Category: Beer Books

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Book Review – Barrel-Aged Stout & Selling Out by Josh Noel


Two confessions before I begin this review. One, is that I met and drank Bourbon County Brand Stout with Brett Porter in L.A. in a weird office building location with no other bloggers around. And two, I read Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out over a single day. I couldn’t stop.

Author Josh Noel has crafted a real page turner. It starts at the beginning of Goose Island and stops with the new Independent Seal being introduced by the Brewers Association and in between it covers all of the highs and lows of the strange phase of beer world where SABInBev was buying up breweries.

Though Big Beer is taken to task, this book is no screed against capitalism. This book is super fair but isn’t fair just to preclude future arguments. Neither John Hall or his son Greg get off unscathed but they also get the credit that is due to them. Same for the SABInBev folks. And that is important in history is to tell both sides as fully as possible while also using hindsight to point out where people made mistakes, small or tragic.

This is the first beer history book that has really used social media reaction in just the right proportion. It would have been easy to rely on the funniest tweets or posts but Noel has taken a measured approach to the outsized reactions that I remember reading and hearing about.

The big take-away for me was when Greg Koch from Stone refers to SABInBev as the Borg. The mega-villain of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It is apt and I went back to earlier chapters and it really fits. They just want to take over beer. They will use whatever loophole or checkbook to get to that point but they are and will forever be at the mercy and stymied by individualism.

It is why craft beer was able to grow so big and it is why they still lag behind craft when it comes to setting the trends and agendas for beer. Everytime they trot out the worn saying, that the only thing that matters is the beer, you can see them sniggering behind the curtain or hear them sneaking up behind you. They just aren’t authentic.

But for most people, the beer in the glass is only part of the equation. For some, it is the company around the table and the beer, for others it is the big game and beer, and for others it is the beer and the story of the beer.

This book cemented my thoughts on the sell-outs while also deepening my understanding of the people who did it and the people who still work there.

As the Texas brewery Jester King said when Wicked Weed was sold, and I am loosely paraphrasing here, they remain our friends but we don’t like who they aligned themselves with and won’t pour their beer. That is where I stand as well.

One last thing, get this book!

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A Book & A Beer – The Widow Clicquot


This story from Tilar Mazzeo is about champagne but it also is about taking risk and the Widow Clicquot took many.

There were a lot of what are called “golden nuggets” of wisdom and factoids in this book. Did you know, for instance, that the founding home of champagne is England? Or that champagne was brown at one time? Or that Russia was THE market to break into?

And that is just industry origin story. Not even getting into the story of the Widow and how she came to be in charge of a large corporation through good times and bad. The sad fact being that she (and other contemporaries of the time) could be in charge because champagne was a declining, unfavored business. If it had been popular, men would have pushed her aside.

The fact that the author could glean so much information about a person with so little written about her is amazing.

To drink, well, that may be difficult if you can’t find one of these new Brut IPA’s or a champagne yeast beer. But since Napoleon figures in the story, a good all-purpose choice would be a Berliner Weisse. Maybe a wine grape version.

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Book Review – IPA by Roger Protz


IPA by British writer Roger Protz is a bit of split personality. The first 1/2 is loaded with interesting tidbits of brewing and more specifically hop facts such as:
only the female hop is used in brewing. You learn about the history in Britain and I was digging it. And I was looking forward to him bringing us up to (or fairly close to) modern IPA times.

But then the book turns into a survey of IPA’s from different sections of the world. And while it is instructive to be presented with other nations take on the popular style, the pace just slows down as you go from beer review to beer review and I kept wishing that Protz had stuck in the timeline and not moved out to the beer listing.

It should be said that the listing does have its merits in finding breweries that might be of interest. I certainly flagged a few on my Kindle app but that seems like a different book to me.

Overall, this book rates OK. Only because the second half was not what I wanted.

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Make it Eclectic


It has been a hot minute since the Brewers Association tackled the ever expanding IPA style in book form but I think they found a brewer who has some good info to impart, Dick Cantwell who is back brewing in the Bay Area has a new book out that tackles the odd side of hoppy beers.

Brewing Eclectic IPA covers “a wide range of ingredients, from cocoa nibs, coffee, fruits, and vegetables, to spices, herbs, and even wood, to push the boundaries of the style.”

Here is the blurb: “Among the most well-respected and experienced craft brewers in the world, Cantwell provides scores of tips and methods for first-time brewers and beer veterans alike to concoct a delectable brew and shares the story of how and why the proliferation of American IPA came to be.”

