People do love beer and books as a pairing. Trustworthy Brewing in Burbank has a book club and when I was in Denver visiting breweries, Novel Strand Brewing had a full year of books.
And you can also join David Nilsen and Emily Swank on Instagram Live for HopLit. What is HopLit you ask?, It is “a casual book-and-beer hangout where we talk about what we’ve read recently, what’s on our TBR piles, and what beers we’re enjoying along the way!”
Follow Emily @thebeercanon on and @davidnilsenbeer on their Instagram accounts to get in on the reading action.
Season 2 of Silo is coming out on Apple TV and like many streaming shows, I have yet to view Season 1. To compensate, I read the first book in the trilogy, Wool (followed by Dust and Shift in one word cryptic book titles).
Hugh Howey, the author, has a great story about the genesis of this series that was a self-published novelette that suddenly gained digital traction to the point where he all but had to embiggen it.
It joins the Fallout series in a post-apocalyptic setting with survivors hiding underground along with a lot of secrets. I will do my best to not include spoilers in this mini recap. The heroine of the story, Juliette is part of a mechanical team for the silo who gets the tap on the shoulder to literally go up in the world to become the sheriff. Factions develop between the mayor, the mechanics, the supply crew and the IT department and there is a lot of going up from floor 100 to 34 to 1 and back down again that will make your legs feel tired just from reading.
For a nearly 600 page book, the pages fly by. I could see why this was plucked for a TV series. The trilogy could supply plenty of story for a showrunner. However I felt it was a bit too fast paced and the silo feels so big just for the sake of being massive. I felt good about the characters to start but they got a little plastic as the book wore on. In a weird way, I would say this book could have ended earlier. Maybe make a foursome of books.
I do not think, I will be picking up books two or three.
For beer, I would suggest pondering what beers you would take into a bunker when the world inevitably ends. And then which ones would be everyday drinkers and which you would save and / or hoard and not share a drop of.
Since we are talking pubs, let’s get into the latest book from beer writer Adrian Tierney-Jones, A Pub for All Seasons.
I would say that the sub-title of this book is misleading. It is not a book of rankings or whether Fall is better than Winter. Winter obviously wins. But more a trio of interlocking themes. Memoir meets existential thoughts and the people who run and frequent the pubs.
And for some readers, that second thread of musings on life is the one that I found hardest to latch onto. Yes, you can wax poetic about the first sun of summer but I want to know more about why a pilsner on a pub patio works so well or give me a tip as to beers that you might not know work really well on a rainy day in April. There is some of that in the book but it is a little more inner when I was hoping for a little more travel guide.
Which leads to my next nitpick. I really would have loved to see a map or three in this book. I was trying to follow the winding train tracks but kept having to press pause on the book to do so.
Those two improvements aside, I did really enjoy the book and how the publicans and brewers are piloting their ways through ownership in this day and age. The beers described made me thirsty throughout the book and it was overall a relaxing read through all four seasons.
It has been a pretty good last half of the year for beer books and now you can pre-order a nice shiny coffee table book filled with info and photos of the Hidden Beers of Belgium.
Just after wrapping up judging some beer writing, more on that later this month, I received Issue # 06 of Final Gravity, the October edition.
An in that judgmental state of mind, I dove in and was pleasantly surprised overall. There were a few that seemed more like good starts but could use more detail. Which is better than the other way around.
My standouts were both female tilted with Ruvani de Silva, a writer I like the more I read, had a smart piece on perimenopause and Cat Wiest had me wanting more stories about her fishing days and brewing days.
Behind that, as honorable mentions, were ‘zine co-founder Melinda Guerra’s piece on the beers she has picked as malty eulogies for friends which was pitched just right for spooky season. And Lucy Corne’s evocative writing on Charlie’s Garage in South Africa which made me want to try the beers and hang with the locals even though I am an introvert.
Time to dig into some ancient beer history with Tate Paulette and his new book, In the Land of Ninkasi.
First off, Paulette seems to be a big beer fan so this book already is a step ahead of most academic inclined books where the author doesn’t seem excited about the topic or is tamping down excitement to remain scholarly.
Second, he is very clear about what can and cannot be guessed at when it comes to archaeology. Claims are made but they are backed up by evidence and when that evidence is too slight or flimsy, Paulette will say so.
