books

“Those were the times when I thought ALL Czech beer was great. That slowly started to change, but I would still drink pretty much anything that was brewed in this country.”

– Max Bahnson

There is much more to Prague than beer, but for a beer oriented visitor there never seems to be enough time to discover all the pivo the city has to offer.

Sure, start with a pilsner, because when you order a pilsner in Prague it will be Pilsner Urquell. That’s the law. And many, probably most, tourists leave town happy to have enjoyed what beer experiences luck gives them.

Then there are the rest of us. We want to know about Výcepní Pivo and Ležák — “Hey, these aren’t listed in the Official Beer Geek Style Guidelines (ABGSG)” — and the yeasty difference between Nefiltrované and Kvasnicové. We want to know the best places to drink in situ; the best revivalists beers featuring pilsner malt and Saaz hops as well as cutting edge beers (stouts and IPAs in Prague, indeed).

We need books like Evan Rail’s Good Beer Guide Prague & the Czech Republic and Prague: A Pisshead’s Pub Guide by Max Bahnson. I’ve previously recommended Evan’s book, and in suggesting that Prague is a two beer guidebook city must include a small disclaimer related to the Pisshead Guide.

When he was writing the book, Max sent me some sample pages. I enthusiastically endorsed the content and the style. It would be a dirty trick for me to turn around and criticize it now. But honestly, I can think of only one thing I’d change. It would be cool if the hand-drawn maps were on napkins or coasters you could rip from the book.

I expect a guide book to be easy to read, long useful information and amusing. Because this book is organized by pub crawls it can take an extra few minutes to find a single destination, and an index would help. But how much you enjoy the Pisshead Guide really depends on if you enjoy the writing. I do, and originally pulled out some quotes from the book to illustrate. Then I realized it is better to suggest you visit his blog and read at least until you’ve come across a paragraph or three that you figure would piss off somebody. Then you’ll have a better idea if this book is for you.

You can buy it here.

Last Saturday after I parked the car and before Sierra and I went foraging at the Tower Grove Farmers’ Market we came across the car pictured above. The bumper stickers represent Boulevard Brewing, Farm Aid and KDHX, an independent radio station that play Chris Knight as often as he pops up on my Chris Knight Pandora station. (Yes, there is another, but it is faded beyond my recognition.)

I told Sierra, “I think we’re in the right spot.”

Moving to a new city is different that visiting a new city every few days, as we did in 2008 and 2009. Then when we needed propane, for instance, we didn’t do much comparing and contrasting. We found a spot, we filled up, we headed down the road. Now I want a handy place to refill my tank (for grilling and brewing), one that charges a fair price (found it, thank you).

The beer part is pretty easy. I was following STLHops and Evan Benn’s Hip Hops column even before we knew we’d be moving back to the Midwest. Between the reconnaissance Daria did, the dining and drinking stops we made when Sierra and I visited and the St. Louis Brewers Heritage Festival (the week after we arrived) we’re feeling almost “caught up.”

Almost, because my St. Louis list on Twitter includes daily announcements of beers hitting town, new local releases, special events. And, like everybody else, we’re braced for the next wave.

Ultimately, though, my goal isn’t to find the best farmer’s market or Italian restaurant on The Hill or food truck any more than I worry any more about the “perfect pint.” I’m in the right place if I’m in a good place for me. And, just as when I was a sportswriter and somehow always ended up at the high school gym without asking directions, finding good places for beer is one of my few natural talents.

Two books that recently landed on my desk — “Brew in the Lou” St. Louis’ Beer Culture, Past, Present, Future and Brewed Awakening: Behind the Beers and Brewers Leading the World’s Craft Brewing Revolution — were not written with me in mind, but for those still navigating the noise generated by so much new in beer. To help drinkers find the right place, or perhaps be reassured they actually have.

Brewed Awakening isn’t due until November, so I’ll write about it later. Brew in the Lou is about where we live now. But why, other than the amazing picture of Stephen Hale on Page 32, is it worth my time? I’d want this book for my library if we still lived in New Mexico because Evan Benn looks at beer and beer “in the Lou” through a new set of eyes. This is interesting to those reading from afar but even more useful for those intrigued or overwhelmed, or perhaps landing somewhere between, by the new.

