First Draft: Bob Townsend

The Southern Brew News editor and AJC beer columnist talks beer

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Veteran writer Bob Townsend moved to Atlanta in 1986, shortly after graduating from Florida State University. After working at a pair of record stores and a music-distribution center, he took his rock ‘n’ roll interests to the pages of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. But it was hardly the first time he’d put word to page, about music or otherwise. “I wrote crazy sci-fi and adventure stories when I was a kid,” Townsend remembers. “I was a staff writer for my high school paper and worked on the yearbook. At Florida State, I worked for the indie daily, the Florida Flambeau, and covered bands like the Replacements, R.E.M., Hüsker Dü, and the Minutemen. During that time, I was drinking quarts of cheap American lager in brown paper bags.”

Eventually, he’d come to love craft beer, and writing about it, too — the latter of which he started doing for the AJC in the early 2000s. Since then, he’s penned countless articles and blog posts, both for the paper and regional bi-monthly publication Southern Brew News, of which he’s served as editor since 2006. As the city’s preeminent beer scribe, he’s seen a lot of change over the past dozen or so years, but like a lot of craft beer obsessives in the Atlanta metro area, he gets most amped thinking about the future. “More,” Townsend replies, when asked what he looks forward to in Atlanta’s beer scene. “More brick-and-mortar breweries. More styles. More fine-dining restaurants that feature craft beer in a serious way. More events exploring serious food and beer. More of everything.”

Read the full interview by Austin L. Ray here.