With that housekeeping out of the way, In the Land of Ninkasi covers beer and brewing in Mesopotamia in ancient times. From where it was brewed and by whom. What is was brewed with. How it was brewed, all the way to who drank it and why. Each step is backed up with evidence and if there is an alternative thesis, he brings that up as well.
Paulette also isn’t afraid to be challenging to our normal thought process. An example being the Minimalist Trap. From our perch in 2024, we cannot assume that we are at the pinnacle of how to brew. We may be but that does not mean that Ancient Mesopotamian brewing wasn’t complex too. There were purpose built brewing areas and specialized equipment back then too.
Another interesting aspect is that the records we have from that time are basically inventories and sales slips. It can be hard to say what a day in the life of a brewer was when it is all just so much zeroes and ones.
Before you think this book is about literal dust and dry facts, the Epic of Gilgamesh is also wove into this tale and one part that I did not remember is about Shiduri, the tavern keeper at the end of the world. How cool that an epic warrior seeks help from a bar owner.
This book is academic in parts as well and those do make the reading drag a bit. There are instances of explaining the different languages and what the words translate to for our times and there is some inside baseball as well that glazed my eyes a bit but overall, this history opened my eyes as to how this time in beer will be remembered hundreds and thousands of years from now.
Followers of the blog know that I am more than just a little keen on Beer history. I like all the nooks and crannies of beer throughout the years. But it is not as well covered as many other fields. Thankfully, the Beer Culture Center along with the Newberry Library are partnering on a fellowship that will help remedy that situation.
It is the Beer History Studies Fellowship which is open to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) MA students, PhD candidates, or post doctoral scholars who are researching beer and who have a specific need for research in the Newberry Library collection.
I am hoping that initiatives like this will bring forth more beer books for me to read and review.
Right off the bat, I have never had Jeppson’s Malört even once. And I probably don’t want to pay for a full bottle since the sub-title of Josh Noel’s book contains the word, reviled.
Take away the whole taste of Malört angle or the whole spirits business angle and this is still a fascinating tale of people told in a fair and even-handed way while still showing the warts of people.
It starts with George Brode and Red Horse Liquors. Brode brought Malört into the portfolio and when that business went down, took it with him and for years ran it as a side-hustle while his legal practice paid the bills (and then some).
Brode had a secretary, Pat Gabelick, who he in true 1950’s style had an affair with while staying married to his wife. This is where the story goes in a whole different direction. Brode and before him, his wife, pass away and Gabelick inherits Malört. Brode was a steady hand but not one for growth and Gabelick is even less interested never really enjoying or even really tasting the product that she sort of lacklusterly runs.
Then Malört starts being cool and fans come in and volunteer to help and eventually catch the hipster wave. And there is more drama before the story reaches the here and now.
This is an entertaining tale that Noel takes us through clearly and at a pace that matches the rise of the drink. You learn about Chicago, cocktail culture and social media too.
When the U.S. can pre-order A Pub for All Seasons by Adrian Tierney-Jones, I will be in the front of the line because it sounds like a delightful book…
“The story of one man through the year and his travels to all corners of the country, A Pub For All Seasons follows Adrian as he visits far-flung corners of the country. From mellow, gentle pubs in autumn and dim, cosy spots in winter to bright, lively bars in spring and wondrous, buzzing gardens in summer, Adrian speaks to locals and landlords, hears unique sounds and stories, and samples food, drink and atmosphere. He watches the wild and beautiful similarities, differences between pubs, and notices how they all shift, tonally, throughout the year.”
Until the book is U.S. ready, you can listen to the author talk about it with All About Beer and John Holl, right HERE.
I admit until I saw Issue 6 of Full Pour on a newstand recently, I did not know of its existence as a fancy quarterly beverage magazine.
But now that I do, I need to dive in and see what is inside the covers…
FP covers wine, beer, spirits and then infused? before non-alc and most of the articles inside are a page or two to start with before kicking into the features section which are not that much longer. Now I usually write very concisely but I felt many of the articles could have been expanded. There were 19 separate ones in this issue. Dropping it down to 15 and adding more detail would make it more engrossing. Especially the piece about craft brewing in India which I wished had more about some of the breweries. Or a map maybe. The other thing that riled me was that were as many cannabis drink articles as beer ones.
On the plus side, I was thankful for the charitable ads inside that were sponsored by advertisers. Always good to see people making an effort at being community based. The variety of articles was impressive as well.
For a magazine that is $20 a pop the bar has to be set quite high and while close, at least this issue, didn’t quite reach it.