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Home Brew World


I don’t cover home brewing all that much. Mostly because I don’t do it myself so I have little to offer when it comes to hopping rates, equipment and the latest trends. But I know who does know that stuff and who has access to many home brewers. And now, Joshua Bernstein has compiled that knowledge in his new book HomeBrew World.

Here is the blurb: “Meet the award winners, visionaries, and scofflaws leading the homebrew revolution. How did they get started? What equipment do they use? Where do they find storage space? What are their hopping techniques, yeast strategies, and aging methods? How do they keep temperatures constant without sophisticated climate controls? What’s their best recipe? Get to know the Stylists who hammer home perfect takes on time-honored beers; the Hop Pack who boldly push IPAs and other hop-forward brews into fragrant new territory; the Wild Ones who are harvesting ambient yeast, unleashing rowdy microbes, and experimenting with souring bacteria to extend the boundaries of good taste; and the Creative Front, who follow one simple rule—no rules at all.”

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A Book & A Beer – Legacy of Spies


I have not read much John Le Carre, outside of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy which though full of double-cross and lies moved at what could be called a “stately” pace.

Legacy of Spies takes one of the side characters Peter Guillam and puts him front and center as the narrator of another dirty chapter of spycraft from The Circus.

This time a lawsuit has spurred the British government to coerce Guillam to give them the facts regarding Operation Windfall that led to the death of a spy and civilian in Berlin.

Legacy cuts back in time and the past episodes are exciting but they never really pay off in total excitement. Everything starts promising and then peters out. A mole is spirited away and then dead pages later. This problem really hits at the end. I read the last page three times thinking that I missed some key pay-off but no, the book just ended.

To add some intrigue to a book that falls a bit short, I suggest two L.A. beers. On is from Yorkshire Square – Castle Dangerous Export Stout. British tinged, dangerous and an export. Then I would have System of a Stout from Beachwood Brewing. Since the Russians are involved, got to have an RIS.

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Enter the Beer Pantry


I usually look at the photos of cookbooks and not much else. But I have had the pleasure of being in the audience with Chef Adam Dulye on two separate occasions and learned a lot both times.

Which is why I will be actually looking deeper at the latest beer cookery book, The Beer Pantry which “is a primer on cooking that complements beer, teaching readers how to think like a chef when pairing their favorite craft brews with culinary ingredients.”

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Book Review – Miracle Brew by Pete Brown


I Kindle’d up this book with a bit of wariness. The weakest part of most beer books is the discussion of ingredients and how-to brew but Pete Brown has done a well-executed deep dive into historical fact and straight up fun facts in his book, Miracle Brew.

Here’s a couple of the fun facts:
“…in French, wine is masculine and beer is feminine.”
“So there’s a cloud of booze at the centre of the galaxy, just hanging in space…”

There are anecdotes about Michael Jackson, yeast banks and old time hop picking summer “vacations” in Kent that really flesh out the main sections of Malt, Water, Hops and Yeast. You learn about each of the ingredients but not in a stuffy way. It feels like a good museum exhibit where you go from one painting to the next with a guide explaining each one.

I was a bit flummoxed by the ending though which had to alternative takes on the Reinheitsgebot. That and a shooting whilst visiting Munich really put a pall on the book that was not there before. Primarily that is due to me and the shooting and bombing that seem to be nearly everyday here in America. But it seemed out of place. A late tie it up with a bow kind of diminishes that downer but not really.

But overall, this book really delivers. Not more so than in the old adage that Brown relays, “We don’t make beer; we simply gather the ingredients in the right place. The yeast makes the beer.” Brown has certainly gathered the ingredients in Miracle Brew.

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A Book & A Beer – Draft # 4

This was going to be the book that I reviewed for March. But then some past events came to light.

So, I went to the next in line book, Draft # 4 by John McPhee.

This book is basically a writing class from an actual professor and actual working writer who published in The New Yorker amongst other gigs.

You get some behind the typewriter scenes about gathering material and how to structure a story but even more fascinating to me were the anecdotes about the fact checkers and the need to have writers green 1 a story, by which McPhee explains, is reducing the story by one line. And you can’t do that by just removing the last sentence.

The section on how he refused to use a regular “Word” program and instead kept a dying specific to just him software program afloat came across as a bit pompous especially when it is of little use to pretty much any aspiring writer.

That being said, it is always interesting to see how a writer builds a story and the pluck and luck needed.

To drink, I would start with a can from Evil Twin, I Plan On Writing An Epic Poem About This Gorgeous IPA. I know that McPhee is primarily non-fiction but that Name would make a writer smile and there are no hop puns.

If you are in Denver, you could just hit up Fiction Brewing and read the book there. Or for us Angeleno’s you could look for Stronger than Fiction from Bottle Logic in Orange County.