This week on Beer is a Conversation, Matt Kirkegaard catches up with Richard Watkins, co-founder and head brewer at Canberra’s BentSpoke Brewing.

Richard can fairly be described as a craft beer pioneer, having brewed at the the famed Wig & Pen brewery for 17 years before founding BentSpoke in 2013.

Regular listeners will recall we had originally planned to speak with Richard during our live Hottest 100 Countdown in January. When we were scheduled to chat, BentSpoke’s flagship beer Crankshaft had not yet appeared in the count and he didn’t want to miss the potential announcement.

Today, with the passage of a couple of months, we talk about the Hottest 100 and what having three top 30 beers means to a brewery such as his. We discuss beer freshness, his struggles with the word craft, the importance of the meaning of the word independence and much more. It’s a wide ranging conversation and Richard is well known for his deliberative approach and also his willingness to speak his mind, all of which make for a fascinating discussion.

Enjoy the conversation.

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