Books and Beer – Page 8 – A Good Beer Blog

Book Review: A Life On The Hop, Roger Protz

I bought a copy of this book after looking around and only finding Knut’s observations from last summer on the difference between its marketing and that of Pete Brown’s Hops and Glory. There was a press release by its publisher CAMRA, a nibbly bit by the NUJ, a smidge from his editorial assistant but I couldn’t seem to come up with a review other than the one that Knut found in The Westmorland Gazette:

A Life on the Hop is an amusing romp around the beer world and is devoid of beery jargon. It will be enjoyed not only by beer lovers but also by those who enjoy travel writing.

Magic. I’ll miss print journalism when it dies.

There has been much sport made of Mr. Protz but it is not something that I really understood as he is not a often discussed writer in this part of the world. So, being the good boy that I am, I thought I would have a read of his autobiography to learn a bit more to either join in the slag-fest or, more fairly, get a bit of perspective. I was in for a little shock.

The book is subtitled “Memoirs of a Career in Beer” and the key word is “memoirs” – as this really isn’t an autobiography but a series of anecdotes arranged in themes based largely but not solely on geography. I learned this in the first chapter when I thought I would learn about his childhood but where I learned about pubs he liked in around his first London newspaper work in Fleet Street – the Cheese, Punch, Old Bell, Old King Lub, Black Friar and the Globe. I didn’t know what to make of it – not much Roger, lots of tavern. Then you are quickly into chapters take you through the Czech Republic, Scotland, Ireland, Belgium Germany, Mexico and the USA as if someone were gleaning through one’s old note books in search of favorite and perhaps not too often repeated yarns of a wag. About a hundred pages in, I started turning down page corners after I read errors vaguely Canuckois like:

a. Fraunce’s Tavern in New York dates from 1790 “when New York was still under British rule” [p.107] The British left in 1783 (some moving to help found my town) and the building dates from 1719.

b. the Yakima Valley of Oregon was once part of “French Canada” [p.124] even though the French speaking part of Canada was far to the east and I think that the Yakima was south of the part of the area of the British claim.

I folded down more corners until I stopped around page 167. I didn’t really care that I doubted his explanation of the genesis of the term steam beer [p. 117] or that lambic is the oldest beer style known to mankind, being close to beer dating back to Egypt, Babylon and Mesopotamia [p. 129]. Did it really matter that Babylon was a city state within Mesopotamia? Was I missing the point?

I didn’t miss that there is something of a cranky, indiscreet tone to these travels. Targets include Tories who put him up for the night, corporations and two older ladies encountered in Prague having a private conversation:

I was crossing the square with Graham Lees, a CAMRA founding member with an acerbic turn of phrase, when we passed two elderly American women who were eyeing the fabulous architecture of the area. “Y’know,” one of them said to her friend, “it’s nothing like Poughkeepsie.” Lees went red in the face, chased after them and snarled: “Of course it’s nothing like fucking Poughkeepsie. It’s been here for several fucking centuries.” It was his finest hour.

That’s the finest hour for an arsehole, perhaps. It’s that kind of small coarse tone that you hear in a far too graphic and entirely gratuitous of an account of the suicide of a brewer in an early chapter and the tragic affect on the family or, later, the naming of names of fellow beer tourists who may have broken marital vows at Oktoberfest. You may come away wondering what sort of person would make that part of a book.

Yet he is obsessed with beer. And has spent a life following it – a life that I realize the more I write about beer sometimes can mean hard scrabble and closed doors. It’s a little bittersweet when despite all the years he is not able to arrange for proper accommodations on an invite to the US and back on a liner. It’s a little poignant when he thinks that when someone isn’t able to meet with him because Roger is going to reveal the truth about a merger when it is likely the guy was just too busy. It is a tough old road and a long one. It’s likely one that he takes pride in taking – a road not often taken when he started out. That pride and hard effort comes out as well.

