Category: Beer Books

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A Book & A Beer – The Age of Dreaming

The City of Glendale is now onto the 9th One Book – One Glendale. And the selected book comes from the author Nina Revoyr, The Age of Dreaming.
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I have to admit that I almost stopped reading this book in a couple of spots. I don’t want to say the book was simplistic but everything fell into place neatly. Even the murder and racism and Hollywood-ism’s were all tied with generic bows.

The Age of Dreaming tells the story of Jun Nakayama a silent film star who we see in flashbacks to his acting days and then in old age in the 1960’s. He is a native of Japan who comes to America to study and ends up (in short order) as a film star. But tumult, in the form of two leading ladies and the murder of a director lead him to stop acting.

The lead character is naïve to the life and people around him in both the 20’s and 60’s which makes it hard to really root for him. I kept wanting to tell the guy that girl A loves him but he doesn’t recognize it in the book until near the end. He doesn’t recognize that the director is gay despite numerous ham-handed clues from the author too.

I know that stupid decisions are needed to move some plots forward. Sometimes the obstacle for a character is self-created but everyone in this book seems to be creating issues that were a small step away from cliché. A producer who changes the script from thoughtful drama to action oriented. The fading star who has a crush on the director. The starlet with the stage mom and crush on the director.

I felt like there was a thoughtful book about minorities in early film that could have been written or a straight up mystery with more Ellroy or Hammett to it. This book just did not do it for me.

For beer to go with the book, my first thought went to the Cream Ale from Angel City Brewing. Although the name of the beer is Marilyn, it is still movie related and life tragedy related as well. Another is Craftsman Brewing and their 1903 lager which isn’t as cool nowadays that LA has more breweries but a chapter of the book is set in Pasadena so I think it works especially since the book is light as a feather like the beer. If I could be snarky, I would recommend the Espresso Stout from Hitachino Nest. It matches the characters heritage and will keep you up when the book isn’t holding your interest.

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A Book & A Beer – Best Food Writing of 2015

So the book for March is a collection of pieces about food and it is a book that I get every year to catch the pulse of food and what is being written about in the last year.
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The Best Food Writing of 2015 has quite a few recipes that I flip right by because I enjoy the commentary and how food affects people.

This year there was a sorta running theme of “not having time to cook and that being OK.” which probably came as a relief to anyone (OK, mostly women) who have to generate a dinner a day if not more for 52 weeks a year. The piece by Tamar Haspel about less complaining struck a nerve with me.

I also was fascinated by Nashville Hot Chicken which I had never heard of up until this year plus the story of bringing non-meat meat-like products to market from El Segundo, California. Another cool piece was At Your Service? By Oliver Strand about “omotenashi” or extra hospitality, as I call it.

To pair with the stories, I would go with some spice accented beers. And I will recommend two from Burnside Brewing.

First would be Spring Rye a pale ale with Ultra hops and Coriander. Next up would be Sweet Heat a heated mix of Apricots and Scotch Bonnet peppers on a base of wheat beer.

For those not near Portland, Saison du Buff from the trio of Victory Brewing, Dogfish Head and Stone would provide the herbal kick that would nicely accent the book.

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Book Review – Gin – The Manual

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Now this was what I was looking for in a Gin book. Gin: The Manual by Dave Broom laid out the topic, made it easy to understand and helped this gin novice/intermediate learn more about the spirit.

My needs for books about spirits or wine diverge sharply from what I need from a beer book. I have read plenty of craft beer books and don’t need to read another truncated summary of beer history or overview of the brewing process but for gin, I need that now to learns the in’s and out’s of the distillation.

The “manual” starts with the history before heading into the How of adding botanicals to a base spirit. Then the brunt of the book is a page-by-page listing of different gins but there is a great pair of twists to it. One is that he slots each gin into one of five different flavor categories. More importantly he isn’t dogmatic about putting each gin into only one. If one exhibits characteristics of two, Broom notes it. The other twist is that he rates not just on the gin neat. He offers up different cocktails and rates each one as a G&T, Martini and other drinks to further flesh out what each gin is like. The recipe section at the back was just the right size for me. Broom apologizes for it’s shortness but a cocktail recipe book this isn’t meant to be.

