in the same areas for the winter, where they find friends from years past once again.
I’ve been fascinated with this culture for a few years now, in a very casual sense. About a year or so ago, however, I started rolling an idea around in my brain cavity; what if I were to buy a van, strip it out and build it up, a rolling bedroom, living room, kitchen, and yes, bathroom on wheels; and just… hit the road? And use that opportunity to attempt (but never actually pull it off, I’m sure) to visit every craft brewery in the nation? Oh, that’ll never happen, you’ll never pull that off, I would tell myself.
A few months ago, I happened upon a post on one of my regular techy/nerd blogs, BoingBoing; it was a video of what is called a “van tour”, where some vanlifey YouTuber has met up with a vandweller, and shot a video tour of their van, with the owner narrating. In this case, it was an Australian woman in her sixties; she’s a very creative type, an artist, a photographer – a combination very well suited to van life. And her van was mindblowingly beautiful; a stained-wood interior, all sorts of homey little touches, and with one feature I’ve yet to see elsewhere – inside the sliding passenger-side door was another door, much like you would imagine to get into Bag End in the Shire, except not circular.
I found that this woman had a blog, with many posts on her own life in a van, her travels, her travails, and I just started reading from the start. The path she took drew me in. And it made me rethink my own situation – if she can do this, and obviously if many others could do this, why can’t I? What’s really stopping me?
So, down yet another rabbithole I go – this one is the YouTube van build hole. There’s many folks who have designed and built out their own vans out there, and a good chunk of them have documented the process from start (“we bought a van!”) to, sometimes, the end (“we sold our van/we’re moving into a tiny cabin in the woods!” is a common theme). And some haven’t come to an end; they’re still out there.
Granted, there’s a lot of shiny influencer types out there – “Hi! we’re Male and Female, and this is our dog, Dog, and we’re traveling the world in our custom built van, that we call ‘Van!'” They do yoga, they’re vegan, he’s got a man-bun, she wears snug articles of clothing, you get the idea. But there’s many more folks who are just… regular folks. Young couples, older couples, single folks, retirees, what have you.
So… that’s my plan, my desire. Find a good used van, not too old, not too worn. Gut it, build it out to my liking. Move all my worldly possessions into a storage unit near where I live, rent out my townhouse for the duration (I want to have somewhere to return to eventually, and I may as well build equity in my home too), and hit the road. Wander around the country; go places I’ve never been, see things I’ve never seen. Bike roads and trails here and there. And, here’s the connection to all that text above – visit craft breweries. And not just breweries; I’d like to go to all the other places that craft breweries need to even exist. Malting operations. Hop farms. Brewhouse tank manufacturers.
This is my plan, but it’s not going to happen right away. For one, thanks to COVID-19, the used car market right now is insane. Finding a good candidate vehicle for a reasonable price is nigh impossible. And beyond that, I have an older pet, a sweet furball of a cat who I know would struggle mightily with life on the road, so I have zero intention of putting her through that. So, my working plan is to wait until my old girl shuffles off this mortal coil before I pack it all up and roll out.
In the meantime, I have lots of time to research all aspects of building out vans and vandwelling. “What’s there to it”, you may ask. “It’s just living in a van.” You would be mistaken. Yes, many folks just slap a cot made of 2x4s, a propane stove, and a jerrycan of water into an old late-80s domestic van and that works for them; but I don’t want to live that way, and I don’t have to. The sort of vehicle I’m looking at building out is fairly typical for a particular segment of vandwellers; a full electric system, with solar panels, batteries, plugs and sockets, interior lights. A water system with a sink and shower. A heating system independent of the vehicle’s engine. All of this stuffed into a box the size of a cargo van. And it’s doable! It just takes creativity, research, lots of calculations and measuring.
I’ve watched quite a few van build series. Most folks go into it reasonably wisely; everyone makes a mistake here or there. Some folks are beyond meticulous; others I watch now with a more educated eye and I cringe at the mistakes they’re making at the time.
Beyond the build aspect, there’s also a lot to just “living on the road”. There’s insurance to worry about. Where do you pull off and sleep at night? There’s many places that are unwelcoming, many that are. There’s residency; do you stay with your old state? Where do you get your mail? Do you have the necessary gear in your vehicle to cover as many possible situations as you may get into? All of this is information I’ve been reading about of late. It’s not as simple as many people think.
Yeah yeah, I’m nearly done.
So until that fateful day that I’ve got a van ready to go, I turn over the keys to my home to someone else, and I turn the key in my new home’s ignition, throw it into gear, and start rolling… well, you’ll get what I can give you. Brewery visits, beer reviews. Writeups on interesting aspects of van building. That sort of thing. My wandering will be limited, but not eliminated.
I hope you find it interesting, and by all means, let me know what you think. Input is always welcomed.