One beer writer chastised me for an unkind comment by email a few months ago, saying: “anybody who started writing about beer since 1995 (just picked that year out of the air – maybe it should be 2000… should pause. If it weren’t for people like Roger they might not be able to be doing what they do.” He also said that he wouldn’t use him as a source but the point is still a good one. When it wasn’t easy, when it didn’t pay well and no one could roll out of bed and blog their thoughts within 17 minutes, Roger was out there writing about beer. He probably got you from one stage of interest to another at some point. And that is what the book is really about. You will get irritated, you will not find out the information you might have thought you would find and you will turn down corners when you find another error – but you will get a sense with the man.

So, buy the book and share your thoughts. Just don’t go on a beer tour with him and give him any reason to think you went off for the evening with the buxom lonely lush. You may read about it later.

Book Review: Hops And Glory, Pete Brown (Part 4)

Well, I finished the book on Wednesday watching kids softball practice. The short message really is that if you are reading this blog you should buy the book. Well written, informative without being stuffy, funny yet quite personal. Likely the best beer book of 2009.

And I checked. I didn’t make the credits. I didn’t think I would but you never know. You never know if you are going to see a note about the whack job who was emailing about the (Inter-)National Toast for Michael Jackson on 30 September 2007, a few days into the tall ship portion of the trip. But no. No, I got something better. On page 248, when he was ten days from Brazil, experiencing one of his lowest points of the entire trip what did he write?

…And even if I had been successful, so what? Who would actually have cared apart from a handful of blogging beer geeks? What was I going to do?

I was verklempt. When one feels like an utter loser and that one’s mission is a dud who springs to mind? Beer bloggers, that’s who. I am sure it was really thoughts of Knut rather than me that steadied our man Pete in that hour of darkness upon the high seas but it’s the general idea, right?

You should buy it. So, go buy it – still 50% off at amazon.co.uk. Review part 1, part 2, part 3.

Book Review: Hops And Glory, Pete Brown (Part 3)

OK, we have moved from page 145 to, what, 332? Yes, that’s it. So, I’ve work through almost central half of Hops and Glory this weekend – still 50% off at amazon.co.uk by the way – and our lad, Pete, has gone on a cruise liner, a tall ship to Brazil and then a container ship to India. As before there is a patch of the life of Pete Brown, then a patch of the history of the English beer trade to service the East India Company’s needs. Pete, beer. Pete. Beer. But then something funny happens. From 237 to 306 the pattern is dropped. Not much history. Mainly just Pete and his boaty bits.

“What was he doing?” thought I. If I use the hockey analogy and, being Canadian, I will – it gets a bit second period. A bit “boy not yet realized which girl he really should love” if we analogize to date movies. Which got me thinking about Tristram Shandy, that odd proto-novel-deconstruction thing from 1759 or so which I now know is just three years after “grog” was set out in British navy regulation. It’s an interesting book, Tristram Shandy, because it is self-conscious and is a bit about what a novel would be if one could not suspend one’s imagination or if one did entirely or something like that. Eighteenth century literature class was 26 years ago, you know. I’ll let you can judge the value of the academic investment. It’s also about the bleaker end of age of enlightenment as was, we learn, the East India Company.

Anyway, the point is that for 237 to 306, Brown takes us into his internal experience – into the doldrums of the sailing ship and then into the small heart of darkness that is the international shipping trade today – by seemingly forgetting to slip back into the history. It’s a good technique. It weighs a bit, wears a bit. But it still takes us along as if to say “it’s alright, Al, no need for you to ever go on a container ship from Brazil to India all alone for five weeks… I’ve done it… don’t bother.” Thanks Pete. I won’t. It’s off my to do list.

Book Review. Part 1. Part 2.

Book Review: Hops And Glory, Pete Brown (Part 2)

Well, I am up to page 145 of 451 and believe we have a romp on our hands.

