This really should be labeled as “book review, part one” given I have not hit the half way point in this book, published just this year. But as I have complained long and hard about the absence of a comprehensive US brewing history, I am driven to tap and type, to type and tap. In a nutshell, this book gives me a significant degree more confidence that I am getting a fuller picture than either Smith’s 1999 Beer in America: The Early Years and Ogle’s Ambitious Brew from 2006. Not so strange when you consider the simple fact that Smith stopped at 1840 while Ogle starts about there leaving only a few gaps along the way to the craft beer movement. Neither as as comprehensive as Canada’s pan-alcohol 2003 history by Heron entitled Booze: A Distilled History.
But I am still not yet sure that Mittelman achieves the level of Heron’s completeness given where I am in my reading but at the same time I have some hope. The book has, for example, footnotes for just about each paragraph that indicate some good primary research has been done as well as reliance on a number of secondary sources. And that research is well laid out. There is clearly a focus on the role of taxation due perhaps in part by the ease of access to public records as well as Mittelman’s past work in the area. I like the fact that she deviates from Ogle’s claims as to the independent immigrant will of specific personalities as a key factor in brewing history with some reasonable description of how German immigrants banded together in the 1860s to assist the newly created Federal tax department in creating a policy structure that went a long way to create a continuing regulatory environment sympathetic to their business needs. Which is right? Probably a bit of both and a measure of something else as well.
Maybe it’s wrong for me to want a unified theory or at least a single history on the topic. The three recent works do relatively well together in presenting their visions of American brewing. Mittelman keeps a blog which is interesting but needs more readers to spark it up a bit – and maybe for reasons other than the unfortunate matter Andy mentioned the other day. I will keep reading and maybe follow up with more thoughts as they pop into my head.