Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Gabriel / Stephen Aprea / Humes. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Gabriel / Stephen, thanks for joining us today. Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?

As actors bouncing around from job to job, we wanted to make something that was not only ours where we could continue to be creative, but also fun and different. We both came up with an idea: what if we make a podcast about craft beer? We could drink the beers on the mics and be our fun selves, while also educating our listeners on the specific brews and flavors. And then, Covid hit. The podcast quickly changed from something that was just fun to do when we had free time, to a creative project to focus all of our time and attention to, now that we had nothing else to do! It gave us an outlet to experiment with, while giving us a chance to connect with people when we were not allowed in the same room. People started listening, breweries started following, and next thing we knew, we had over 100 episodes recorded all with different craft beers, sometimes even ciders or liquor, to toast to a special holiday including St. Patrick’s Day or Cinco de Mayo!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

First and foremost, we’re both actors! Both hailing from Hamden, CT, we met in high school and the theatre brought us together. We quickly became friends and even started doing community theatre together in the Summers, and eventually started working together with professional theatre companies, often performing Shakespeare. After college, (Stephen attended Ithaca College, Gabe attended UCONN) we lived together in NYC and continued to work hard to achieve our acting dreams. Both of us not only enjoyed drinking craft beer, but we both had an appreciation for it; how it was made, the ingredients used, and how some beers could be very high in alcohol percentage and get us feeling a little loose after just a few sips! Not a lot of our friends had the same eye for this stuff as we did, so it brought us even closer together and we were always the team that people went to when someone needed a recommendation! It wasn’t until January of 2020, (horrible timing on our part!) that we started talking about making the podcast.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

We started listening to other podcasts who were either in the same field, or close to it. We noticed that there were a lot of shows where the hosts would do one of two things. They would either talk too much about the beer, the facts, the ingredients and make it very stale and often times boring for the listener, or they would drink too much, start slurring words and seemed to be a bit of a mess for the people listening. We decided, why not bring these two ideas together to make it not only informative, but also fun! While we do give facts about the beer and brewery we feature, we are always ourselves and are not afraid of drinking the heavy stuff and “seeing what happens.” Our first Thanksgiving episode, we drank 5 different variations of ‘Black Is Beautiful,’ an imperial stout packed with flavor and ranging in all levels of alcohol percentage. Let’s just say, we were NOT sober!

We have also made a strong effort to be very inclusive to all kinds of beer, or non-beer drinkers alike. This show is for everyone, whether you like the stuff we do, or your go-to beer is Bud Light. There is a seat at our table for EVERYONE. Every month, we feature a Black-owned brewery. We noticed out of the thousands of breweries in the country, only about 60 are Black-owned. We need more diversity in this field and we do everything we can to feature them and showcase their offerings. We do whatever we can to visit these places as well, getting their awesome brews fresh from the tap!

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

The technical elements of having a podcast were tough to grasp at first. When we first started, we thought it was as easy as plugging a microphone into our computers, hitting the record button and just going for it! Little did we know, it’s not that simple. Our very first episode we recorded was lost. Just when we wanted to get off the ground, we had to begin again. We needed to buy recording equipment to make the sound clear. This included mixers, a good microphone and a quiet room. (Try finding a quiet space in NYC, not an easy task!) There was also uploading the episodes and editing them to make it sound clear and concise. We cycled through a few computer programs until we finally got into a rhythm and understood how to edit and upload each episode to be broadcasted wherever podcasts are listened to. Then we decided to challenge ourselves even more when we became a video product as well! Having access to Youtube, we show ourselves drinking the brews in real time and give our fans a chance to actually see us and the drinks. In the few times we are able to be in the same room to record, we have to set up cameras as well as the mics, and make sure we not only get good audio, but video as well. We do it all! It’s exhausting, but so rewarding.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehopodcast/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheHOPodcast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheHOPodcast
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thehopcraftbeerpodcast5364
• Other: Send us an email! : [email protected] Need to shed some beer weight? Order off https://fnxfit.com/ and use our promo code: HOPOD15 iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hop-a-craft-beer-podcast/id1491526551 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4oNnDGZXILoXf3JeAZ5D3z?si=abmFcC4eRpKXvJ3RknY-9Q