Hops and Glory (now 50% off at Amazon.co.uk) is a very entertaining read as well as a better introduction to larger questions of British history in India than I had expected. The format of a chapter on Pete’s travel and then a chapter on India keeps it lively. I don’t recall whether the format is exactly what I recall from my reading of Brown’s 2006 Thee Sheets to the Wind but the cheery tone certainly is. You know, I am not sure, now that I look back, whether I actually did a review of TSTTW as opposed to just the Norwegio-Canuck interview. But like his last book, well, the man may well turn out to be a pain in the arse were we ever to meet in the corporeal rather than digital worlds – but he sure paints a pleasant portrait of himself as well as his struggles to undertake the journey.

Which is an interesting point in itself. Most travel books are about journeying to another place. But this book is a little more self-conscious as it is in large part a book about the writing of this book given that the book is about a task and an education and a telling all wrapped up together. It also tells the tale, at least up to page 145, of one of my favorite parts of history, the British Empire of the 1700s. The later Victorians get all the attention as far as I can tell but living in a city which was created in 1783 as a key westerly outpost of the same Empire it is interesting to see the similarity and differences in how British North America developed compared to British India.

In particular the vast scale of alcoholic celebration simply stuns the modern perspective. One of my favorite guys is William Johnson, 1st Baronet of New York and Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern Colonies, who may as well have set up my town though he died nine years before it was settled by refugee Loyalist troops and their families. His mastery of the New York frontier was based in large part on his ability to celebrate on a scale that the Iroquois nations could respect. Herds of Johnson’s cattle and cart loads of his rum were driven up the Mohawk Valley in the 1750s when parlays were called for and days were taken in the consumption of it all. Similarly, Brown describes how the social lives of those in East India Company were lived on a scale really quite unfathomable – let alone repeatable – to our times. In 1716, we read, one outpost of 19 East India company staff over just one month consumed 894 bottles of claret, 294 bottles of Burton ale, 2 pipes and 42 gallons of Madeira as well as 6 flasks, 274 bottles, 3 leaguers, 3 quarters and 164 gallons of various other forms of booze. I would say it boggles the mind but I think the mind would have been completely boggled by no later of the ninth of that particular month.

But Hops and Glory is not just dipsography. Brown’s struggles to figure out exactly why he’s doing the trip are honestly and humorously told. Which is why I am about to go turn to page 146. More later.

Book Review: Hops And Glory, Pete Brown (Part 1)

A big lump came in the mail today. For someone who is used to packages with DVDs or even VHSs of 1970s sci-fi slipping through the mail slot, this package looked like a lump. When I opened it and saw it was Pete Brown’s new book sent from the publisher I knew it would be a good week after all. Monday evening rarely gives you that promise even one in June.

There was a sad moment, however, when I pulled out my invite to last week’s launch party. Sure, it was an ocean away and, sure, 6:30 pm is just after lunch my time meaning I would have had some very special explaining to do with both my family and my boss. But it would have been good to have had to try.

Who is kidding who? I can’t make it down the street most days let alone across the ocean. These days I am more of the curling up with a good book lump of a man than anything like my former “jumping on a plane with a backpacking” youth. And it does look like a good book. From the first few pages it appears to be about yachting. I am hoping he’s on the coal scuttle later, too. Good for Pete to stretch out a bit. There’s no money in writing about good beer.

Maybe I will hit him up for an interview like with the last book. What could I ask him? What would you like me to ask?

Book Review: “Beer and Skittles”, Richard Boston

This arrived from a used book shop in the UK yesterday and, today being off sick, it was a great opportunity to rip through this book in record pace. Richard Boston was the columnist for the then Manchester Guardian whose weekly “Boston on Beer” is credited as being as important as the early days of CAMRA in raising public awareness of the impending loss of real ale that England faced in the early 1970s. He passed away late in 2006.

