Category: Beer Books

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Beer Book Review – Hops by Kenneth Helphand

History. Beer has plenty of it if you look behind the curtain of hops. Kenneth Helphand has compiled some really cool photographs including some Dorothea Lange ones in his book about the hop world way, way back in the day.

This is a specific book. You are not going to get what varietals were made or even much talk about the end product. This is first and foremost a curated set of photos of the people in the hop fields. You also get recollections from people who went picking and from newspaper mentions as well. It does lead to a certain sameness. A group of people in front of a row of hops or surrounding a barrel filled with the days pick. But then you look a little closer and you see Chinese faces, Native American faces, recent immigrant faces.

You see, the everyday racist slights in the advertisements for workers. Or a YWCA camp set- up as a safe haven for women working the fields. You also get a glimpse into camp life with dances, movies, company store and living in tents until the harvest is complete.

It also leads me to want a similar book but of the current hop season. Let’s see the faces who grow and pick and bale our hops now.

Also, love to see my last name in a book…even if he is just standing around

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Book Review – Pilsner by Tom Acitelli

Pilsner by Tom Acitelli roams all over the world. Fitting since the style has too.

This book is formatted with bite size chapters that are super easy to blitz through which is both good and bad. The good is that you are quickly propelled through history. The bad is that each chapter seems to be missing an opportunity to deep dive into a historical character or a moment in time.

I wanted more of the Anheuser-Busch saga and the marketing. I wanted more of Freddy Heineken. I wanted more because the history of pilsner is everywhere in modern history especially here in the US.

I guess that I wanted a book three times the size because Acitelli is a really good writer and I wanted the book to keep going but it arrived at the finish line too soon.

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A Book & A Beer – The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

Wow, this is a depressing book but narrated with both a resigned and jaunty air. Originally this book was to be named the Saddest Story Ever Told and that is no understatement. Yes, the Ashburnham’s at the center of the story do not seem the type to care about. Nor is the casual wealth of narrator John Dowell and his wife Florence helping to relate to them.

Even still the dissolution of not only two marriages and four people in shells of their past selves is just harrowing. No one comes out unscathed by the end. For a book from 1915, this is really a deep dive into therapy.

To drink, I would look for beers that mimic cocktails. Boulevard, Firestone Walker and others have versions out there. Or look for a wine/beer hybrid to go for that continental feel of the lazily rich.

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A Book & A Beer – The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

Elena Ferrante burst onto the literature scene with her Neopolitan trio of books that started with My Brilliant Friend. I did not read those, in fact, her latest novel The Lying Life of Adults is the first of hers that I have read.

And it’s certainly makes my teen angst pale in comparison. It is a comparison that sets the events in motion as the worldly father compares his teenage daughter to his sister, whom he hates. At first it seems a comparison based on physical appearance but is actually deeper.

The daughter, Giovanna, demands to meet this aunt and from there her orbit becomes widened and secrets and lies and family history start to show. It is a cracker of a book. Loaded with emotional bombs going off.

To pair with this, I would recommend starting with that sub-style, Italian pilsner then you can move on to a sour IPA because there is acrimony aplenty and you will need to match it.

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Beer of Kings

Beer books are my favorites and I am always happy to report a new one. Now we can learn about pilsners from Tom Acitelli who has already covered the inner workings of beer writing about the early craft beer revolution. I will be placing my order shortly.

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While We are Not Traveling

It is a great time to read about places to go. One of my go-to’s is Rick Steves. Folksy, and good at uncovering places others might miss. He has a new book out that beer fans should pick-up

not because it is loaded with beer info though he quaffs a few across Europe but because he shows you the places you can go inbetween beer adventures.

But you don’t have to pick up his book, find any travel book and get to planning. I am thinking of hop farms in 2021 or Denver after GABF or a Czech trip.

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Hops in the Olden Days

I have a hop scratch that needs to be itched after hearing about this year’s harvest and the perfect book has just been ordered from my Dads Alma Mater and nephew’s current college.

“The craft brewing renaissance of recent decades has brought a renewed interest in hops. These vigorous vines, with their flavorful flowers, have long played a key role in beer making and in Oregon’s agricultural landscape. This compendium of photographs offers a visual dive into the distinctive physical presence of hops in the state. From pickers and poles to cones and oasts, Kenneth I. Helphand brings the landscape and culture of hops to life.

For much of the first half of the twentieth century, Oregon was the leading producer of hops in the United States, with the Willamette Valley deemed “the garden spot of the world for the cultivation of hops.” The author has scoured archives across the state to gather together images of the hops landscape in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The photographs featured in Hops portray pickers of all backgrounds through different eras of agricultural practice. Here are children, nuns, families, immigrants, and college students in fields, hop driers, and tent camps. The photos range from the candid to the highly professional, including images from Dorothea Lange’s iconic Farm Security Administration work.

The 85 high-quality photographs are accompanied by captions that provide, variously, factual background, selections from oral histories, and visual guidance. A historical essay provides a short overview of the plant’s history and the world of hop growing and picking.”

I have already pre-ordered mine.

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A Book & A Beer – Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell

Utopia Avenue is the latest from David Mitchell. I have liked his genre busting switches from coming of age to time travel to ancient Japan and how he has woven in characters across books.

The latest is an Almost Famous tale of a band from their formation through success and the tragedies minor and major along the way. There is also a side story about a ghost that haunts one of the players.

Overall, I found it to be a good set of people to ride along with but that the journey itself was kind of caught between doing a standard rock novel but just with flourishes added to it. On the plus side, when the songs were described, they sounded real and of the time. Not some fake tune that you would never believe was a top ten hit. Your mileage may vary on the celebrity cameos as well. I found them a bit annoying.

Since the band starts in England and then conquers the world. I would suggest having a beer corresponding to where they are in the world. Start with a proper pint of bitter, move on to some European pilsner, have some New York craft beer and then finish with beers from L.A. and San Francisco.

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A Book & A Beer – Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman

2020 is a bubble year in many different aspects. NBA players live in one in Florida, I live in a modified one herein Glendale and Deborah Feldman lived in an even more restrictive one growing up in a Jewish sect in Williamsburg in New York City.

This book had so many moments where I would not have survived. My brain is not wired to “behave” just because some dude says so. And for women, well the situation was much worse. Unless of course, you are one who is wired to follow a particular course.

Unorthodox has become a Netflix show quite different from the book. If you have binged that show, the book will be a good companion piece with additional information that will stagger the mind.

It would be an easy reach to say the He’Brew range of beers would be a good choice to be drinking. Especially considering that beer is not part of the ceremonial aspect of the religion. Instead I would look for wine/beer hybrids since that libation is more associated with the church. Firestone Walker makes a good many grape must beers as does Homage and Smog City.