Category: Beer Books

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Book Review – The Underground Culinary Tour


Behind the scenes is a fascinating place to be. With the rise of so many cooking shows and Diners, Dives and some other D word, one has to dig deeper to read about what is going on in the business of restaurants.

But Damian Mogavero has done that with his book, The Underground Culinary Tour. He goes into the numbers. The statistics generated each time a server punches in a code and taps a colored square on a POS (Point of Sale) device in a restaurant.

And what that data can tell the owners and managers of a restaurant is amazing. Even the celebrity chef names dropped don’t hold a candle to the insights.

Restaurants are a thin margin business so any percentage point of savings or increased business can be a difference maker. Mogavero details how the data can be used to make ordering more efficient, to better utilize the wait staff and cooks, to have ingredients and beer on hand when it is needed. Most importantly, it tells you what dishes are selling and which are not.

Interspersed amongst the success stories is a gut wrenching (in a good way) culinary tour that could double as itinerary for the food hearty traveler to New York.

The book travels from new York to New Orleans and Las Vegas to Downtown Disney in Anaheim with tales of how the numbers helped restaurants of all different varieties.

My favorite section was the details of the most common scams that waiters and waitresses could pull to put a little extra coin in their pocket. Next time you order ice tea or coffee, check out your bill. How to track the sales by day and adjust accordingly seems really easy when explained but I had never thought of it before.

From the craft beer perspective, I found it heartening that Mogavero has identified, I think correctly, that restaurants today will need at least a decent craft beer list not handed down by a distributor but customized for the neighborhood and the customers.

Anyone with a passing interest in foodie business will lap this book up.

Thanks to Blogging for Books and NetGalley for bringing this book to my attention.

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Beer Book Review – My Beer Year


As someone who passed the entry level Certified Beer Server test of the Cicerone program and then blanched at the cost of the remaining levels and complexity, My Beer Year by Lucy Birmingham was just what I needed to remind me that I didn’t want to pursue the next step while also putting me “in the room where it happens” as it were.

Birmingham’s prose style is easy and flows smoothly. She is dexterious moving from describing scientific points in a hop field to her feelings about husband and son and then back to beer again.

Her plan for conquering the Cicerone test is quite good and should be emulated. Don’t just sit at home with flash cards and books and empty bottles but get out there and visit breweries and talk to people and home brew. You could almost see the movie montage playing as answers come to her from the experiences with brewing as opposed to planting a nose in a book.

The book also gets where it is going without feeling rushed. You know a test is at the end and the results just after that and it can be hard to make the preceding chapters exciting but she does just that.

What I like most is that Birmingham seems to understand the duality of studying of beer and the enjoyment of beer are linked but sometimes at odds with each other. From the pages, you can tell that she will not be that know-it-all but rather someone with a lot of beer knowledge.

My first quibble is that more could not be spilled about the test itself. Having to take the test and then write about it is hard by itself, but then trying to dance around the strictures of test rules adds a second layer to the writing task. I would also have liked her to take a harder stand on the theme in women in beer but when I went back through the book, I realized it would not have fit the tone.

If you are planning on taking the Cicerone test, read this book. If you don’t want to take it, this book can be your proxy.

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A Book & A Beer – Dark Matter by Black Crouch


There are books that you read and when the end is reached, your first utterance is, “Well, I can see that being made into a movie.”

Such is the case with Dark Matter and in this case, that is not a disparaging remark. The author, Blake Crouch, has TV in his writing background, Wayward Pines so when the hero (more on that later) starts jumping from parallel earth to parallel earth, you can see the special effects in your minds eye.

The tale starts with one Jason Dessen a professor at a small Chicago college who us abducted and shot up with chemicals and deposited not in his world and has to find his way back.

If you are a time travel nitpicker, then this is probably not for you. The villain of the piece, well I can’t spoil that reveal since it doesn’t come until a bit later in the book is a bit problematic until later in the book.

But if you bought Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, you might shell out movie tickets to see him portray this Jason. It’s right up his alley.

Beer Wise – The label design and names from Bottle Logic in Anaheim fit this book to a T. Get a Recursion IPA or an Ocularity DIPA and become bitter with the villain. Better yet, pick up their GABF winning Lagerithm Black lager.

Since the book is set in Chicago, you can search out some Half Acre beer and enjoy a Pony Pilsner while going through the pages.

Or if you want to keep a science theme going. Get a growler from L.A. Aleworks from their SpaceX line of hoppy beers.