I had hoped that this book would be a reprinting of his columns but it is more of a reworking from the point of view in 1976 – not a bad thing but it covers a lot of ground later beer writers like Cornell, Brown and Haydon dealt with in more detail. That being said, it is still a real treat. Boston left beer behind and went on to many other things in his life with a engaging eccentricity but his 1970s beer writing played an important role in preparing the public appetite for the writings of Michael Jackson whose first book, The English Pub was published in the same year.

The book includes information on the history of beer; home brewing and cooking with beer; a guide to where to find real ale 32 years ago as well as a handy discussion on the elements of the pub. This section includes descriptions of games such as Toad in the Hole and Bar Billiards– and contains a passage of incredible value, a description of both the rules and manners required to play shove-ha’penny. Through my tireless (but somewhat fruitless) efforts in relation to The Pub Game Project, I have placed shove-ha’penny on the list of those games I might actually get to play. Manners, as is the biggest part of any game, are critical:

How do you decide if a coin is in, or if it is just touching the line? Some boards have sunken brass dividing lines that can be raised to see if they move the coin or not. Some players run the edge of a piece of paper or the blade of a knife or engineering feelers between the coin and the line. This is poor stuff. The rule is that the coin must not only be in, it must be clearly seen to be in. If you have to ask a scorer for a decision, then it’s out. A good player will never argue the issue.

Throughout the book, Boston is both grumpily entertaining and keenly critical. Of CAMRA he writes “it has been said that some of their members would drink castor oil if it came from a hand pump and would reject nectar if it had no more than looked at carbon dioxide.” Filled with relevant poetic quotes, illustrative anecdotes as well as charm, it captures a moment in time that has turned out to be critical to the development of real ale in the UK as well as North American craft brewing. Long out of publication, Beer and Skittles is well worth the sort of price you will pay if you find it second hand

Beer And Philosophy: The Book Is Out!

It is either out or I have just received my copy but either way it is all quite exciting to have a book in my hand with a chapter written by me. So, of course, I read my chapter first and found myself thinking that I could have written most sentences better and that I hoped I didn’t lose all the legal footnotes…though I suspect the sensible editing was afoot on that one. Then it strikes me – I don’t know – can I do a proper book review when I wrote about one-fifteenth of the thing? I don’t have any percentages deals or anything. But I can be pure of heart with the best of them can’t I? So let’s see.

Price? Reasonable. This is a trade paperback meaning it’s going to cost you a decidedly reasonable $13.57 on an Amazon pre-order. The book covers a lot of ground, partitioned as it is into segments entitled “The Art of Beer”, “The Ethics of Beer”, “The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Beer” and “Beer in the History of Philosophy”. Fascinating stuff. And with chapters by Garrett Oliver and Sam Calagione (not to mention me) as well as a forward by the late Michael Jackson (no mention of me) there is plenty of familiar names for the average beer geek.

But it is when the book goes beyond the expected that it gets really interesting. Except for the crew named above, the rest is written by Phds (pronounced “fudds“, professors and a dean. Egads! I See Eggheads! Yet, they bring the egg down off the head and…and…OK, I can’t finish that analogy but rest assured this is interesting stuff. An example: in the chapter by Rex Welshon, Chair of a Philosophy Department in Colorado, explores Nietzsche’s relationship with the drink opening with the philosopher’s observation that a “single glass of…beer in one day is quite sufficient to turn my life into a vale of misery.” I recall my philosophy professor recounting his wife’s observation that she was not so much disappointed that Nietzsche thought all those things so much as that he wrote them down. Perhaps the same might be said about him having that beer. Another example? Neil Manson, a professor from Mississippi has his bio right next to mine (which falsely claims he can drink more than me and you. Lie – I simply choose not to), has provided a dialogue of the Socratic sort (I think) on “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Beer” which seems to talk about God a lot as three characters drink. Neato. It’s like what you think your dinner parties were like the foggy-headed next morning. And there are about ten more of these sorts of chapters.

So…bottom line…get this book. I earn nothing more from saying so yet you will gain incalculably from the procurement.

