Category: Beer Books

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Book Review – Bitter by Jennifer McLagan

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Bitter: A Taste of the World’s Most Dangerous Flavor is not the typical read for me.  I was hoping for a biography of sorts of bitterness.  I wanted to understand why the bitterness of hops is so appealing to me (as is citrus) whereas vegetables like broccoli or Brussel Sprouts are major turn offs in aroma and taste.

What the book is, is mostly recipes.  Some intriguing like Beer Jelly and others with ingredients that I would rather leave out of my kitchen.  There is information of both historical and cooking types inside the covers but it is more of an aside and less the main thrust of the tale.  Case in point: An excellent two pages on how sound affects eating pleasure. It was intelligent to point out how airplane sound is one if the reasons that food a mile high is unappetizing. The photography though is amazing.  Simple but detailed.  Close enough to really see the items on display and well staged.

Jennifer McLagan is an engaging writer whose personality shines through and I did learn about entemological backgrounds of grapefruit and other foods but I just did not get enough to reach the level of what I desired to learn.

Perhaps there is another book out there on this taste.

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Book Review – The Brewer’s Tale by William Bostwick

Due to Santa being of advanced age, I found out via wayward e-mail that I would be getting this book for Christmas; which is tomorrow.

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Which means that I got to read it early! And I am glad I did. I have been in a rut of bad books, repetitive books and flat out uninteresting reads. The Brewer’s Tale is none of those things.

It is broken up into eight categories like The Patriot and The Monk to illustrate both a brewing era and an archetype of brewer. You get opinions from Jim Koch and Sam Calagione as well as points of actual view from iconoclasts such as Brian Hunt of Moonlight Brewing. And each chapter gets a home brewed beer that is actually woven into the text very well.

One of my signs that a book has been enjoyed is the amount of dog-eared pages. And there were many in this book. Be it quotes from Martin Luther to the Devil, the names of Elizabethan ales or a quote about the glory of the inefficient hand-made.

William Bostwick has covered a lot of ground, educated me and done so in under 250 pages. It is as if, a trusted writer had synthesized beer history and put it into a slender volume. All while sharing a personal point of view.

Of course there are a couple of things that I would change. Somehow Logsdon Ales ended up in Washington State instead of Hood River, Oregon and the old chestnut about how big beer makes uniform quality beer is there.  But it read more like a having a discussion with a well versed beer buddy where I felt that I could chime in with my opinion as well.

As you can probably tell, I highly recommend this book.  It is up there with Ian Coutt’s book the Perfect Keg for readability and accessibility.

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Beer Book Review – We Make Beer

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I so wanted to really like this book.  A book based solely on the personalities of brewers and brewery owners.  No lengthy prologue on how to make beer, no list of top beers, or another re-hashing of why and how craft beer came to be. Plus the author has a great first name!

But “We Make Beer” by Sean Lewis felt thin.  Clocking in at close to 200 pages, I sped through it in one afternoon.  On the positive side that meant the book was never boring.  I have many books this year that were just like slogging through mud.  This was lively with a far ranging cast of characters.  I learned about the genesis of brewing operations from Nebraska to the East Coast with stops to talk with Greg Koch, Jeff Bagby, A.J. Stoll and Matt Brynildson for those of us in California.

But rather than format the book to have a chapter cover one brewer or brewery, each chapter was split between two.  This led to a somewhat disjointed structure where you would be happily reading about one person and then that would get dropped to talk about another one.  Typical of the problem was a paragraph and 1/2 mention of the brewing scene in Bend, Oregon.  I started to think that I would get a tidbit of info about a scene that I know little about but it was not to be.  ‘Twas a teaser and then gone, not to be mentioned again.

I can tell if a beer book is good by how many dog-ears I have made.  There were a total of four here.  One being a mention of Sriracha ace and writer Randy Clemens.  I liked the mention of IPA as an acronym for “improves profits automatically” and there was an all too-brief passage about consistency and uniformity in a small batch crafted product that I could see being turned into an impressive full length magazine article.  But I found little else of import in the pages.

That doesn’t mean that others would find it lacking.  A newcomer to craft beer might see this as a whole new world.  But from the standpoint of a blogger who has read quite a few books about the fermented arts, this seemed to touch on topics that have already been covered.  Either focus on one brewer or expand the stories.

And I must say, I was turned off by the attitude of the main brewer who is a through thread from page 1 to the end.  Andris Veidis from Blue Hills Brewery is introduced as someone who makes fun of a beer geek (OK maybe a snob) who had the temerity to explain the flavors that he was getting to the brewer and in return is immortalized as out-of-touch and not understanding the awesomeness the brewer had achieved.  It gives the book from page 4 a tone of, brewer as can’t do wrong while consumers are a fickle lot to often swayed by hops and the interwebs.

Maybe it is me.  The back jacket has praise from Maureen Ogle, Steve Hindy and Jim Koch. But I found this book too slight to recommend.