A couple a national publications recently carried stories about the outbreak of new breweries in and near the city, new specialty beer focused bars, and growing attention to beer in “better” restaurants. They suggest a cause and effect between InBev taking over Anheuser-Busch (i.e. A-B is no longer “locally owned”) and more interest in beer that isn’t called Bud. Perhaps, but I’m pretty sure what’s now obvious was already underway. Either way, Benn began working for the Post-Dispatch in 2009, after the sale, and wasn’t yet much of a “beer guy.”

Thus the fresh eyes. He’s a journalist — he decided he wanted to work for newspapers when he was in middle school; I didn’t know such people still existed, bless his heart — and he found a story that tracks from the mid-nineteenth century to probably somewhere in the middle of this one and makes sense. In the introduction he writes, “My goal: To tell the tale of beer’s past, present and future in the Gateway City, with an eye toward how we got to where we are today, and where we’re going tomorrow.” Last weekend 55 people showed up for a sold out brewpub tour he guided through St. Louis. That’s a pretty good crowd, so somebody’s listening.

Physically, the book reminds me of the guides from Cogan & Mater (Tim Webb’s brainchild), for instance Around Brussels in 80 Beers. It’s full of lush photos that look particularly nice printed on heavy, glossy stock. Unlike the C&G books or the Stackpole state breweries guides that began with Lew Bryson’s Pennsylvania Breweries this does not appear to be the beginning of a franchise. It’s a local production. But it sure seems like something similar in Chicago or Austin or Denver would help locals or tourists find just the right place.

Intentions being intentions, not all 600 or so breweries currently “in planning” in the United States will end up brewing beer. But a little advice seems in order.

Although the combination might seem curious, “Brewing Up a Business: Adventures in Beer from the Founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery” (Revised and Updated) and “Beer Is Proof God Loves Us: Reaching for the Soul of Beer and Brewing” make a pretty educational one-two punch for an aspiring brewery owner.

The former comes from Sam Calagione, Dogfish Head founder-owner, and has earned plenty of praise from those who work outside a world populated by brewing kettles and cases of beer. Bob Guccione Jr. from Spin magazine, Jim Davis of New Balance and a former governor of Delaware are among those offering back cover blurbs.

It wouldn’t be one of Amazon’s best sellers in a category like Books > Business & Investing > Small Business & Entrepreneurship > Hospitality Businesses were the target audience only those selling beer. But it is rich with examples related directly to making and selling beer and written in a conversational tone. Calagione includes enough off-centered stories to make the book popular with fans of the brewery, and its founder, people with no interest in starting their own brewery.

Calagione wrote the first edition in 2005, so this update was in order. Not so much to reflect that Dogfish brews much more beer these days, but provide more about marketing, and particularly social media.

The book is long nuts and bolts. He goes into detail, for instance, about plans to sell $51 million worth of beer in 2011, running through the roster of just how many salespeople are involved and compensation packages.

It makes an interesting contrast to “Beer Is Proof God Loves Us,” which offers philosophy from Charlie Bamforth, “the beer professor” better known for well, professorial, books. Like “Standards of Brewing: a Practical Approach to Consistency and Excellence.”

A native of England, Bamforth has worked for large breweries, in brewing research and was selected the first Anheuser-Busch Endowed Professor of Malting and Brewing Sciences at UC Davis. Bamforth makes his way toward “God in a Glass” (the 10th chapter) with stories that should appeal to the most ardent “craft beer” fan. He keeps things moving by employing end notes, which in total make up about half the book and are full of both short clarifications and long colorful stories.

But he doesn’t pander. For instance, he explains why a newly educated brewer might be much happier working for a very large brewery . . . while expressing concern about the number of jobs that actually may be available as those big breweries grow ever more efficient. He devotes a chapter to “So What is Quality” and does not deduct points when technically proficient beers strive to “reach the common denominator.”

He would be on the same side of the table as Calagione at one of those beer versus wine dinners. (In fact, I previously reviewed Bamforth’s “Grape vs. Grain’ and Calagione’s “He Said Beer, She Said Wine” in the same post.)

