Where the magic that is the Ale of a Time podcast happens. Picture stolen from their website as I forgot to take one while I was there.

UPDATE: I inadvertently left out the link to the Ale of a Time podcast in the last line of this post. That’s been fixed up now. So you can now all rush to listen to me. And then listen to all the other podcast episodes. Because they’re all good.

The first time I recorded a podcast, it was awful. I recorded it on my phone, via an app I installed. Aside from feeling like a massive tool holding a phone and essentially talking to myself, I was talking a mile a minute.

See, I thought gaps in a podcast were to be avoided at all costs, and so I tried to fill every space up with words. That led to me talking a lot of crap and at a speed that saw me exhaust my material in about three minutes.

And that’s when I saved the world a little pain and deleted it.

The second time I recorded a podcast it went much better, because it was with two guys who knew what they were doing. And who could provide assistance in filling in all those empty gaps. I speak of Luke and Dave from the Ale of a Time podcast. I recorded it during my recent trip to Melbourne after Luke invited me on.

I can say I was quite flattered because they tend to have proper beer people on the show – Hendo from BrewCult, Tiff from Two Row, Chris from Slowbeer, Steve from The Taphouse and GABS, Matt from Brews News and Phil from the Beer Diary podcast. So I felt like a bit of a pretender next to that sort of talent, but I still was keen to appear.

I woke up with a bit of a hangover on the morning of the recording and a small part of me thought about staying in bed. But I got up and caught the tram to the studio (yeah, an actual studio. Not a mobile phone with an app). I soon felt like a big wuss when Luke arrived because he felt worse than I did – he had an illness as well as a hangover. And he was the one who had to do most of the talking. But the collective hangovers abated with a few sips of Rodenbach, this particular podcast’s beverage of choice.

Having listened to all the other episodes my mental image of what went on was far from reality. For instance, I thought it happened in real time; so, while we hear those guitar solos from Toehider, Luke and Dave are sitting behind the mikes waiting for the riff to end. But no, they get put in later in the editing phase (ah, yes. Editing. Another thing that would have been absent from the awful “podcast on a phone” effort).

Appearing on the show was fun but a bit nerve-wracking. It reminded me why I chose print journalism over radio or TV – I have time to compose my thoughts before presenting them. To be honest, I’m not totally sure whether I’ll listen to this episode. Partially because I don’t really want to hear the sound of my own voice but also because I have a vague recollection of saying one or two dumb things and don’t want that confirmed. Or maybe those moments ended up on the editing room floor (yes, I know it’s all done on computer so the cuts don’tactually fall on the floor. It’s just an expression. I’m not a complete moron).

You, however, can listen to it here. If you do, let me know how it sounds. It might give me the courage to listen to the sound of my own voice for 45 minutes.