books

The question I get asked second most often — after “What’s your favorite beer?” — runs something like, “What book about beer would you recommend?”

Then I ask a question of my own: Is this for somebody who wants to learn about beer in general, for a homebrewer, a history buff, a breweriana collector, or somebody otherwise interested in beer?

This, although if you press a beer to my lips and insist on a single answer before I drink it turns out I have one: “Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion.” It was first published in 1993 and later reissued, but recently used prices have jumped, if Amazon is to believed. I’m sure it would have been a James Beard award winner had the publishers got around to nominating it, and it covers to all the subjects listed above.

It’s worth tracking down, but in the spirit of the season I’ll off a few alternatives. (Note that these links go to BeerBooks.com, and I would receive a small commission if you buy through them. I usually use Amazon links because that’s what most people are comfortable with. But this way you get a chance to support a small, independent business. I guarantee you the service is great, and right now Carl is shipping a copy of the video “The American Brew” with every order.)

For a homebrewer: John Palmer’s “How to Brew” is perfect for the everybody from a total novice to a brewer interested in making his or her own equipment. John also worked with Jamil Zainasheff on this year’s top release: “Brewing Classic Styles: 80 Winning Recipes Anyone Can Brew.” Zainasheff has established himself as one of (if not) the best all around homebrewers in the country, and he shares it all. In this case award-winning recipes mean “gold medal.”

For a home cook: Another 2007 release tops the list — Lucy Saunders’ “Best of American Beer & Food: Pairing & Cooking with Craft Beer,” which I reviewed a while back. Garrett Oliver’s “The Brewmaster’s Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real Food” is also a fine book, but not if you care looking for recipes.

For a history buff: I raved about “Land of Amber Waters: The History of Brewing in Minnesota” just last week and stand by that. However, it will be a little specialized for some. For entertaining reading and a solid explanation beer choices are what they are today try “Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer,” a clear-eyed look at how beer in became and industrial products and how beer that once were called microbrews lead to still more change. Reviewed last year.

A couple more excellent choices are “Brewed In America: The History of Beer and Ale in the United States,” a history that stops in 1962 and doesn’t suffer a bit, and “Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.” Here’s a review of Brewed in America.

For moments of beer reflection: “Beer & Philosophy: The Unexamined Beer Isn’t Worth Drinking” requires a little bit of thinking while drinking. A review.

That’s 10 books . . . and I didn’t even manage to mention “Brew Like a Monk.”

In the preface to Land of Amber Waters: The History of Brewing in Minnesota author Doug Hoverson writes how he came to decide that there might be something he could add to the literature on Minnesota’s breweries:

“Without making this sound like a research grant proposal, I think it is easy to demonstrate that the history of the brewing industry is important in understanding Minnesota’s history and culture, and that Minnesota’s brewing industry is important to the wider history of the brewing industry in general.”

Mission accomplished.

I could likely dash off a quick 2,000 words about this book, but that’s more than would interest you.

Hoverson teaches social studies and coaches the debate team at Saint Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights, Minn. He’s a homebrewer and associate editor of American Breweriana. It’s obvious early on, like when he thanks his family for “the times we drove out of our way to look at a hole in the ground,” this was a labor of love. He writes he spent hundreds (although I suspect it may really be thousands) of hours in local libraries.

The result is information we’ve never seen before. The dude has details on all 290 breweries that ever operated in Minnesota. All but 40 opened before Prohibition and all but 20 no longer exist. That makes for challenging research.

The University of Minnesota Press certainly does the book justice in 340 pages, each 10 inches by 10 inches, printed on heavy stock and packed with illustrations.

But what makes Land of Amber Waters worth its $39.95 price tag is the perspective Hoverson adds on top of his meticulous research. For instance, he introduces the third chapter with a 1902 quote taken from the Pine City Pioneer:

“Mr. Buselmeier makes a purer beer than any that is shipped in here and we are glad to know that the drinking public appreciate that fact. Every dollar that Mr. Buselmeier gets is expended in Pine City and those who patronize him are benefiting the village. The same can be said of every other home industry. … So when in need of a glass of beer, a glass of pop, a good cigar, a sack of flour, a newspaper, or in fact anything that is manufactured at home and will benefit home trade be sure and call for it. This is the way to build up a town.”

Maybe that’s a little rah-rah, but this chapter about the “glory days of the small-town brewer” offers example after example of the role breweries played in communities and the role communities played in beer in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Small towns have changed a bit since then. Small breweries literally disappeared then came back. We’re not returning to 1902, but as well as doing a terrific job of chronicling Minnesota’s beer history Land of Amber Waters tells us more than a little bit about beer in America today.