 

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The Brewer’s Tale

William Bostwick has penned a new book on the evolution of brewing through history. The Brewer’s Tale about “Jumping through time as he weaves ancient lore with today’s craft scene,”

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Since Bostwick is a journalist with a Wall Street Journal pedigree, I expect this book to be well researched especially if it wants to cover 5,000 years of beer in 300 pages.

It is on my reading list, so when I have finished, expect a review here.

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Scientific Beer

Since I watch a “bit” of sci-fi, I will occasionally hear the name Michael Faraday. Finally, I checked out a biography of his life and scientific experiments and toward the middle, I ran across this paragraph that links him to Charles Dickens and the science behind beer.

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Digging a step further, I found the article on the Chemistry of a Pint of Beer online. And it is a fascinating read. In a short few pages I ran across little gems like these

“There’s a great many beers. There’s porter, there’s heavy, or brown stout, and there’sstrong beer, and ales of ever so many sorts,
and, then, there’s swipes.” What the heck is a swipe?

“….the difference between the beers of different places depends, for one thing, on the kind of water they are brewed from.” So very true.

“By his account, beer was so brewed from potatoes by a Monsieur Dubrunfaut, a Frenchman; and we are told it ‘resembled the beer which is made in Paris.’ Perhaps it may resemble, and something more, not a little of the beer that is sold in London, too.” I like the use of the qualifier, “resembled”

“….to have one’s beer turn sour is a great misfortune, in a domestic and economical point of view.” Not as true nowadays.

“The root of the sweet flag, coriander and carraway seeds, orange-peel, and other aromatics, are also used to give beer that flavour, which, if properly made, it would derive, without any such medical treatment, from malt and hops.” English wit-biers?

“Lastly, there are drugs which are put into beer merely to increase its fuddling power—Cocculus Indicus, St. Ignatius’s Bean, Nux Vomica, or Ratsbane, Opium and Tobacco.” OPIUM!  That is crazy.  Makes the tobacco dry hopping seem tame.

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Sustainable Home Brewing

Every little bit counts.  Even if you don’t brew on an industrial scale, you can be as cognizant about sustainability.  Creativity with spent grains is one step.  And that is where the book Sustainable Homebrewing by Amelia Slayton Loftus comes in.

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Loftus “covers the whys and hows of organic brewing, things to consider when buying equipment, and everything you need to know about organic ingredients (what makes them different, how to get them, and how to make substitutions). ”

And more importantly new to me considering the sun and lack of water in California, “You’ll learn how to brew sustainably by growing ingredients yourself, recycling water, using solar energy, and achieving zero waste.”

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Bitter – the Book

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I am a fan of books about beer, spirits and wine. But I also am intrigued by the science behind those three beverages too. Which is why I read with great interest on the NPR blog, The Salt about a new book that delves into the topic of bitter, the flavor. Check out the full post HERE. If I can get my hands on this book, I will review it here.

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Book Review – Proof – The Science of Booze

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Adam Rogers has pulled off a pretty good feat.  Making science not seem so science-y.  Plus he introduced me to quite a few historical characters involved one way or another with making wine, spirits and our favorite beer.

Proof follows the ABV trail from the yeast to the hangover in linear fashion with many fascinating stops in between.

Some of the chapters mesh together better than others. Yeast is one. The characters and the science and the history meld together to get one point across. The same for the chapters on the effect of alcohol on the human body (and mind).

Others suffer from being a bit muddled mixed with trying to cover too much ground. I felt the fermentation chapter typified that issue. I would have liked more on the science of it even if it did ever into repeating some of the earlier information.

That being said, the problem was more of too much of a good thing and not too little. And you will probably not look at hangovers the same way after reading how Rogers gently debunks cures ad remedies, old and new. It was my second favorite part of the book after yeast.

The one take-away from the book that has stayed with me the longest is the idea of a “confused culture”. One that indulges in alcohol but also prohibits it or rails against it. We Americans have taken that term to a whole new level and not only with alcohol. Sex, celebrity and food all spring to mind.

Maybe if we all understood how ABV affects us, we would be better equipped to deal with its aftermath.

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Book Review – The Craft Beer Revolution

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The Craft Beer Revolution by Steve Hindy is the behind-the-scenes business version of craft beer’s rise in the last 40+ years.  Think of it as a companion piece to The Audacity of Hops by Tom Acitelli which charted the rise from the brewing and people perpective.

I almost forgot the sub-title: How a Band of Microbrewers is Transforming the World’s Favorite Drink.

Hindy, was a co-founder of the very influential Brooklyn Brewery.  Which has given the craft beer community such great beers as Local 1 and their Black Chocolate Stout and Sorachi Ace.  It is also where beer luminary Garrett Oliver brews.  So their roots are deep.

At first, I thought this was going to be all old news but by the middle of the book, I was gaining new knowledge about people as diverse as Kim Jordan of New Belgium and the recently passed Jack Joyce of Rogue.  And unwittingly, (I think) Hindy makes Boston Beer and Jim Koch into a special interest irritant.  I finished the book thinking less of Koch and the Sam Adams brand.

