Follow Sean Inman to the best in craft beer
Beer books have to have something that they cannot get from a quick Google search, and the The Guide to Craft Beer from the Brewers Association looks to do that by adding a tasting log and including a food and beer section as well as helping “readers explore style preferences, traditional and modern brewing ingredients” as well. What I think separates this from a reference book fate is the pocket size and the focus on community. I will check it out and report back.
Not too many books with Pericles, Prince of Tyre as a character nowadays but Mark Haddon reaches back to Shakespeare for the weird, The Porpoise. Now, I usually like interwoven stories, stories that span time frames, multi-character arcs and the like. But this story veers away from the opening line and slowly becomes a re-telling of Pericles but with a few names changed (for whatever reason Thasia is now Chloe) and some of the action re-imagined. As if a Hollywood screenwriter had adapted the play but didn’t want to 100% mimic it.
There is also a very weird Dead Shakespeare interlude with another writer of the time that comments on Pericles but says nothing really about the story that we started with. And then the book just ends. SPOILER ALERT – Haddon sets fire to a house and just kills off the main characters that were abandoned a 1/3 of the way into the book. I could totally see a modern take on Pericles but this is not it. Most of the time it just meanders like a boat lost at sea.
Now, I could be extra glib and say for a beer that you should find the worst one in your ‘fridge and leave it at that but I think it better to pick up something aquatic related. So something from Pelican Brewing in Pacific City, Oregon might work. Like their Doryman’s Dark Ale for the twisted turns in this book or you could go sour for the taste in your mouth reading this with SeaQuench from Dogfish Head.
Most, if not all books about beer, are non-fiction. You are not going to find brewers as the focus of fictional lives. The tilt is towards the dangerous and event filled occupations like firefighters or spies. But along comes….
What’s great about the Lager Queen of Minnesota (which is now on my reading list) is that it is not only about beer but about woman and beer. The author, ” Stradal says he visited more than three dozen breweries in his research for the book. “The women I met working at these breweries were really inspiring,” he says.”
If this book was just about pizza, I would still be interested but this book is more than that. After listening to the author, Ed Levine talk about his life on the Good Food podcast, I knew that I would be adding this to my reading list because it details how a food website came to be in an era when anything blog related seemed limitless. A full review of Serious Eater will happen later this year.
It is strange to go back in time and behind the scenes of the musicians that created part of the soundtrack of your teenage years. You sometimes lose the luster of the music to details of private lives. I was a big New Order fan, still am of a range of their music but I did not know how they came to be, their origin story as it were. I got into a slice of Joy Division music and now after the movie Control and the book above, I know more about the people who created the music.
This is not a regular historical account of the Ian Curtis years. It is an oral history arranged in chronological order. All the people involved in the story have their say and you bounce from Bernard (Barney), Peter (Hooky) and Stephen (just Stephen) as the main protagonists as well as the roadies, the manager, the wives and girlfriends and music reviews.
This oral history style is popular on websites talking about films and TV and works to an extent here but I do wish there was more historical data in-between to add some context to the matter. But as a piece of the record (pun intended), it does add to the knowledge base of the band.
I have three ideas as to what to drink with this book. First, find some British cask ale and immerse yourself in Manchester of the late 1970’s. Yorkshire Square and MacLeod’s would be the L.A. options.
Second there is an anecdote in the book about drinking Duvel so that would work and probably get you in the mindset of the devil. And lastly, the new Leaves of Grass series from Bell’s would provide the needed poetry that great music has when it is really working.
This is what I am talking about. Delving into lager should yield some fascinating topics and sub-topics especially with Mark Dredge at the wheel. This book will be coming out in September (probably in England first and then the US.)
With LABW11 in the rear view, time to re-broaden our horizons and look all around the beer world and I have a book choice for you that will help with that, The Brewery in the Bohemian Forest by Evan Rail.
When the ancient brewery in the Czech forest town of Kout na Šumavě reopens, rumors start to circulate about a mysterious brewing book found hidden in the crumbling brewhouse walls. The beer from Kout is so strangely delicious that many who taste it think that it has to be made using secrets — or even magic — from the old brewing log. Enchanted by the taste of Kout lager, Evan Rail makes several journeys out to the brewery, even bringing Anthony Bourdain to film a segment on Kout for the TV show “No Reservations.” But the world of Czech beer is full of secrets… and some secrets definitely do not want to be revealed.
I was reading the somewhat scary book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker just knowing that alcohol was probably due for a moment under the microscope, and so it was…
The sedative effects of alcohol create two effects to sleeping. One is that it disrupts a full continuous nights worth of sleep and secondly, the chemicals set loose by alcohol prevents REM sleep (the dreaming part of sleep).
Other sleep problems are more pressing such as being shoehorned into a business or school schedule that does not care if you got your full 8 hours or if you are an early riser or late riser. Caffeine and other eating habits as well as the use of blue LED lights in our devices are contributors to sleep issues as well.
And while this blog is all about beer, I do have to advocate for changing your habits to not drink as much (I’m cutting back on the amount I consume) and to not drink late into the evening and to excess.
Dr. Seuss immediately brings to mind the word Vivid to me. Vivid colors, vivid wordplay, vivid creatures and Becoming Dr. Seuss by Brian Jay Jones takes us back to the beginning to see how Theodore Geisel morphed into a Doctor (with degree and everything).
There are a lot of events in his life that I did not know about. His dabbling in movies, his work under famed director Frank Capra during World War 2, his move to La Jolla from the East Coast and sad points in his personal life.
Mostly what comes through are the sparks of creativity that led to his famous books starting with Bartholomew and his hats to The Grinch and the Lorax. Learning about how a book like Cat in the Hat came about adds to how great his ideas were.
You might want to find a glitter beer to drink while reading about the places that you will go to or lean to another San Diego institution with roots in La Jolla, Karl Strauss. Maybe Follow the Sun Pils which is what Geisel did coming west and building a home high on a hill or go for Wreck Alley considering that he was a poor driver. Whatever you choose, it should be fun and wild.
If you are in the market for a beer book that is less about the latest trends or economics or all those things about beer that make you want to have a beer and block social media, well then Ian Clayton’s book, It’s the Beer Talking might be for you.
“Author Ian Clayton embarked on a lifelong love affair with local pubs in the middle of the 1970s. He has raised a glass in neighbourhood bars around the world for more than forty years. His stories are intertwined with quests to find perfect pints and peoples’ palaces and about joining in with the joy he finds in the unique gathering place we call the public house.
He moves across the generations and boundaries to take a glimpse at what makes the pub tick. Humorous and poignant by turns, It’s The Beer Talking tells of the laughter, the tears, the cheers, the remembering and forgetting, but most of all the camaraderie we all crave. This book will resonate with anyone who as ever uttered that immortal phrase, ‘Do you fancy a pint?’”
Quite probably a bunch of social history to be found in these pages.