The layout and design of the book is easy on the eyes and showcases each bottle and label in a straightforward manner. The green from the cover and the plain stylistic choice continues through the pages. The tone throughout the reviews and recipes is more of a friendly bartender. One from Britain who spells things a skosh differently which, to me adds to the small joys of the book.

There could have been more words used to discuss the gin variants and how they fit into the universe. Maybe a diagram of some sorts to show what Old Tom is vs. London Dry Gin vs Genever or fruited Gins. Also the U.S. section felt a little thin to me but considering Broom seemed to have drunk each one and made cocktails with each, I can understand that his liver probably couldn’t take the pounding.

Otherwise this is a great first book for those looking into gin and distilling and would make an excellent reference book to reach back to from time to time. Plus I learned about Purl – aromatized beer with gin added. Something to research for the future.

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A Book & A Beer – Mycroft Holmes

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We head to the realm of prequel in this month’s A Book & A Beer with the backstory for the elder Holmes brother, in the book Mycroft Holmes.

What makes this peek into a little mentioned character in the books who has been enlarged upon in TV and movies is that the novel was co-written by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Yes, that one. As well as Anna Waterhouse who has screenwriting credits on her resume.

The actions begins at a crew race in England but spends the bulk of the time on the island of Trinidad. Where there is a rash of killings with an apparent supernatural bent. The book re-creates the winning formula of a Holmes brother with a trusted friend at his side, using his wits to solve a crime. There are turncoats and near death adventures before the final coup de grace is delivered by Mycroft back in England with the Queen in attendance.

To start off the beer choices, the first selection is Carib Royal Extra Stout from the Carib Brewery on the island. Staying in the dark malt realm and tying in the profit motive of the mystery is Oil Piers Porter from Surf Brewing here in California. Then I would add the IPA from the Cigar City Humidor Series to honor Douglas the cigar man and right hand to Mycroft.

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Book Review – The Spirit of Gin

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I think I would like and get along with Matt Teacher, the author of The Spirit of Gin, more than I enjoyed reading his “Stirring Miscellany of the New Gin Revival”.

After reading the Kindle version of the Spirit of Gin, I went to Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena for two reasons.

One.  To see if the layout of the book was butchered by trying to fit into the e-format and two, to find a better book on gin because minus a few points learned this book was not what I needed to learn about gin.

I feel spoiled by Tasting Whiskey by Lew Bryson. It has set a high bar for books about spirits. And Teacher’s book doesn’t even come close to that height.

A few reasons why: The photo placement is random. There is no history of gin except for a couple limited paragraphs. There are so many recipes that you would think it is a cocktail book and not a “miscellany”.  The organization/skeleton of the book seems haphazard.  And according to the percentage read stats, a good 25% is just a list of gins and distillers.

Now that the litany of complaints is mostly complete, we come to my major issue. The tone of the author is weak. Teacher can’t project a newbie vibe which could work well and draw other people in for the ride and certainly doesn’t project an authority of gin information. He closes each and every interview with slight variants of “and I said thank you and left.”  It drove me crazy. His handling of interviews was hamhanded. A simple Q&A would have been better suited to his writing style.

What I was looking for as a fan (albeit mostly through gin & tonics) was a history, a primer on styles, distillery practices and examples to start a tasting.  What I got was a limited prohibition history with a catalog of gins.

And that is why I went to the bookstore, to get more knowledge.

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A Book & A Beer – Slade House

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This month we delve into the interlocked world of David Mitchell and his haunted house mystery, Slade House.

First, a little digression. Most people know the author David Mitchell from the Cloud Atlas book that became a movie with Tom Hanks and Halle Berry. Now that book was fine but I really liked Black Swan Green more and I grew to like The Bone Clocks and the Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet more as well.

It helps to know when reading from the Mitchell oeuvre that characters from one book might wash ashore in another and that souls don’t seem to be anchored down very tightly either.

Back to Slade House, until the end it is a horror/fantasy straight out of the X-Files. A sibling duo that needs to feed every nine years to power their lifestyle. Then they choose the wrong person at the end, a leading Bone Clocks character ends the story and ties it into the other books.