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Book Review – Bend Beer: A History of Brewing in Central Oregon

I read a lot. And I read a lot of beer books. What I have come to appreciate are the histories of the craft beer movement. Be it of a style, a brewery, or going up a rung, the larger, beer scene of a region.

Bend Beer – A History of Brewing in Central Oregon slots into that last history as author Jon Abernathy starts at the beginning of beer in Central Oregon and takes us up to just about before the sale of 10 Barrel Brewing to SABInBev.

Abernathy, the blogger behind the Brewsite beer blog has a tricky territory to cover. The City of Bend plus Sisters and Redmond just don’t have a lot of meat on the bone in regards to beer history. Partly due to population and also prohibition, the heat doesn’t really rise until the first mention of Deschutes Brewing.

Once that happens you almost need a genealogical chart to map out which people left Black Butte Porter behind and what brewery they started. For the most part, Abernathy doesn’t lose you in all of what I call the “begats”, the biblical dead spots where we learn who everyone’s ma and pa is.

It is fascinating to see how each brewery got started. Though I would have liked to see more about how the city and community played a part in the brewing evolution. Was Bend amenable politically to craft beer? Did they make it easy to open up shop? What beers did the people of Bend gravitate towards? Is there a discernible Bend terroir?

Unfortunately, Abernathy has already spent 1/2 the book before even getting to Gary Fish and Deschutes. But that is also the strength of the book, I am reeled in and want to know more and more. Let’s hope an updated version is around the corner.

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A Book & A Beer – All That Man Is


Well, NOT All that Man Is might have been a better title for the book of short stories that are thinly connected by author David Szalay.

There are nine men met in this novel, all white European men, most of privilege, or at least set in privileged striving. None of the nine appealed to me. At best they are sad sack navel gazers like the teenagers on holiday in Germany or the pedantic scholar driving to Poland. At worst they are unaware and quite nearly evil industrialist or muckracking journalist. That is fine. Plenty of novels with unworthy narrators out there but I just could not dive into any of the stories. The Men in each effectively blocked me from enjoyment.

That added to the overall downer quotient of the book wore on me and seemed rather invented. All the portent and doom and gloom seemed obvious to me but profound to the characters in the book. Said Russian industrialist who has to sell off his yacht, named the Europa. Oh, is he selling the concept of the men of Europe? Seemed heavy handed to me. As was the early inner mindset of another character who tells himself early on in his tale, that “Life is not a Joke.” Fine to use that, but that character hadn’t even earned it yet.

The final story at least had some earned pathos to it as an elderly man tries to ponder an inscription seen in a nearby abbey: “Amemus eterna et non peritura.” Let us love what is eternal and not what is transient. It is a slog to get to that point though.

To drink, I would start with Orval. It is old and weathered like the older characters in the book and is a classic European pale ale.

Then I would move onto a Berliner Weisse. You probably have a local that does a good rendition. The Bruery had Hottenroth which is transitioning to Frederick H. or you could go with the more accessible Professor Fritz Briem 1809 Berliner Weisse.

And since a Russian is one of the characters and since it is January, a Russian Imperial Stout would be good. Old Rasputin would work or one of the Stone variants.

As a last suggestion, since the characters in the book are all over the map, you could find out which country is the setting for the next story and pick up a beer from that locale indicative of their craft beer scene.

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Beer Book Review – Complete IPA by Joshua Bernstein


Joshua Bernstein has made an admirable stab at the inimitable and intimidating IPA style (and sub-styles) in his book Complete IPA – The Guide to Your Favorite Craft Beer and he mostly succeeds.

Where I find fault is not so much the execution but the format chosen at the beginning. A book based on primarily reviews of IPA’s or in this case, more accurately, highlighting beers from U.S. regions that signify the IPA leads to a certain almanac type of style which can be repetitive even in the most descriptive of writers hands as Bernstein is.

It also leads to the inevitable stale aspect. Bernstein tosses out fun facts and covers a wide swath of breweries in this heavy hardback book which is great. I now have breweries to check out all across the country but he also tosses in other beers brewed of the non-IPA variety that distract from the topic at hand. It is great, overall, to know that brewery A in state B has a great stout but I would have preferred to know about the IPA philosophy of that brewery and how it was brewed to showcase the hops used. If that means less beers focused on, that is fine. I would rather have read ten longer pieces that detailed ten different IPA’s than a Top 10 list however well curated.

