Category: Beer Books

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Book Review – So You Want to Start a Brewery?

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Hope you like books!  ‘Cause there will be few more coming down the pike due to the Christmas, what to get Sean rush.  I will hold back and not review any non-related beer books though.  No, The Martian or Midnight in Siberia or Beautiful Chaos for you lot.

Next up is the story of how Lagunitas Brewing came to be in So You Want to Start a Brewery? by Tony Magee.  This story meanders a bit.  But once you are a few pages in, you realize that is by design.  The Lagunitas Story is a winding digression of a brewery story.  And akin to the Sierra Nevada history, the fact that they are alive and brewing is a near miracle.

I was seriously amazed by the shoestring budget and the financial hurdles that Magee endured to bring the brewery to Petaluma and Chicago.  You learn the backstory on how Brown Shugga’ came to be in a late night mistake fix.  The Undercover Weed investigation proceedings.  And more importantly you learn a bit about the culture that is imbued into the brand.  From the design of the labels to the taste of the beers.

This book is a bit on the tell-all side which I expected form an outsized figure like Magee who has been known to call out people on social media.  But as the book goes along, you can’t help but side with him.  I expect someone could write a companion volume that focuses on the negative aspects which would be just as truthful.

What surprised me was the ending of the book.  Not the Chicago brewery epilogue but Magee’s take on where he has been and what he has learned.  In particular, this chunk has still stuck with me:

So, after all the time and all the histrionics, what is the net result? What are we, where are we going, and what do we mean? Those are the questions every twenty- one- year- old asks himself. Twenty- one happens to be the brewery’s current age— a time of necessary choices and uncertain paths. For my part, I hold this question as central to the reeling in and rolling forward of this company. We don’t want to be just “whatever we are” in the future, because I think we have become something interesting now and are worthy of a good life as a brand among brands in a world that we helped to create. The answers to these questions are important for us to know going forward, so that we can play out our strengths. It’s a delicate thing to write about, the future.

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Fictional

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Fiction Beer Company is not made up.  It is non-fiction by definition. Founded by a book fan and a beer fan their tag line is “Crafting liquid literature”. And I love the branding via book styles:

The Classics:
“Like a good book you read over and over, our classics are beers you may be familiar with such as an IPA, Wit, or a Scotch Ale. Just because they are classics doesn’t mean they have to be boring; our brewers utilize their creative license to alter the same old stories to create a new experience.”

Mystery & Adventure:
“Think of a page-turner. Something to keep your attention, keep you guessing and keep you wondering what is coming next. Interesting flavors, varying styles, seasonal elements, all coming together to keep you drinking.”

Fantasy & Science-Fiction:
“Imagination is the only limit here. As an author might dream up a far-away world full of magic and outlandish creatures, these beers are conjured using a variety of techniques and ingredients to create a complex elixir for those who wish to try something out of this world. Sour, barrel aged and brett beers are just the beginning …”

Choose your own Adventure:
“Beer flights. Choose what you want to drink and in what order. We may suggest an optimal path of consumption; however, we leave it up to you—choose wisely.”

Makes me want to grab a good book and sit down with a pint. But what to pair with a romance?

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Book Review – Brew Brittania

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One of the first beer book purchases of Christmas was this British book from Boak & Bailey.  Two names that should geek out beer bloggers.  Brew Brittania is a revelation to someone like me, who knows next to nothing about the British version of the craft beer “re-birth”.  And I apologize in advance for the repetitive comparisons to us and them.

Many know about the American beer revolution and the stories of New Albion, Cartwright and Anchor but what about other countries? British beer had the same downward trajectory that American beer had.  A trending toward monopoly.  A trending toward lager.  And they pulled out of that nosedive like we did.

This book covers the post-war British scene and rolls forward to current time.  And it does so clearly and confidently.  You learn about who started what breweries and organizations and the major players and charts how the current scene came about. It is a history book that also has a clear line of opinion through it.  Which is a mixture that I truly like.  And it treads that line very well in respect to the one organization that British beer has that the U.S. certainly did not.  CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale.

If you think beer bloggers have become a bit divided here, CAMRA has us trumped in causing factions.  But without them, I do not know where British Craft brewing would be.  And that is the fair point that is delved into in the book.  You see the whole arc of the organization and how it has to come to a bit of crossroads now.  You will have more respect for CAMRA but will probably be more worried about what they will do next.

You also learn about how Martin Dickie went from Thornbidge to BrewDog.  There is also a solid appraisal of BrewDog in the pages that shows why they PR tweak people and some of their mis-steps in that regard.  All the stuff before they started touring America for TV.

British beer lingo is on display too. Cuckoos being my favorite. Brewers who use another breweries system in off hours. Or Loopy Juice, a term for what I gather is sub-par homebrew.

At the end, I have so many places that I want to visit now.  Magic Rock, The Euston Tap, Barley Mow and Wild Beer in particular.  But what the strong suit for me was the timeline in the book.  I will be referencing when Cascade hops hopped the pond, the rise of Michael Jackson and many other turning points from this book.

Brew Brittania is a tremendous read that really illuminates a slice of beer history. And it truly answers the question posited in its early page, ” How did beer get so hip?”

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Session # 95 – The Next Great Beer Book

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A Good Beer Blog is at the reins of the first blogging session of 2015 and has posed a very thought provoking topic for one, such as myself, that thinks bookstore gift cards are the best.

What beer book which has yet to be written would you like to see published?

“What is the book you would want to write about good beer? What book would you want to read? Is there a dream team of authors your would want to see gathered to make that “World Encyclopedia of Beer and Brewing”? Or is there one person you would like to see on a life long generous pension to assure that the volumes flow from his or her pen? Let us know. ”

There are times when it would be easier to make a list of often used and over used beer topics.

Be it invoking Ninkasi or Alewives in beer history, short summations of the brewing process, the 10-50-100 or 1,000 Beers you MUST try or how to start a brewery by an irreverent brewer.  Worthy topics all.  But they have been done and covered both badly and well.

Instead of broad histories or an inventory of a beer style, I would like to peek behind the curtain, so to speak, of the Humulus Lupulin.

I can hear the howls of hypocrite.  How dare you call some books re-hashes and then propose a book about the most hyped beer ingredient that fuels a hop boom that shows no sign of abating and crowds out other styles on tap and in bottles.

But I propose something more focused.  Specifically on the both the science and art of designing and growing a new hop from start to finish.  We hear code designations bandied about.  Then a fancy name gets attached like Mosaic or Mandarina.  But I want to know (in laymans terms) how the cross of Hop Parent # 1 with Hop Parent # 2, creates Equinox.  I want to see a hop family tree.  I want to hear from the farmers from Washington to New York states and the scientists at UC-Davis and Oregon State.

Since hops in brewing has been covered by Mitch Steele and hops in history and practice extensively covered by For the Love of Hops by Stan Hieronymus, with Pete Brown hitting the history of IPA angle, the narrative should hone in on one single hop.  The tension coming from will it be successful both from an agricultural standpoint and successful in a beer.  Akin to focusing on a bill becoming a law and then analyzing the impact of that law.

Side by side with this narrative could be digressions to see how some hops became name brands like Citra and why other hops labor in obscurity or become workhorses and not stars. Or a discussion of buying hop futures and how that affects the brewing schedules.  Maybe get a look into the world of HopUnion and finish off with plunge into tasting the winner of an Alpha King competition of the Great American Beer Festival.

The journey of hop from drawing board to pint glass.  It could be called, The Bitterness Project.

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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.”