Oct 16, 2021
Producing and hosting a weekly local radio show likely isn’t how
most beer writers get their start—but that’s exactly where Emma
Inch’s career in beer began.
With a passion for rockabilly music, which she saw as an outlet
from the stress of her day job as a mental health crisis worker,
Emma went from hosting club nights to approaching her local radio
station with a show idea. Then a few years later—as she began
noticing a change in her local beer scene in Brighton, England—she
pitched an idea for a new show, and in late 2015 Fermentation Beer
and Brewing Radio began.
Initially a live monthly radio show with a local focus on the beer
scene in and around Brighton, Emma later decided to continue
producing the show as a podcast instead. As she puts it, with most
podcasts sought out rather than stumbled upon, as radio programs
often are, this enabled her to not only broaden her geographical
scope (from Brighton to the rest of Britain and beyond), but to
narrow her focus and take a deeper dive with the stories she was
telling.
And in 2018, Emma’s storytelling skills won her the U.K.’s highest
accolade for a beer writer: the Michael Jackson Gold Tankard for
Beer Writer of the Year. When I ask her to take us back to that
moment, her memories are a bit fuzzy. Not from alcohol, but from
the rather tough bout of sinusitis she was battling at the time.
But when I ask her to reflect on how the win has impacted her
career since, she rapturously reels off a list of the incredible
opportunities it brought her way.
We also discuss the impact of her win on the industry more broadly,
and what it means to be a queer woman taking home the top award in
a space still dominated by straight white men. And with Emma’s
recent election as Chair of the British Guild of Beer Writers, the
organization behind the awards that recognized her work, she tells
us how she’s keen to bring further focus to issues of diversity,
representation, and equity within the beer writing community.
From looking forward to her newest role, we then take a look back
at her longest-standing one. Alongside her current career as a
drinks writer, audio maker, and podcast consultant, Emma is a
part-time university lecturer in social work. We explore how that
role—then and now—has influenced her perspective on the beer world,
her approach to her work, and the stories she chooses to tell.