For beers, gotta go dark and British and well evil is connected to the color black so first up is Black House from Modern Times followed by Black Cab from Fuller’s a thoroughly English Porter.

Or in a nod to name dropping that Mitchell does so well, maybe a dark mild from Timothy Taylor since Jason Taylor from Black Swan Green shares a name with the brewer.

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Beer Book Review – Oh Beautiful Beer!

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Oh Beautiful Beer by Harvey Shepard is a fitting title for the excellent design on the pages inside. Each and every page has a very well executed design on a bottle label, on the bottle itself or on a can.

The main strength of the book is the hardest. Which labels to pick and which do not make the cut, surprisingly, there are many pages of beers that I either never drunk or have never heard of before. I appreciated that many of the examples were from outside of the US. Beer geeks get a little too U.S. centered at times and it is refreshing to see how design and packaging is done out of our little bubble.

This type of book lives and dies on the photography and layout. On this aspect, Shephard has fully delivered. The photos are crisp and clear and take in all the angles of this 3D art form.

I do wish that the book was bigger. That is probably an economic choice but even after lingering on the many details of certain pages, I was done with the book far too quickly. If more photos could not be included, I would have liked to see more opinion and discussion of each label. My biggest letdown in the book was that there would be a two page spread of a really interesting design and no words about it other than the design house.

I would like to also have seen a little bit of information on the governmental restrictions of labels and how design can be used to overcome regulatory handcuffs.

If you want to see if you like the book before purchasing, you should check out Shepard’s blog from whence this book sprang.

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Cookies & Beer

Today’s theme is the sweet tooth of beer and we start with a book that a Cookie Monster and a beer geek monster would love, Cookies & Beer a new cook(i.e.)book by Jonathan Bender.
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For all the home brewers out there with an over abundance of spent grain, here is another way to use it, with chocolate chips.

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A Beer & A Book (& A TV Show) – Modern Romance

I still have two episodes of Masters of None to watch so no spoilers but this fictionalized extension of the book Modern Romance shows Aziz Ansari in his glorious irony.
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I strongly suggest reading the book first. Most books by comedians, even the good ones, are just written versions of routines or a riff on a topic that they are known for cracking wise about. Modern Romance is more sociological, more historical and more about his own life and family then it is funny. And that is despite the fact that it is really funny too. The chapter about breaking up in the modern age of smart phones and emoji’s is really illuminating about how different my crew of Gen X’ers handle life versus how the Millenials do. God how I hate typing those stereotypical words but they get the point across.

Once you have finished the book, move over to Netflix and watch Master of None. Inspired casting and big themes that can come across a little heavy handed if not for the fact that they aren’t talked about outside of Amy Schumer.  Dealing with parents, dealing with sexism and how to date talked about in sitcom form but still bristling with points being made.  Good stuff.

When it comes to beer, since phones are so prevalent in book and TV show, how about 805 from Firestone Walker or Goose Island 312 Wheat Beer would fit that bill and are both easy to find.

Food plays a role in both as well so how about a Jalapeno Sculpin from Ballast Point or Seme Della Vita from Monkish Brewing with pistachios.

Frankly any good session beer that you can drink while binge watching 10 episodes would work too.

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A Toast to NaNoWriMo

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It is that time of year again, when I take fingers to keyboard and attempt to write a coherent novella under the umbrella of NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month.

I did it, that first year, because my sister and a nephew or two were doing it. But now I find it a taxing but rewarding way to force myself to write. Maybe not any better or any clearer but to set the mind to thinking about stringing words together in new patterns. Not that I would force anyone to read the drivel. Probably wouldn’t make for the basis of a bad screenplay.

It can be hard to blog consistently. Just look at the beer blogs that don’t have any new posts. Not even cut and pasted press releases! Inspiration needs to be found at times and also re-charging needs to be done. Otherwise it can become a chore.

Raise a glass then to all those who are giving it a run and maybe spread a little hashtag #NaNoWriMo love to those who have added another deadline to their lives.