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motivational story of a teacher turning his home brewing hobby into a side business

Listen up, cub reporters. Lesson 1: Never miss an opportunity to catch a good story. I was doing important hop research at my local craft beer emporium, aka my bar.

"This red IPA is great. What is this again?" I asked the bartender.

"That's Line 51. From Oakland. The owner, P.T., does it part time. He has a day job." What's he do? I asked. "He's a schoolteacher."

Bingo! Secret teachers, you can't hide from this NPR Ed sleuth, no sir.

For P.T. Lovern, brewing started as a college hobby and party necessity. Later, it turned into a weekend passion that rapidly veered toward obsession. He has a giant, 31-gallon steel vat for brewing mashes of malted barley, hops and water in his basement. The sweet hop aroma of an India Pale Ale in the making would drift through his block in Oakland, Calif.

"I had been entering my beers in competitions, and they were scoring well," Lovern says.

When you brew 60 gallons of beer in your basement on a weekend and have a four-tap kegerator in your man cave, you're no longer just a home-brewer. You have entered obsession land.

"All my friends were like, 'You should take the next step, you should quit your job, open a brewery!' " Lovern says. "Your friends are gonna tell you, 'Your beer is great,' no matter what, because they just want to drink for free. But it's another thing for people in the market to actually buy it and drink it."

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http://www.npr.org/b.....down-there