books

At the end of the Preface to “Tasting Beer,” right before you head to Page One, there’s a picture of a glass of beer with a command: “Don’t even consider starting this book without a beer in hand.”

Since you have the book in the other hand you probably aren’t going to ask yourself if, since you are already drinking a beer you like, you really need this book. So I will. Do you think more knowledge about beer will make that beer taste better? If you answered yes then you should own this book.

(Before going on, a bit of a disclaimer. Author Randy Mosher and I are friends, and he asked me to to the “technical edit” of the book. Yes, that sounds as laughable to me as it must to you; like Malcom Gladwell calling me up to ask for story ideas. I don’t get any royalties from the book, so there is no incentive for me to give it a review that boost sales. Because I don’t know of another beer book to be published in 2009 that should be of as much interest to you I’m going to write about it.)

I thought about “Tasting Beer,” but wasn’t ready to write this review, when I posted “The tyranny of the tasting note” last month. Quite honestly, there’s more here than many of you are going to want. Perhaps you don’t feel the need to be able to turn to your dining companion and whisper, “I believe I’m getting a touch of autolysed yeast.” More than you might want now, that is, since once you head down the road of beer knowledge stopping ain’t easy. Because everything in this book is presented in easy to bite off chunks you can grab what you want now and come back later for more.

Mosher makes it deceptively easy. Consider this: “Every sensation found in a glass of beer has its origins in the decisions of the brewer and malstster made druing its manufacture. For instance, the tangy, green perfume of hops? That’s the result of the careful choice and deployment of prized aroma hops in the brewhouse or perhaps the fermenter. The light nuttiness and hints of raisiny fruit? That lightly kilned pale ale malt and a dab of crystal. And all of this is shaped by the mysterious workings of a particular strain of yeast under certain conditions.”

Whether that looks terribly simple to you or densely confusing it will all be clearer 27 pages later in a chapter called “Brewing and the Vocabulary of Beer Flavor.” You’ll be ready for “The Qualities of Beer” and looking forward to it.

I hate quoting book covers, but I’m going to point out that the subtitle for the book is, “An Insider’s Guide to the World’s Greatest Drink.” That’s certainly true, but you exit knowing you don’t have to be an insider to enjoy the beers Mosher writes about. Further, the back cover claims “Tasting Beer” is “The Portable Beer Expert.” Indeed.

Still with me? Then you’ve reached the part of the review where the reviewer offers a profound thought. I’ll pass and give the author the final word:

“Beer is only as good as the people who seek it out, support it, keep it honest, and, most important of all, enjoy the genuine pleasures of it.”

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– Order from BeerBooks.com (and support a business that cares as much about beer as you do).

– Order from Amazon.com.

Or drive to the bookstore and buy it right now.

Makin’ a list and checkin’ twice, it’s that time of year. I’m woefully behind so breathed a sigh of relief when I discovered a few books that were supposed to be here when we returned from Europe, so that I might provide an opinion if you should buy them, were not to be seen.

Thus no beer book shopping list, something I generally enjoy compiling, from me this holiday season.

Instead I’m going to give you a list of one, a book — Amber, Gold and Black, The Story of Britain’s Great Beers — that works perfect for the procrastinating shopper because it is available via download. Call it the beer book of the year if you want.

I’ve already written something of a review, so instead consider one paragraph:

“In 1802, a writer called John Fetham wrote three pages on porter brewing in a guidebook called The Picture of London. Feltham’s version of the history of porter, which includes the claim it was invented by a brewer named Harwood, has been repeated hundreds of times over the past two centuries as the allegedy authentic story of porter’s origins. Unfortunately very little of it is backed up by independent evidence, and much of it is demonstrably wrong.”

Are you thinking you’ve repeated this story a time or two yourself and now you are feeling like a first year law student who just got called on in The Paper Chase? Read the book and instead you get to be one of the cool kids watching a classmate squirm.

FrankenBrew: How to Build a Micro-Brewery, is now available on DVD.

I haven’t seen this video, assembled in 1995, in some time and fully expect it will be dated. In a good way.

Tom Hennessy, one of the founders of Il Vicino in Albuquerque, put it together, featuring New Mexico microbreweries that were small and smaller. And in many cases not survivors.

It originally had a subtitle along the lines of building a brewery for “less than $20,000.” That notion’s obviously dated, and it’s a heck of a lot harder to start a brewery these days with used “re-purposed” equipment, so I wouldn’t suggest this is the video you need if you are dreaming of starting your own brewery. (Additionally, Hennessy was always quick to point out the idea might have been to get started on the cheap, however the bigger plan was to use the profits to buy “real” equipment.)

If you care about American small-batch brewing it’s worth owning even if you don’t live in New Mexico (we do, although we lived in Illinois when we first saw the video). It captures an important bit of history from a time when a lot of small breweries opened on a shoestring. Some became rip-roaring successes, more didn’t make the cut. Big picture: It’s important to hear the voices of those who don’t succeed as well as those who do.

Maybe more important, I remember grinning a lot the last time I saw this video. I look forward to seeing it soon and grinning some more.

“I think I was the first person ever to use the phrase, ‘beer style.’ The next thing was to try to define what they were, which lots of people have done since, but I think I was the first person. But then my focus became really to talk about, to try to describe the flavors of beer. When I was first writing on beer, nobody else was describing the flavors in beer. It’s very frustrating when you read old books on beer.”

         – Michael Jackson, interviewed in All About Beer magazine in 1997.

I went looking for this quote about the time I reached the fifth chapter, the one about stouts, in Martyn Cornell’s new book, “Amber, Gold and Black: The Story of Britain’s Great Beers.”