In the introduction (which itself merits 13 end notes), Bamforth writes, “The world of beer is hugely different from that I first glimpsed as a too young drinker close to the dark satanic mills of my native Northern England. has beer, I wonder, lost its soul?

“Or is it, rather, me that is the dinosaur? Is the enormous consolidation that has been the hallmark of the world’s brewing industry for decades nothing more than business evolution writ large as survival of the fittest? Do the beers that folks enjoy today . . . speak to a new age of Kindle, Facebook, and fast food?

“In truth, there remains much of his hoary old traditionalist to delight in: the burgeoning craft beer sector in his new motherland, the United States. A growing global realization that beer, rather than wine, is the ideal accompaniment to foods of all types and (whisper it) is actually good for you, in moderation.

“All is not lost in the world of beer.”

Several years ago, Saint Arnold Brewing owner Brock Wagner compared the business of multi-national breweries with his own, today much bigger but still tiny by most measures.

“We’re trying to add 10 customers at a time. The big brewers are trying to add a million,” he said. “We’re in different businesses. We both make something called beer, but they don’t really taste much alike. The big brewers are of a completely different mindset. A-B has more in common with Coca-Cola than they do with us. That’s not to say their beer is bad. It’s just different from what we make.”

Wagner worked as an investment banker before founding Saint Arnold. The skills he learned no doubt serve his business well, but any story about his brewery starts with beer. In contrast, beer is not at the center of Dethroning the King: The Hostile Takeover of Anheuser-Busch, an American Icon. The book details the takeover of one brewing giant (A-B) by another brewing giant (InBev). Lots of hostile fire, some flirtations, plenty of intrigue, all of it happening at a stunningly fast pace.

Beer itself is barely at the periphery through much of the book. It’s most prominent when author Julie MacIntosh turns her attention to the Busch family, notably the uneasy relationship between August III and August IV. Almost every review of this book has pointed out with some surprise that the family controlled so little A-B stock by 2008. Few add that although the Busch family did not have it in their power to block the takeover it came together during a rocky economic time in 2008 and could easily have fallen apart. Had August III not pushed for the deal, and her sources certainly indicate he did so with a capital P, the financing window could have closed before InBev had everything in place.

Again, Dethroning the King is about the deal. How it happened, and pretty much why it happened. It’s not about the relationship between the city of St. Louis, its corporate and spiritual home, and the company. Recently, stories in The Washington Post and Bloomberg have examined how the takeover opened the door for smaller brewers in St. Louis. MacIntosh barely touches on such matters.

Not to make fun of her, but an example from the early pages indicates how little of St. Louis — more time spent in boardrooms than barrooms, plus the various locations (notably an airport hangar) where meetings were held — she got to know. Writing about the “Wassup?” advertising campaign she describes August IV giving the spots a final test run on “a well-known hill in St. Louis where a pack of Italian restaurants was concentrated.” This, of course, is not a hill but The Hill, one of America’s more famous Italian neighborhoods.

OK, it’s not fair to judge a book by what’s not in it. However even though A-B became a global company, and even though it operates a dozen breweries all over the United States we always understood that if Budweiser was the king the throne had to be in St. Louis. What does the change mean there? On the national scale, why all the attention to the fact that a foreign operation officially owns what was already an international company?

Those questions, as well as others of global impact, will be more easily answered after additional time has passed. This book, full of financial details, was ready to be written. It’s likely one historians will consult for years.

For instance, MacIntosh points repeatedly to how the company spent lavishly for travel and various amenities on the corporate side. Such “fat” that could be easily eliminated made A-B vulnerable, because InBev (and previously Ambev) has been famous for rewarding stockholders by ruthlessly improving the bottom line.

Although she doesn’t explain that the company spent just as freely when it came to acquiring the best ingredients that too was part of the Busch philosophy. Since the deal closed the new company has divested itself of many contracts with hop growers from the south of Germany to the American northwest (honorably it should be pointed out). Wouldn’t you think this has implications for A-B InBev beers? As significantly it may affect what hops are generally available, plus their quality, for all brewers. More for history to sort out.

*****

Order Dethroning the King from BeerBooks.com (and support an independent bookstore).