I am a sucker for a beer book and last week as I was picking up a book at the library, I saw The Great American Ale Trail on the shelf too. So I grabbed it.
And I must say that I was underwhelmed by it. Especially the further east the book went. Here’s the thing. There are now over 2000 craft breweries in the U.S. and pair that growth with the unavoidable fact that travel books go out of date super fast and you end up with books with glaring holes in them.
You can minimize that problem by focusing on the brewers or a certain style or a narrow part of the country but when you try to cover the entire U.S. you would end up with a gargantuan book.
Now I can live with a survey of the U.S. that glosses over or skips entirely certain spots. I’m sorry North Dakota but you are not making it in to most beer books. Personally, I don’t need to read about Portland or Los Angeles or Denver or Asheville for that matter. I know what’s there from what I see on beer blogs daily.
But it does prick my hide to see what was left out of the L.A. section. No mention of Ladyface. No mention of Strand or Hangar 24. Beachwood BBQ, Daily Pint and Lucky Baldwin’s all left out. That is a major chunk of craft beer to leave on the cutting room floor as it were.
But I guess we got off lucky. New Jersey got two pages and no mention of Flying Fish beers. Massachusetts is summed up as Sam Adams. No mention of Hoppin Frog or Six Point. It seems like the beer bus ran out of steam partway through the country. I understand that not every state should get equal billing but when I can rattle off breweries missing from New Jersey, that is a large hole.
Three other issues hampered my enjoyment of this book which has some good suggestions and isn’t beer snobby in any way.
1. For a travel book, there are no maps. Only short blurbs about possible itineraries. The whole travel theme would vanish for pages. It’s not so much a trail as a cul-de-sac.
2. There were a lot of head scratching entries of non craft beer bars. Every city has great dive bars or historical spots that should be visited for their vibe. But this is a book about beer. Why am I reading about some bar that serves PBR?
3. I like the cover art work and the regional artwork as chapter breaks. But wow was there a lot of clip art space fillers in this book. I don’t need computery looking strawberries to enhance a blurb about a strawberry beer. That space could have been used much more efficiently. Like by increasing the font size for the details like address and website for each entry to a readable size.
Lastly, and not to pile on here, but there was some real nice spots of writing. Especially the end about Michael Jackson. But I felt the author’s voice got lost along with the travel theme. There seemed forced bits to make the book palatable to non craft beer types.
I am forced to not recommend The Great American Ale Trail. Find a regional guide instead if your beer travel plans take you far from home.