Of more interest to me was Chapter 7 – Beer and the Media.  But this chapter, while providing the back story to RateBeer and BeerAdvocate doesn’t have the insights that start to occur with more frequency as the book goes along.  I would think that mentioning Jay Brooks or Jeff Alworth or beer bloggers in general would warrant a paragraph or two.

But where the Media chapter falls flat, the chapter on distributors is more illuminating.  Maybe because I know less, so I am more apt to be amazed by facts like Reyes Beverage Group being the largest distributor in the US and it started in 1976.  A skosh before the craft cause.  And drilling down, the laws and changing alliances around taxes and states rights and the emergence of the BA is all fascinating stuff.  You can almost picture what would have happened if events had happened differently.

And when Hindy reaches what he calls the “Third Generation” the book really kicked into high gear.  I was dog-earing pages left and right.  Discussion of what size works best from multiple viewpoints is a topic for a whole book alone.  And hearing about a CSA style of brewery started me to thinking about how that could work here in Los Angeles.

But the summation quote came from Dan Carey of New Glarus in Wisconsin and I am so glad that it is now immortalized in book form.  Carey says, “The idea of the huge megashippers is not the norm.  That was the deviation.  We are not the deviation.”  I have often thought about craft vs. the BMC in terms of going back to the roots but I hadn’t thought about it as succinctly as that.

Overall, this book book works more on the political and business level than on the love of beer level.  Though that sentiment hangs over the book.  And as I said before, it is a great companion to the Audacity of Hops.  Together they make a great history lesson on craft beer.  Where we were and where we are going.

 

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Book Review – The Perfect Keg

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Perhaps word has gotten out that I love books about beer.  Because every twice-in-a-while, I will get  a new book to read and I was glad to get The Perfect Keg by Ian Coutts.  With the appended longer title of “Sowing, scythng, malting and brewing my to the best-ever pint of beer.”

What I liked most about this book was the honesty.  This isn’t a book about going from point A to B in a straight and unerring line.  This is a book with fits and starts.  There are learning curves and mishaps.  Two steps forward and one back.  But it is written in such a go-get’em tone that you are rooting for Coutts to make that Perfect Keg a reality.

There are home-brew recipes sprinkled throughout the book but not being a brewer home or otherwise, I was more interested by the the process of really doing a “local” beer.  There is a lot of lip service paid to local and community driven beer whilst deliveries from across the world come in the back of the brewery.  And I think it is very important to be more transparent about the whole affair.  If brewery A can only afford malt from a certain place then so be it.  There is no dishonor there.

And this book, though ostensibly only about brewing one special batch at home with local malt, yeast and hops really brings the point to a sharper point.  What do you do if the malt isn’t coming out of the ground in enough quantity?  How do you coax hops to grow in an area not conducive to hop bines?  What is the history of brewing in the area?

There are trips to professors of Agriculture.  Talks with brewers and farmers here that will add to the craft beer fan’s knowledge of brewing.  My favorite section of the book though is about the whole malting process and all of the conflicting advice and wisdom that is out there.  And trying to cobble together a Rube Goldberg malting set-up is one of the funnier (now, probably not then) parts of the book.

This is an easy and fun read that has a lot more going on than the typical craft beer book.

I also got the opportunity to ask the author Ian, a few questions.  Some will appear right now (others in Beer Paper LA in the future)….

1. How do you compare the beer scenes in Canada and the US?

We are a) catching up and b) slightly ahead. Let me explain. I think in most of English Canada, we are playing catch-up with the U.S. Despite all the jokes that Canadians traditionally made about American beer, honest Canadians have known for a decade or more that the Americans were way out there in terms of imaginative craft brewing – think of those West Coast Pale Ales that have conquered the world, for example. To my mind, craft brewing here for the longest time was still stuck back in the early days when a slightly hopped brownish ale could occasion utter hysteria. But I think we’re catching up.

But then there’s the slightly ahead part. And that’s Quebec. Beer-wise, they don’t just march to the beat of a different drum, it’s a completely different band. When craft beer started to take off in the 1980s, they were in there with live yeast beers, decades before anyone else. Belgian styles, French styles, beers made with spruce needles or hibiscus – even without any malted grains at all — craft brewers there will try anything and the audience is always up for something new.

2.  What Canadian breweries do you suggest Americans get to know?

That’s a tough one because, as in the U.S., craft brewing is highly regional. I am sure there are fantastic beers in British Columbia or Nova Scotia that I have never heard of here in Ontario. But I can recommend a few from my part of the world. Beau’s does neat beers – one-offs, seasonals, they keep mixing it up. I like Church Key’s Holy Smoke – made with smoked malt, there is nothing else quite like it up here. And then there’s Quebec. Three firms there that do daring beers are Les Trois Mousquetaires, Le Castor and Grimoire. Unibroue was one of the first Quebec craft brewers. They were bought out, but still do good stuff. And if you ever find yourself in the Ottawa region, cross the river and head for a shop called Bieres du Monde in Aylmer, Quebec. This guy stocks 300 different beers – all from Quebec.