The Seven Moods of Craft Beer

The Seven Moods of Craft Beer is my latest book and if you want to be snarky yes it’s a list book, 350 beers from around the world, about which I have written and I suppose recommended the reader try before he or she stumbles off this mortal coil. You can look at it that way and if so please be my guest. 

On the other hand, what I think does make it different from what I have written before is that I have tried to approach the beers metaphysically, go beyond the whole ‘this uses Fuggles/Cascade/ME109, weighs in at 4% ABV, was developed by Cajun renegades in the East End of London in 1855, and is designed to be drank from a fluted wellington boot made of coloured glass’. There is nothing about the price of beer, what is best for its dispensation and despite the book’s title nothing about the meaning of craft beer.

The kernel of the book, the approach that I have taken, is to harbour an intention towards each beer that marks it with a mood applying to both beer and drinker. It’s about imagining the beer’s mood, giving it a personality, letting it speak to me, going off on a tangent about the beer, seeing what it really says to me, letting it expose its mood as it settles or seethes in the glass. It’s about beer having a character, a personality, which I have tried to reflect through the mirror of my words. Usually in about 100 words.

You want a beer to have a social mood, to be as chatty as a mynah bird, as sociable as your best mate who’s just got paid, then beers such as De Prael’s IPA or Douglas’ 942 will be ideal; these are garrulous, chatty, flighty beers, frisky in their playfulness, sincere in the way they sway in the glass, words tumbling out like acrobats in a French farce from the 1930s.

On the other hand, if you want a beer with a bucolic feel, a mood that reflects your inner rurality, that makes you think of a lonely farmhouse in the middle of Wallonia where saison has been made for countless generations (you might even find a bucolic beer that does that even when it has been brewed in San Diego to a soundtrack of car horns and the frenetic pace of city life), then there is the incomparable Saison Dupont, but also Modern Times’ Lomaland. 

This is about beer being flexible, about being a friend, about beer gelling with how the drinker feels, about beer surprising and leading the drinker to surmise how little they knew about the beer in the hand. 

And the other moods? There are poetic beers, adventurous beers, gastronomic beers, imaginative beers and contemplative beers, all of which will reveal themselves to you whenever you are in a mood for a beer. 

I’m signing copies this week at GBBF at 6pm on Wednesday, so if you are around come and hear me rattle on more about moods (and of course buy a book), or on Thursday as part of London Beer City I’m at the Mermaid in Clapton where I’ll be celebrating the moods of London craft beer in the company of a few yarns on my beer travels in the last few years. You can get tickets here or turn up on the night and get them from the pub. I promise to be in a good mood. 

Brew Britannia

I enjoyed Boak and Bailey’s book a lot, read it quickly, devoured it even; it lasted me a couple of days, ate into valuable working time, and I was annoyed when I spilt some amatriciana sauce on it. I smiled at some of the portraits of the interviewees I have got to know since writing about beer from the late 1990s: the prickly one, the comical one and the regal (or really unregal) one. There are many moments in the book that chime. I recalled the Salisbury in Cambridge, which was an early CAMRA Investments pub that I used to visit a lot, for the scrumpy and ‘foreign’ lagers. I remembered the jolt that Man Walked Into A Pub caused amongst beer writers when it appeared and I even remembered when the Society of Promotion of Beer from the Wood (I always wanted to say prevention instead of promotion) had a stand at the Great British Beer Festival and looked forlorn; I thought about joining them for some unknown reason (who knows why one joins things: I briefly joined Amnesty to try and impress an ex-girlfriend).

Brew Britannia is a fascinating odyssey through the last half-century of British beer and I would recommend this without a moment’s thought. But (and I bet you could guess this was coming), with my book reviewer’s hat on, I can only say I feel slightly disappointed with parts of it. I was expecting more of a dynamic narrative that would reflect what has happened in beer. There are moments of great dryness, a kind of ‘then this happened and then this other thing happened’, but I wanted more.