All of that is not to say that Complete IPA is not helpful. It is. It is succinct and clear and the beers that appear in the book are fine choices. (Though L.A. got extremely short shrift with only Beachwood getting a page for Amalgamator and Smog City getting a quick mention.) I really like Bernstein’s writing style as well. For such a narrow-ish topic, the book never gets repetitive with its adjectives. For what it wants to do, it is absolutely fine.

In the end, I am also still waiting for a history of the IPA in America to date.

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On Beer


One of my favorite book series is the Best of {insert year} books. You can choose comics, sports writing, fiction, or my choice Food. Usually I am disappointed that there is not an article or two about beer. There is great short and long form writing out there that should be exposed to new eyes.

Which is why I am glad to see that there is, at least, a British tinted anthology of the best writing about beer. Pulled together by Adrian Tierney-Jones with the title Beer, In So Many Words.

You get current writers like Boak and Bailey, Roger Protz, Jeff Evans, Melissa Cole and Pete Brown co-mingled with famous authors of the past such as Dylan Thomas, Ian Rankin, Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene and Charles Dickens.

You can go from page one to final page about the typeface or you can jump between themed sections from The Taste of Beer, Beer in Pubs, Beer People, Brewing, Beer Journeys, Beer and Food and The Meaning of Beer.

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THE Belgian Beer Book


To break ourselves out of lupulin stupor hazy or otherwise, might I suggest getting a last minute gift about Belgian beer?

The Belgian Beer Book by Erick Verdonck and Luc De Raedemaeker has a lofty title and covers Belgian beer and its place in Belgian culture topics that range from history, beer styles, how not to be an Uglier American than our “president” then tourism and beer cuisine.

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A Book & A Beer – Valiant Ambition by Nathaniel Phillbrick

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In this time of political upheaval, I feel pulled to re-read history to see that it wasn’t all peaches and cream when our (possibly now damaged beyond repair) democracy was being created.

Which is why I picked up Valiant Ambition by Nathaniel Philbrick. And my first thought upon putting it down was, “Why couldn’t this be taught in history class?”

There is so much intrigue and infighting and messy back-and-forth’s and impossible to believe parts that you can’t help but turn the page.

This book focuses on two people for a limited time frame. George Washington and Benedict Arnold from mid Revolutionary War to just before the end of the war. Both men are interesting in vastly different ways. Reading about the uncertainty in Washington as he made wartime decisions and the brashness of Arnold which helped him win battles but certainly didn’t win him friends is fascinating.

Also to know that Arnold was wounded twice in the leg. One time so badly that it took him months to recover after almost losing it adds to the complete picture of the man who finally became so disillusioned and poor that he felt he had no recourse but to turn traitor.

To drink with this book, with its description of the privations of the army at (especially Valley Forge) puts me in the mood for something dark and heavy. Add something that would be understandable to a military man back in 1776 too.

Heavy Seas Peg Leg Imperial Stout – the leg is integral to the story as are the seas & waterways of the East Coast.

Sam Adams New World Tripel – Obvious to choose a patriot who gets passing mention in the book but also a strong hearty beer with spices that remind of the maritime trade.

DC Brau Penn Quarter Porter – Even though the capitol was not yet set in DC, the whole area was well trodden Washington ground.

…and you can finish with the classic Liberty Ale from Anchor Brewing.

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A Book & A Beer – Inside the Apple

It has become a habit for me to bring a history book or a historical novel when I travel on vacation.  So when I celebrated my wedding anniversary in New York, I Kindle’d up, Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.  The history / walking tour book of Manhattan is by Michelle and James Nevius.
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The book covers a lot of historical ground. Literally. You go from street to street and building to building through the Isle of Manhattan learning about Peter Stuyvesant, Alexander Hamilton and even a bit on Lady Liberty.

The book comes in bite sized chapters that focus in on an area and an era. So you can easily and quickly read a chapter on the subway while heading towards it. Or read it as you are walking through Central Park, like we did. Learning that they had to kick my wife’s kind (the Irish) out of what would become the most iconic park in the country.

The other part of the book are turn by turn tours of areas covered in the history section of the book.

The writing is crisp and clear and imparts loads of knowledge. Did you know the term “The Great White Way” was coined after a snowstorm and only took on more meaning later.

To read this book whilst in Los Angeles, I would first suggest decamping to one of the new Shake Shacks in town and ordering up a burger and a Brooklyn Brewery beer.

Then mix-six some SixPoint Ales and look at the clever Statue hidden in the grocery scan.

As a nod to the nickname, I might also find a hard cider, maybe something from Reverend Nat’s like his Winter Abbey Cider.