Meet Jonathan Hatcher | Just Jon, like who’s that? Just Jon””

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jonathan Hatcher and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jonathan, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I just wanted a reason to work with my friends. Now we all work different shifts and never see each other, so I did not really think that one through. Making beer has been a group effort from the start. Ten years ago we would have just been excited to have a brew space with a floor drain, or some insulated walls and a heater, maybe a working sink instead of a hose, fewer squirrels in the ceiling as well as holes in the roof, etc. Used to, we would sell our bodies out to science just to get hop money. Now we sell our bodies out to the local cougar brigade. I’m told our online following is mainly women in their 40s and 50s so I think it is working.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I had a promising outlook on life as a premed student on full academic scholarship when I left home. That was the last time my life was simple. Then I made a still in my dorm, allegedly. Also, it turns out you don’t have to be 21 to buy beer ingredients. I may not have had stellar lab scores, but I picked up many a useful technique. Turns out I liked philosophy better than chemistry and wound up with a biology and philosophy major. Also turns out, if you get a major in philosophy you immediately have a justification for being poor and purposeless. So I went to Alaska to be poor, purposeless, and houseless for a stent with Americorp. I made $880/month to live in the bush and educate at risk native Alaskan youth. I couldn’t start some normal job after that adventure, so I took craigslist gigs in major cities for a while as I traveled around the lower 48 camping out of the back of my truck. Many national parks later I was WWOOFing in Hawaii where I met an english teacher that worked in Japan. Next thing I know I’m teaching english is South Korea when North Korea sank the Cheonan and was there still when the Fukushima reactor melted down.

While WWOOFing in Hawaii I started to get into some dangerously close to hippie stuff called permaculture and that approach to life was in stark contrast to the life I was living in Seoul. I loved the city life, but for many reasons it was not a healthy lifestyle for me. While traveling southeast Asia I took a permaculture design course in Thailand that pushed me further toward the natural world. I remembered going to a permaculture conference with some friends in Anchorage and that one of the presenters came from a place in middle Tennessee called The Farm, so after finishing my contract in Korea and traveling southeast Asia for a bit I joined an apprenticeship program at the Ecovillage Training Center on The Farm in middle Tennessee. I figured it would be a way to look like I was doing something while also being close to family. Well I ended up married and never left The Farm.

This question is about my professional life and career, but as you might have learned from above, I don’t really see myself as having had a career/professional life. Things I have done since getting a degree that might go on a resume: restaurants, cleaning/demo, selling fire wood I split by hand, trail crew, field educator, craigslist gigs, medical testing, ESL teacher, WWOOFing, lifeguarding, a cookie company in a mall food court (one of the worst), assembly line making radiation detectors, ran a lab producing rhizopus oligisporus for tempeh production, various teaching positions in non-traditional settings, gardening, bookkeeping, and other miscellaneous character developing activities. The thing I am most proud of in all of that is that I have owned my life through the process. When I was on the road I did not know where I would sleep on a regular basis, but I knew at a minimum I had what I needed to get through the night wherever I was at the time. I’ve seen bonobos, orangutans, mudskippers, and pit vipers in the wilds of Borneo. I almost died in Loas AND Cambodia. I’ve been hit by a train, literally. I’m living the good and the bad and I can still smile.

If I want the world to know anything about Twisted Copper it is this. We love each other. We do what we do because of each other, and for each other. We could have done just about anything together, but I’m not complaining its beer.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I’m assuming this is intended to highlight places around me, because being honest, I would take them somewhere else to show them the best time ever. If I’m showing them the best time that can be had in Summertown then we are getting hammered and riding my cart through the woods at night. Maybe a soak in the yard tub. Thats a bath tub in the yard for anyone that doesn’t know. Board games are involved and hiking around the farm. It’s not close, but I highly recommend the fiery gizzard trail. Also, Hobbs cabin in the South Cumberland state park is a great escape. Food wise we are getting Shaffer’s, and I’m cooking most of the rest. It’s a bit of a culinary desert out here. We would probably take a trip to the other bar, aptly named, “The Other Bar” to go see ol’ hot ass, the owner of the joint. You can still smoke cigarettes inside, even if you don’t want to and a coors is just $2.50. Depending on the season we would forage for mushrooms, have a dip in the swimming hole, and/or sauna.

Since this is a business thing though… Jon’s list of foods

Mama Milas, Southern Tre, South Ahan, McCreary’s Columbia
Aha Indian Grill Springhill
Cocina Real Lawrenceburg
Lewis and Clark’s in hohenwald
El Indio Mt. Pleasant, and The Grille Mt. Pleasant

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
The list would never end if I thanked everyone that played a part, but here’s a few of note. My wife, for all those days and nights she believed me when I said, “we aren’t just getting drunk.”
Our community, for lending us the block walls and a roof so we could develop our craft. Also for providing a safe space to get a little too loud.
Forrest’s mom, for all the denim.
Aaron’s good eye.
Ian, for the Charley work.
Brett, for never knowing how to connect the speakers.
Finally, Dave’s eyebrows, for letting us all know how he feels.