Month: October 2009

The next several days here will be all mostly about beer books. I’ve got a stack — some from last fall that I didn’t write about because we were out of the country — I should tell you about before the holiday shopping season arrives. In fact, with holiday beers about to arrive in stores I think I’ll start with Don Russell’s Christmas Beer tomorrow.

First a few thoughts provoked by Jeff Alworth, who begins his review of the most recent beer book to find its way on to the shelves at Barnes & Noble (but not our local Borders so far) this way:

There’s something a little cheeky about writing a world guide to beer. The act suggests hubris: that a person of modest age might really have attained the experience to put himself forth as an expert of the caliber to comment on all the world’s beers. That is the purview of another Brit, right? And herein is the second layer of hubris; in the post-Jackson age, who really has the cojones to step in and take his place? Well, apparently Ben McFarland has the cheek, because he’s put out a book called World’s Best Beers: One Thousand Craft Brews from Cask to Glass.

Alworth has nice things to say about the book but you might leave with the impression that McFarland is a youngster (“just his second book”) who saw the opportunity to market a book “familiar to those who know Michael Jackson’s oeuvre.” The thing is McFarland is 33, only two years younger than Jackson was when his second book, The World Guide to Beer, was published. He’s twice been chosen Britain’s Beer Writer of the Year, once when Jackson was on the judging panel.

So I dropped him a note with the straight-out loaded question: Do you view yourself stepping in to take Michael Jackson’s place?

He replied (this is the short version, because it seems people who write books have a lot to say):

“No. I don’t. In terms of beer writing, Michael Jackson had to carry his enormous cajones around in a wheelbarrow. They were THAT big. He was the original beer writer and the best. He inspired many to drink more beer and, indeed, write about it and for that reason, with so many exalting the joys of beer, there will never be another like him.

“Setting out in life with the ambition of becoming the next ‘someone else’ is an extremely daft thing to do. Whilst I often asked Jacko for advice and am forever thumbing his books, I don’t see myself picking up his professional wheelbarrow.”

Exactly. There will never be another like him. However we got two great beer books this year, Tasting Beer and Hops and Glory, that Jackson never would have written but certainly would have enjoyed.

Jackson was a journalist first, like McFarland is today. When you think about it writing a world guide in 1977, when beer information was a little harder to come by, was pretty dang cheeky. That he did is one of the reasons why it’s easier to find today.

Inspired, at least in part, by BrewDog’s Equity for Punks, Adrian-Tierney Jones has a half dozen questions for us this morning (a.m. in the U.S., that is):

I am talking about the sly sense of exclusiveness that is seeping through the world of craft beer. Do you want to be in my gang? Is it a good thing, has beer lost its democratic edge? Was its democratic edge just another manifestation of mindless rabble-rousing, the guy in the corner, drunk on god knows what, taking potshots at easy targets — drink Bud, Blue Ribbon, Stella, whatever?

“Is this what the craft brewing revolution has come to, a freemasonry of various lodges looking uneasily at each other, or will love of good beer overcome any drift towards tribalism? The love of elitism. And what of the wider world? Will commentators in the media (whatever branch) be overwhelmed by this sense of singularity in a world which is usually represented in their pages or on the screen by closing pubs, ‘oh look women drink beer’ featurettes, the very odd shrug on the rising star of cask beer and predictable points scored on the horrendous fashion sense of CAMRA members.

As beer becomes more exclusive, but more knowing, more distanced from its ur-source of a refreshing but uncomplicated drink, then it becomes more valuable, changes its character, at least in the minds of many of us — however, as this drive to exclusivity continues, I wonder if it might hinder its growth and its clubbiness put off people who like a beer but don’t consider it their life and deliver them into the arms of whatever drink offers them a alternative and less threatening sense of belonging (maybe beers that are the equivalent of those ads for ‘exclusive’ figurines of Native American warriors looking narky or kittens wearing high heels). A two-tier system of beer appreciation waits perhaps?

I didn’t plan to quote quite the much, but so many nice phrases. “. . . more exclusive, but more knowing.”

Cheers to the Newark Star-Ledger for featuring Greg Zarcardi and High Point Brewing in Butler, N.J., today.

The hook (why he’s getting the attention now) is that Zacardi “was selected to represent the United States this weekend at The Mondial de la Biere Strasbourg-Europe in France where he will speak about the history and evolution of American microbreweries.”

Zarcardi has been making excellent weissbiers in the tradition of southern German breweries (like Schneider-Weisse or Weihenstephaner Hefe Weiss) since 1996 without getting much attention. That can get a little frustrating, as he explained when I talked to him for Brewing With Wheat.

“The biggest consumers of wheat beers want German wheat beers,” he said. When he conducts blind tastings, which he calls the “Ramstein Challenge,” locals like those at the Deutscher Club in a nearby town prefer his beers to well-known German weiss beers. “You can taste the difference in a locally brewed wheat beer. They love our beer, but it’s not German. They still buy the German beers.”

Although his original plan was to make only wheat beers, non-wheat beers now account for about 40 percent of his production. But somebody is going to have to explain this to me:

His recipe won him several awards, and was recently rated No. 1 at Oktoberfest in Germany.

Huh?