Perhaps it’s the fact that the chapters from the middle of the last decade onwards (the emergence of Thornbridge, BrewDog, Magic Rock, craft beer etc) feel like they belong in a magazine article rather than a book (however, the stuff on the emergence of CAMRA and the 60s drinking scene is excellent and I wonder if this is where the authors’ hearts lie). They’re entertaining but feel flimsy, they feel like a broad brush and seem to rely on the way blogs reported things — personally I would have interviewed more of the characters, even if it was only on the phone. I would have certainly liked an interview with James Watt and/or Martin Dickie; the authors don’t seem to have been done that (please correct me if I am wrong) and as BrewDog are perhaps one of the most important British breweries to emerge in the last 20 years (along with Thornbridge) I would have liked more on what drives these two.

Still, I did enjoy the book and wish it every success but I can’t help feeling that my glass is only 2/3rds of a pint full.

Brew Britannia: The Strange Rebirth of British Beer, Aurum Press, £12.99. 

My favourite beer books of 2012

Words, food and beer: how a book begins (Marble Arch, Feb 2011)

Been some good books this year, but for me five stand out and here they are in no particular order. I loved Tim Webb and Stephen Beaumont’s gorgeous World Atlas of Beer with the duo’s incisive and elegant styles of writing bringing the beers of the world to sparkling life allied with lush, luxuriant and lively photography. This is the beer book as a backpacker.

Then there was Chris Arnot’s Britain’s Lost Breweries and Beers, an elegiac and yet uplifting social history of those that were once at the centre of their community but have now gone. It might have been a yomp along memory lane but the lacrimosa was absent — some of the beers now vanished, Arnot suggested, might not have been that good. It’s a valuable record — Brian Glover’s The Lost Beers and Breweries of Britain covered a similarly melancholic subject but I have not seen it yet, but knowing how good a writer Brian is I will look for it in the new year.

Then there is Pete Brown’s exceptional Shakespeare’s Local. I did my first serious book review for the Telegraph of it and devoured it in one sitting. Even now I have been listening to Tony Robinson reading extracts from it on Radio 4 and continue to enjoy it. The strength and skill of the book is that Brown brings to life Southwark, seeing it through a beery eye and putting the George at the centre of things. I love it and think it’s his best book yet.

You will probably have a job getting these three books in time for Christmas but not with my final two choices, which are by the same writer and can be downloaded onto your Kindle within minutes. Evan Rail’s Why Beer Matters and In Praise of Hangovers are beer writing taken to a new philosophical plane, beer writing as a matter of musing, personal recollection, philosophical probing all brought together with an erudite and personable writing style. They are essays, elegant in their design, but also robust in the way in which they celebrate beer and its universe. In Praise of Hangovers was a particularly welcome company on a train journey I took from Pilsen to Munich back in September — a crowded carriage, a slight mustiness in the head after the Purkmistr festival the day before, the growing carousing of Oktoberfest-bound travellers, a desire to go home (though it would be another four days before that happened) and a disinclination to have another beer for a while. That essay made me feel much better and I remembered it that evening as I wandered open-mouthed around Oktoberfest’s carnage.

So there you are five great books and I haven’t even mentioned Mitch Steele’s book on IPA and Stan Hieronymus’ For The Love of Hops, which are for 2013.

Institute of Beer and Distilling beer books

One of my favourite pub books
and on the list

Presciently it arrives in the inbox, just as I was lazily gearing up to write up a list of my 10 favourite beer books (but then I realise it’s very difficult to keep it to 10 so I’m glad of the diversion). The Institute of Beer And Distilling Beer Book Sale/Auction is an annual event in which the Institute gets rid of a load of second-hand books on brewing, beer, the industry, history and pubs — I’ve got a list with guide prices in front of me, which as a member of the Brewery History Society I received yesterday. They are some intriguing titles here including The Brewers Pocket Companion (1901, guide price: £26), the magnificently off-centre London Pubs (1962, guide price £6), my own Big Book of Beer (2005, a snip at £6) and plenty of brewery histories, pamphlets and so on. I must admit to being tempted by a few things on display. For more information go here where there will be a full list of books and details on how to bid. And perhaps my best beer books list will have to wait a bit longer. 

