Category: Beer Books

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Blitzing

Ron Pattinson if the Shut Up About Barclay Perkins blog has been amassing a history of brewing in the United Kingdom and his latest chunk of the timeline has been released ( find it HERE ) .

Blitzkrieg! covers the World War II years and along the other three books: Armistice!, Peace! and Austerity!. The years 1914 to 1973 are now accounted for.

Blitzkrieg! is in two parts, according to Pattinson, “the first volume cover all the fun history bits: brewing materials, techniques and equipment. Along with beer styles and background information about taxation, pubs and brewing restrictions.” The second volume has the recipes along with more brewery information.

The next book is in the pipeline, Free!, covers the years from 1880 to 1914. 

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Desi Pubs

Followers of the blog know that I have not given up on the beer and food pairing idea and I feel a bit vindicated when I see David Jesudason’s book “Desi Pubs” was released recently. It is a guidebook and history, of British-Indian bars. I think this will be fascinating even though I do not particularly care for Indian food.

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Course 2.0

Ten years ago, beer writer Joshua Bernstein published “The Complete Beer Course,” his overview of craft beer in 12 lessons.

Bernstein has a completely revised, updated, and with a new look version 2.0 out now.

If you want to hear him talk about it before you buy it, head to Radio Imbibe to listen to the podcast about it.

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Jeppson’s Malört

Jeppson’s Malört.  A spirit that only a few people have heard of but has an outsize reputation.  Personally, have not had it and being honest, I will probably read Josh Noel’s book about it before I do. Noel has written extensively about beer and penned the book on Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout so I know his style will probably work well here too.  Only downside? We have to wait until 2024.

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Peoples Brewing

Do you know who the owner of the first black owned brewery was?  I didn’t.  But if you read Clint Lanier’s book about Ted Mack and Peoples Brewing like I plan to, then we will both learn some beer history.

Here is a teaser of the story:

“Born a sharecropper in rural Alabama in 1930, Theodore A. (Ted) Mack, Sr., fought in the Korean War and then played football at Ohio State while earning a college degree. Brewing and selling beer, he believed, would be just another peak to attain. After all, it couldn’t be more challenging than his experience in organizing buses to the March on Washington or picketing segregated schools in Milwaukee. This is the story of Mack’s purchase of Peoples Brewing Company in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Though he had carefully planned for the historic acquisition, he underestimated the subtle bigotry of Middle America, the corruption of the beer industry, and the failures of the federal government that plagued his ownership. Mack’s ownership of Peoples Brewing is an inspirational story of Black entrepreneurship, innovation and pride at a time when America was at an important racial justice crossroads.”

Strangely, this book is in paperback at a first edition hard cover price, so Kindle may be the way to go.  But I would suggest plumping for the actual book at a smaller local bookstore if you can.

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Daddy Likes Beer

When I was younger, I did my share of babysitting and that was more than enough for me. So I don’t fit the group that Mike Lukaszewicz is writing for in his children’s book, Daddy Likes Beer.

Maybe he will write a sequel about Uncles.

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Beer Palate / Cider Palate

Beer is my main beverage but I dabble in gin and bourbon and also cider. Coming this fall is a new book that reaches over the gap between beer and cider from Beth Demmon.

Demmon should be on your list of beer scribes to follow. You can get a taster of her cider writing style HERE.

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Guinness Day – Dark and Light

Right up front, if you want a story about the beer of Guinness, go elsewhere.  This is a biblical style survey of a LOT of the Guinness family from the first Arthur all the way to Guinness being family free under Diageo. You learn very little of St. James Gate.

This is also not a quick or fun read.  This is slow and in tiny print with a cavalcade of names being thrown at you.  There are helpful family trees sprinkled throughout the book but even with those guideposts, it is hard to keep track especially when titles started getting added and Edwards become Lords of this or that.

A third thing that made this hard was the money being spent.  Every Guinness it seemed had more than enough money to buy house after estate after castle.  Maybe in 2023, I am too aware of the 1% lording over the rest of us that reading about it happening back then just left me a little bitter.

Those three issues aside, Wilson introduces us to so many people who are worthy of books just about them.  Granted some of these Guinnesses would need to be looked at with a very critical eye but interesting politicians, sailors, bankers and writers nonetheless.  And the financial kerfuffle of the Guinness purchase of DCL Distillers is more than likely already a book about how not to run a merger and / or acquisition.

But if you have a Guinness in the fringe and a hankering for Irish history through the prism of one extended family, you will find some interesting stories.

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A Book & A Beer – How to Be Eaten by Maria Adelmann

Faux celebrity and fifteen minutes of fame is the underlying theme of How to Be Eaten by Maria Adelmann and the author goes to some dark and stark places to bring a new perspective to popularity and its side effects.

Here is the GoodReads synopsis, it’s a doozy, “In present-day New York City, five women meet in a basement support group to process their traumas. Bernice grapples with the fallout of dating a psychopathic, blue-bearded billionaire. Ruby, once devoured by a wolf, now wears him as a coat. Gretel questions her memory of being held captive in a house made of candy. Ashlee, the winner of a Bachelor-esque dating show, wonders if she really got her promised fairy tale ending. And Raina’s love story will shock them all.”

This was a wild book. Just weirdness on every page. The fairy tale aspects didn’t work for me as much as the more reality show aspects. But it sure wasn’t a dull read at all. And I will certainly be on the lookout for future work when wandering in a bookstore.

On to the beer choices, I would try to find beers for each of the women in the group. Maybe something with rose hips or hibiscus for Ashlee. A dark Czech lager for Ruby. A pastry stout for Gretel. A black IPA for Bernice. And for Raina, maybe a beer with the label removed so you don’t know and have to guess.