Although Cornell himself writes in the introduction that this is “the first book devoted solely to looking at the unique history of the different styles of beer produced in Britain” don’t mistake it as “just another book about styles.” No, it’s about beers, sometimes specifically what they tasted like and other times giving us some damn good leads. Most importantly, this book brings them to life in a manner I think Jackson would have approved of.

Cornell uses a nicely balanced combination of words mined from a dizzying number of sources and his known, cleverly mixed with delightful vintage illustrations (his first book, “Beer Memorabilia,” also belongs in your collection).

As Cornell showed with “The Story of the Pint,” he is a trustworthy historian. Yet this is not all about the past. He writes that the microbrewery boom in England has “helped bring in new styles such as golden ale and wood-aged beers.” It is an unapologetic “celebration of British beer in all its many beautiful shades and inspiring flavours.”

And it is specific to the UK (although it provides examples of how styles evolved as they were exported to other brewing nations), making it comfortably uncomprehensive. We don’t need another compleat guide to styles. Cornell passes on breadth to provide refreshing depth.

Certainly this book will be useful in starting, and one would hope settling, barstool arguments. As Cornell’s press release states, “Long-standing stories about beer, lovingly retold over pints by beer drinkers and brewers down the ages are comprehensively debunked in the book.”

Now to that fifth chapter. We find Charles Knight writing in 1851 about Guinness: “Its sub-acidity and soda-water briskness, when compared with the balmy character of London bottled stout from a crack brewery, are like the strained and shallow efforts of professed joke compared with the unctuous, full-bodied wit of Shakespere [sic].”

Then Cornell connects the dots by explaining the difference between London and Dublin stouts.

“Amber, Gold and Black” is available only in electronic form for a modest £5 (about $10 US). Not everybody seems keen on reading it on a computer screen. Personally I had no problem. My only complaint would be that it lacks an index.

Quite simply, this is both a terrific resource and a wonderful read. An index would make it easier to find just the right fact or phrase when you find yourself perched on a barstool, computer on your lap, pint in hand, ready to make an important point.

Need to know more? The Table of Contents is here.

Next weekend in Washington, D.C., the Brewers Association plans to show that beer belongs at the table with the grownups. OK, maybe that’s not the best analogy – suggesting beer might otherwise be served at the kids’ table won’t go over well in most circles – but you get the point of SAVOR: An American Craft Beer & Food Experience.

And the BA has called on several luminaries from the wine world to help make the case, like Ray Isle from Food & Wine and Lauren Buzzeo of Wine Enthusiast. Fortunately beer people as well, so I’ll pass on pointing out that maybe this looks a bit too much like beer has an inferiority complex.

For the most part attendees won’t hear much argument about whether beer or wine is better.

But that debate seems like a good way to sell the printed word. Exhibit 1: “Grape vs. Grain” by Charles Bamforth. Exhibit 2: “He Said Beer, She Said Wine” by Sam Calagione and Marnie Old. Three and four: Old and Calagione have taken their rivalry to the current issues of All About Beer and Beer magazines.

And a friendly rivalry it is. It started with a series of beer dinners where they’d pair each dish with one beer and one wine and ask dinners to vote for their favorites. They are a very entertaining team, in person and in print, and don’t be fooled if a few of their exchanges look a little adversarial. Although Old is a sommelier and educator and Calagione — you surely know — the founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, in this instance they could both be described as promoters, even sales people.

HSB,SSW is jammed with inviting photos, including 20 each of the protagonists. Both talk about simplifying wine/beer and the editors of the book have set out to help them with easy-to-understand presentations. For instance, charts with objective characteristics for specific beers or wines, then charts with rules of thumb about serving wine or beer with particular dishes.

Bamforth’s approach is decidedly more academic. He is the Chair of the Department of Food Science and Technology and Anheuser-Busch Endowed Professor of Malting and Brewing Sciences at the University of California, Davis. Reading the book feels like attending a college lecture, but one conducted by everybody’s favorite professor. He successfully acts as his own foil, spinning stories that go beyond the chemistry behind beer, such a look at the evolution of the pub.

Yet you remember this is the author of “Standards of Brewing – A Practical Approach to Consistency and Excellence” when he chooses to explain dimethyl sulfide (DMS) — an aroma often described cooked corn — in particular detail in order to illustrate the complexity of brewing.

He’s always the educator, and the book could be characterized as a beer primer from wine drinkers and a wine primer for beer drinkers. He doesn’t hide his own preferences, writing in the preface, “To that extent, and reflecting my professional specialty, the theme of this book is primarily one of demonstrating how beer is a product of an excellence and sophistication to match wine, and I seek to do this by championing beer while being entirely fair to that other noble beverage.”

He’d need to be a little flashier to keep up with Calagione and Old. Consider this from the authors within two pages.

Old: Every culture what has had access to both (beer and wine) has judged wine to be superior — from the ancient Mesopotamians straight through the modern day.

Calagione: “It’s true that beer drinkers may burp more often than wine drinkers, which could seem “uncivilized.” However, I’ve always thought that is because wine drinkers don’t stop yakking about pretentious things like “notes” and “bouquets” for long enough to build up the required internal pressure.”

Old and Calagione will encore their debate to SAVOR on Saturday. Quite honestly, it wouldn’t be fair for Bamforth to act as “referee,” but let’s give him the final word.

“Wine and beer — both wonderful beverages, sublime outcomes of humankind’s oldest agricultural endeavors. They have much to learn from one another.”