Follow Sean Inman to the best in craft beer
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
American Spy is not the most creative book of book names. But author Lauren Wilkinson has taken the spy format and written an excellent lead character who subverts that sometimes tired and pro for a format by being well-rounded and human. Having a female lead that is both black and a mom really really works as Wilkinson creates a dangerous world for our protagonist Marie to navigate. I won’t give away the plot but it has the required twists and turns shown in a new light.
To drink with this, you could go in many different directions. Martinique for Island influenced beers. Washington DC or the Bronx for the main settings of the book. But I would recommend looking for beers brewed by women. Then take a moment to see how a spy operates differently based on gender and how the same occurs in brewing.
This is a very thorough dismantling of a word through the lens of marketing, economics, history, philosophy and even social media. And I dug every moment because it did not play favorites or set- up straw men to easily knock down. This is rigorous and since I recently watched Hamilton, it made me think of the Federalist papers a bit.
Brown starts with using a (5) part definition of a craft brewery written by Dan Shelton of Shelton Brothers. Those qualifications were ingredients, methods and equipment, spirit, control and ownership structure. Which is probably too much to have to apply to each and every brewery. By the end, Brown has whittled and refined it into (4) comprised of skill/creativity, quality, autonomy and motivation. Bigger ideas but also simpler to understand in my opinion. With only motivation being somewhat opaque.
Some other cool ideas that I ran across:
Skilled craftspeople are considered less than a typical pencil pusher.
Workers should also spend time thinking and thinkers spend more time working.
Craft is a moving target
The concept of under erasure. Where a word is inaccurate in explaining or describing an idea but is also necessary so it is shown but crossed out.
If you haven’t noticed, I highly recommend buying this. Worth every penny.
Here is what you will find inside the covers of The Dogfish Head Book: 25 Years of Off-Centered Adventures: “readers will gain an understating of the “How & Why” behind the brewery’s growth and success through heartfelt stories of Sam, Mariah and Andrew’s trials and accomplishments. Chock full of wisdom, entertainment and a whole lot of timeless lessons learned – everything from memorabilia and co-worker-told tales to the brewery’s business philosophy and “Rules of Thumb,””
This looks to be a grand addition to anyone’s beer library and a good lockdown read.
Yes, you can go back to taprooms and bars but I am still wary about that situation. I will opt for reading about an epic drinking and talking about life adventure from Roddy Doyle. Love is set in Dublin and it will provide me all the bar interiors and Guinness Pints that I will need.
No, The Great Influenza is not the cheeriest of titles to be reading now as we see spikes in cases in states that opened up waaaaay too early but I have heard 1918 referenced so often, that I felt I needed to get a handle on it.
Author John Barry starts us with the young medical establishment that would be key in treating the the flu that killer approximately 100 million worldwide. The book then covers the ground until the virus burned out in 1919, but not before hitting President Woodrow Wilson.
There is a lot of fascinating history found here with the name (Spanish Flu) coming from the fact that the press in Spain was not censored and thus wrote about it more. Also, it more than likely started in Kansas, went across with WW1 soldiers to Europe and then came back in a strain that was much more deadly. There is an afterword that should have been read by leaders last year.
I do not want to recommend a certain brewery or beer lest they become associated with sickness so what I recommend that you find a nice healthy kombucha with all sorts of fruits and hops too to keep your health on an even keel.