Born and raised in the craft beer cradle of Northern California, Joel Bittle is a freelance writer in St. Louis. Over the years Joel has written about sports, green building, stay-at-home dadding, as well as fiction and poetry.

The omnipresence of Budweiser in St. Louis led Joel in the early 2000s to seek out craftier alternatives, and the community he found inspired him to tell the stories of the renegades who dared to brew in the shadow of Anheuser-Busch.