In the introduction of Beer (Eyewitness Companions) we are reminded why there will never be another beer writer like Michael Jackson:

“When one thirsts for a glass of wine or a pint of beer, the brain gradually registers the order as a half-heard whisper. The volume is slowly turned up, creating a gentle, purring, reverberation throughout the nervous system. It seems a pleasurable massage at first, then becoming tenacious. You are in the hands of a higher authority that brooks no argument. It is desire, and the streetcar cannot leave its lines. Your destination is a rendezvous with a drink.”

Are you still here? Or are you on your way to a bookstore, as thirsty for the rest of this book as you would be for a beer?

Because I contributed to Beer Companions it doesn’t seem appropriate to offer a “review,” but I can tell you a little about it. Shortly before the book shipped Amazon linked used copies of “Great Beer Guide” to this one. Both were published by Dorling Kindersley, which might have created some of the confusion, but they are quite different books.

Probably because the “Great Beer Guide” was itself a repackaged version of “Ultimate Beer” and because Beer Companions was published shortly after Michael’s death some beer discussion boards contributors hypothesized that this would be another one with “re-purposed” content. That is not the case.

Michael explained in the acknowledgments that rather than researching and writing the whole book himself he recruited correspondents to provide up-to-date information from the world’s great brewing nations. He acted as editor-in-chief as well as writing the front matter. Some parts — such as the introduction to beer’s ingredients, how it’s brewed, and how to enjoy it — will be familiar to those who own his other books. But much it totally new.

This book is part of another “Eyewitness” series from DK. You’ve likely seen the Eyewitness Travel books (we must own a dozen). The Companions series focuses instead on subjects such as beer, wine, cheese, olive oil and golf.

Going into the project Michael noted, “The readers as inherited from the Eyewitness Guides will tend to be well-travelled, interested in food-and-wine, well educated, earning a reasonable income, open-minded.”

He greets them with with an introduction and treatise on styles that are essential reading.

He doesn’t pull punches, writing early on that “neither European brewers nor most drinkers on either side of the Atlantic have yet grasped that tomorrow’s most exciting styles of beers will be American in conception.”

Michael once said: “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.”

That was, of course, in his 1977 “World Guide to Beer.” Now we get his perspective from 2007, a last chance to see the world through his eyes. One certainly worth treasuring.

Patrick Emerson has been kind enough to the work of Vic and Carol Tremblay in analyzing the merge of Widmer Brothers Brewing and Redhook Ale Brewery, giving me an excuse to mention that and also offer something of a review of their book, The U.S. Brewing Industry: Data and Economic Analysis .

Please start by reading his post at The Oregon Economics Blog as well as Jeff Alworth’s response (which is what got me to the Economics Blog). Emerson brings up quite valid concerns, particularly the ongoing competitive landscape.

I’m not going to repeat what he said about minimum efficient scale (MES), but expand on it a bit. From the end of Prohibition until the late 1950s the minimum production a brewery needed to reach scale efficiency and be competitive was 100,000 barrels per year. A-B was the largest brewery in the country, producing 8.4 million barrels per year, and Miller was 10th at 2.4 million. (Visit BeerHistory.com for more.) It wasn’t 1880, when we had more than 2,500 breweries, but regional breweries were a competitive force.

MES began to rise dramatically in the 1960s and was 4.5 million by 1973. Now it’s 23 millions barrels, which only Anheuser-Busch, Miller and Coors achieve. And the latter two plan to merge U.S. operations.

With that in mind, although it will still produce only a fraction of that Widhook (as those in the Northwest are already calling this “new” brewery) makes sense. Drawing on Tremblay and Tremblay, Emerson writes: “These are the cold, hard facts: economies of scale exist in beer brewing, they can be quite large and thus the economic incentive is to grow bigger and become more profitable and/or more competitive.”

So what about the fourteen-hundred-and-however-many other breweries in the country?

I’m reminded of what Eric Wallace of Left Hand Brewing said more than 10 years ago: “The large brewers are not tooled to do what we do. They’ll have to build less-than-efficient breweries to make beer like we do.”

And as beer drinkers we need to remember that. Less efficient means more expensive. I won’t climb on on that soap box today, because I promised something of a review of The U.S. Brewing Industry.

– You don’t need the book if you are looking for the best Czech lagers, are wondering what kind of glass to pour a particular beer into, or want to read entertaining essays in the manner of Pete Brown.

– You might enjoy the book if you’re deep enough into American beer history to wonder how and why the beer industry changed from 1950 to 2000. It fits quite nicely with Maureen Ogle’s Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer, although it’s not quite the breezy read. It’s an economics book.

– You really should own the book if you want to sell beer in America. Robert Weinberg, who made part of his company’s extensive brewing data base available to the Tremblays, explains why in the foreword:

“The Professors Temblay have hit a home run. In a single volume they provide the theorist with more than adequate basic knowledge of the fundamental operating dynamics of the brewing industry. At the same time, they provide brewing industry executives with an excellent demonstration of how the tools of economic analysis can improve even the most pragmatic managers’ understanding of the environment in which they operate.”