I-Spy for grown ups

I’ve got another book out, it’s called Real Ale Record Book. A bit cheaper than 1001 and nowhere as heavy. You can even put it into your pocket when you’re out and about. If you remember the I-Spy books of a glorious youth before less wholesome activities set in, then this might just be your thing. When the publishers (the same people who do Martyn Cornell’s Amber, Gold & Black) asked me to do it, I-Spy for grown ups was the pitch, which makes sense given its pocket-book status. It’s got over 150 beers in it with 50+ word tasting notes for each (and yes I have drunk them all). I think you’re supposed to go round the country ticking them off (not put them in plastic bottles and drink them in a shed). And why not? As the book title suggests it’s about cask beer, but I’ve got a couple of Brew Doggers in and a Meantime, but sadly no Lovibond’s, West, or Freedom. Despite these calamitous exclusions I’m quite pleased with it. If you buy it do let me know what I’ve missed out of it (there are also a few pubs mentioned in it, favourites of mine where the heart always quickens when the sign comes in sight, the Anchor Walberswick, Woods, Dulverton, Royal Oak, Borough etc etc). Oh and if you’re a wild swimmer I’ve also got a similar book out with the same publishers as well, it’s called the the Wild Swimming Record Book.

From Tennant’s to Castle Eden

In the post a handy little book arrives, The Brewer’s Tale, being the memoirs of one Frank Priestley who started at Sheffield’s Tennant’s Brewery and went on to become head brewer at Castle Eden. 1959 sees him going from the Labour Exchange to the brewery, while in 1979 his job vanishes as the big boys continue to amalgamate. It’s fascinating stuff, even if written in a very workmanlike way — it’s a window into a different brewing world, one you could argue that has long gone. The odd hoary old myth is recycled (sticky leather trousers), but I found it fascinating and a different beast of a beer book to what I am usually used to. It’s published by Merlin Unwin, costs a crisp tenner and I do recommend a gander.

Beware of geeks bearing gifts

I don’t do lists normally, but working on a recent project (now hit by the ubiquitous credit crunch) that involved lists of beers I started to do films and then thought books and then thought beer books. It didn’t take me long and is just a bit of fun, but here are my top five favourite beer books (not to be taken seriously — these are books that currently call out to the beer-sodden wraith that haunts my soul). They’re not in any particular order either.
The Book of Beer — Andrew Campbell: published in the 1950s and a thorough celebration of beer, including a wonderful section that suggests how the beerman (and let’s face it this is a book for blokes) can get through the day with beer as companion. ie a glass of mild perhaps with breakfast to aid with digestion…
Radical Brewing — Randy Mosher: published several years ago; I’m not a home-brewer but this is a riveting and rollicking journey through the happy soul of home-brewing along with much information about beer, including many lost beers; exceptional useful for spotting faults; I took it down to the pub the other day to show the barman why the beer he was selling was phenolic.
New World Guide to Beer — Michael Jackson; my first ever beer book, bought as a Christmas present by a then girlfriend’s mother; this is the late 1980s edition and even now it still manages to enthuse and entertain in equal measure; however, there’s also a poignant element about it, a sense almost of a lost world when even Interbrew were not the behemoth they have become. I love the colour pic in the British Isles section of drinkers in Adnams’ Harbour Inn, Southwold, with a caption, part of which says (referring to the fact that the pub occasionally got cut off by high tide), ‘Students of these brews have sometimes been stranded for days’.
The Brewmaster’s Table — Garrett Oliver: makes me hungry and thirsty at the same time; he makes great beer, conducts wonderful tastings and writes like a dream, a true Renaissance Man; this is a gorgeous odyssey through some of the greatest beers in the world.
Travels With Barley — Ken Wells: an entertaining journey through the world of American beer culture that takes in yeast rustling, extreme beer, retro beers, craft beers, A_B and so on; a fantastic book.
As I say, this is just my opinion, there are other great books, Ambitious Brew, Three Sheets to the Wind, Brew Like A Monk, The English Pub (both MJ and Peter Haydon), The Ale Trail, Prince of Ales, The English Inn, An Inn-Keeper’s Diary, Tim Webb’s Belgian series, but this is just a bit of fun.