A professor and a grade school teacher taste, review, and grade America‘s best coffee roasters, breweries, and more

As a professor and as a middle school teacher, we’re no strangers to dolling out “A” through “F” letter grades. We’re also no strangers to enjoying a fantastic cup of coffee to start our workday, and then a refreshing beer to unwind after a long day of teaching.

Despite our sometimes endless piles of papers, we can’t seem to escape assigning grades wherever we are. And boy, do we like to travel. As such, what better way to share our best coffee roaster and craft brewery experiences than through our weekly podcast?

We feature a new location every week -- some local, others discovered while on trips. Our listeners began as friends and family but are quickly growing as we meet new fans through social media.

The weekly process is pretty simple: find a new coffee roaster or craft brewery, taste, and then share our letter grade based on our four rubric categories:
1) Atmosphere/ambiance
2) Service
3) Coffee/Beer
4) Food

Add them all up, and voila! A final grade and a new episode review.
 

A once in a lifetime road trip across the country? Hours in the car everyday to discuss (and debate) our most recent coffee roaster and craft brewery experience? Sounds like an “A” grade recipe for a new podcast. And so “A Grade” was born!

We quickly realized that some of the best places to get “A” grade coffee and beer were right from the source: roasters and breweries. By the time we returned home from our trip, we already had our podcast gear on its way so we could share our continued experiences.

Since then, we’ve been exploring new spots, both on trips as well as at home. Our main goal is to feature the best of coffee roaster and craft breweries to help the "A" grade businesses out there flourish!
 

We publish new episodes of “A Grade” every Monday morning at 7am EST. We like posting early in the week to give listeners a chance to download and then listen at their leisure.

Ideally we would like to do a coffee roaster and brewery episode every week, but the time it takes to find, visit, record, edit, publish, and promote even just one. The whole process is a blast, but it's also pretty time intensive with our regular teaching duties.

We host our podcast through Podbean and are always looking for new ways to promote.
 

We currently only accept donations via our Patreon account (patreon.com/agradepodcast). We offer bonus content for subscribers for as low as about one dollar an episode, including behind the scenes photos, videos, and a full “report card” containing all our podcast grades.
It’s been wonderful to explore more coffee roasters and breweries -- especially the connections we’ve made via the businesses we’ve graded. Many have been greatly supportive, even reaching out to share their thoughts, support, and planned developments after listening to our episodes!
 

We use a simple mixer and a pair of dynamic mics to record each episode. We record directly into Audacity, do some relatively simple audio editing, and voila! New episode posted!

For preparation, well, we either google local roasters or breweries, and then we’re off! We try to record the same day as our experience is fresh in our minds.
 

We post new episodes on our personal social media accounts. But perhaps our largest pool for engaging new fans is through our Instagram @a_grade_podcast.

You can find our episodes pretty much wherever you listen to podcasts: Spotify, iTunes, Apple Podcasts, and more!
 

If you want to be a podcaster: then be one. Of course, this is much easier said than done. But the biggest obstacle we’ve heard from others is simply starting -- and then continuing to record actual episodes.

It helps immensely to have a strong core premise. You should definitely listen to podcasts both similar and different to what you’re thinking about doing for your own one.

Keep in mind that it’s probably going to take some time to get your “vibe” down. You may even want to try some practice recordings before publishing an episode. Don’t be afraid to ask others or even just google “podcasting advice”. There’s no textbook on it that we know about, so it’s okay to be unsure and to keep learning!
 

Check us out on Instagram @a_grade_podcast for further adventures and content -- as well as if you want to chat with us about any of our episodes! We encourage listeners to reach out -- especially if they have recommendations of their own, or thoughts about the places we’ve visited!

And if you want even more bonus content (like behind the scenes pictures/videos, full scorecards, etc.) we have our Patreon page at patreon.com/agradepodcast to help support our work!
Instagram: @a_grade_podcast

Patreon: patreon.com/agradepodcast