The Widmer Way: How Two Brothers Led Portland’s Craft Beer Revolution.
Combined with the soon-to-be-released book on Goose Island, this history that explores the Widmer brothers live and Portland beer history up to now as part of the Craft Beer Alliance fills in much needed information about the old guard of craft beer.
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.
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.
Year of Podcasts – Gastropod
I love reading about the history of beer (and the people saying other people’s history is incorrect) and I love the scientific underpinning of beer. As of yet, there is no meshing of those two for beer in the land of podcasts but over on Gastropod, you can find a lot of information that can be taken back to our interaction with craft beer.
Especially this podcast that goes into detail about natural and artificial flavors and designer yeast…
Cans through Time
I don’t normally post graphics. Though there was a time that I would get them e-mailed to me at least once a week. But this timeline of canned beer that I saw on CraftCans has some history behind it. Actual history. Worth checking out…
Archive It
Here is something that I think each state’s brewing guild should look into. And, if course, it is something started in Oregon.
A Hops and Brewing archive. The Eugene Register-Guard has a nice synopsis HERE.
In this day of digital everything. All sorts of documents can be kept without the rent of an office building or much infrastructure at all. And for future book writers and researchers, it would be a storehouse to research ( for a small fee).
You can start with the books written by the founders of Sierra Nevada and Lagunitas.
Book review – Brewing in Milwaukee
Brewing in Milwaukee is part of the Images of America series from Arcadia Books. In a nutshell (or mash tun) it is a set of old-time photographs with a little accompanying text before each chapter detailing the history of Brewing in Milwaukee Wisconsin.
Another way to look at it is like an exhibit at a local history museum. As with the Yuengling book that I reviewed earlier. I loved the photographs and I just wish there had been more text or a timeline or something to accompany it. That is probably more a reflection of my greedy nature.
But here is what I took away from this addition to the historical beer canon….
– fire was always a menace to these breweries. No OSHA apparently.
– there was a Weissbier brewery by the name of Gipfel
– beer deliver in winter was perilous
– seems like the beer barons married into the business
– lots of clay bottles used back then
– wish some of these old buildings could have been repurposed, not razed
– Schlitz was 8 city blocks big!
And much more. If you are a fan of beer history this is great stuff about a brewing city that is not talked about much anymore sadly.
R.I.P. Don Younger
One of the greats of the craft beer revolution has left the bar.
Don Younger passed away but I firmly tell you that his legacy will live on. He was the first beer booster and without him places around Portland might not exist and I sure as hell wouldn’t be writing about beer.
Craft beer is diminished today but without him it would be a shadow of what it is right now.
This is blatantly taken from Jay Brooks’ wonderful Beer Bulletin: take a listen with a pint in your hand.
Don’t know much about Malt Liquor?
Neither do I. But thanks to the industrious bloggers at the HopPress, now I have a link to the History of Malt Liquor!
Did you know the first malt liquor showed up in 1937?
And now you can find new variations from Rogue or Dogfish Head.
A Beer a day
This is the latest addition to my growing beer bookshelf…
This is part of what the author, Jeff Evans, says about this book…
Find out why Franziskaner’s Hefeweissbier is the perfect drink for
4 October.
What’s the link between Bamberg and St Lawrence?
What happened on 18 April to inspire a beer from San Francisco?
I looked at what beer was on my birthday. Fruh Kolsch. Not a bad choice.