Sour Beer Studies: Sweet, Sour And… The Brewmaster’s Table

I have been a bad beer blogger. I just got a copy of Garrett Oliver’s The Brewmaster’s Table. One baaad beer blogger. And not bad like ManRam says either. The fact is, I thought it was really more like The Brewmaster’s “Kitchen” and had expected it was more like a recipe book. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Lucy Saunders obviously does a great job at telling us how to cook with beer. But I didn’t feel drawn to another similar one.

How wrong I was. How shallow the uninquisitive mind. This is a great and valuable text. No wonder everyone recommends it. Let me be a guest late to this party. It is well laid out with sections of the traditions of the great brewing nations, a discussion of the major styles found in each, examples and their properties as well as a description of the foods that go with each. It is the table because it is what a craft brewer would (and does) place place before himself in terms of food and drink. Good. Handy.

For present purposes, though, the book provides me with one thing that no one else in my meager span of attention had mention. Many traditional sour beers – and especially the sourest – were not intended to be consumed without sweetening. See, this is what has always bugged me about lambics and gueuze. We do the medievals and thems that followed a disservice when we say that the pure raw lip puckering drink is what they would have consumed. First of all, most of them would have consumed mostly unhopped ales bittered with gruit made and swallowed within a few days. Then, few would have had access to the resources required to buy aged ale, including any which might have been aged for souring. Additionally, those that were aged were likely aged within the annual cycle as is most every other agricultural product. These general observations seem both logical and consistent with the histories by Cornell, Haydon, Hornsey and Unger. Plus I have another pet theory – no one drinks extremely sour things without a certain purpose and sour in beer has long standing recognition as a failing in brewing.

But I have gone over that before in these sour beer studies. What is new is the mention made of one tradition of Belgian lambic drinkers – as opposed to its brewers – described in The Brewmaster’s Table. At page 71, comparing dry lambics to their sweet siblings, Oliver states:

Lambic afficiandos are given to frothing at the mouth when the latter versions are mentioned, but I feel both types have their place. Don’t forget that some people always sweetened their beers, when they could afford it – sugar was once a luxury.

Sadly, I can not longer wallow in vindication dancing the merry jig as these studies have given me both respect and a taste for the sour beers of Belgium. I still find Cantillon too stark but that is like saying Guinness is too dark. It simply is. And sour for me now holds an interesting and worthy place in the beery pantheon.

But, still, there is comfort knowing that now and likely in the past people did not suffer austere acidity except as a mild fetish or a consequence of poverty. Two traditional styles, neither of which I have tried as they are quite localized, confirm how sweetening may have been undertaken, Berliner weisse and faro. Berliner weisse is a German sour brew uniformly taken with a sweet fruity syrup and preserving sweets is entirely reasonable as a form of storage though the centuries. I would expect that facing another pitcher of dry lambic before him on the table, your average 16th centurian may well have had a spoon in the jelly or honey jar next to it. In addition to Berliner weisse, Belgian faro is described as a “low-alcohol, slightly sweet table beer made from lambic to which brown sugar has been added” – taken on draft, again, it is a reasonable approach to making a rather restrictive brew more approachable for the many.

Point? I am relieved to find this confirmation from somewhere that lambics were sweetened by drinkers in much the same way as the old guys shook the salt over their draft in the Nova Scotian taverns of my youth. People, as we learned from Depeche Mode, are people. Other point? Buy The Brewmaster’s Table.

Session 8: Food and Beer With Lucy Saunders

Most excellent! I forgot it was session day today and the topic is food and beer as picked by the poetical industrial complex behind Beer Haiku Daily. As it happens, a few weeks ago…or more likely months…beer cook extraordinaire Lucy Saunders was kind enough to forward a review copy of her handy book Grilling with Beer – with, I just noticed, a very nice inscription. And, as it turns out, I took today off to make an extra long weekend and as it turns out it is the last stinking hot day of the year here at the east end of Lake Ontario. So it is time to BBQ and we are ‘cueing and brewing with Lucy.

Updates throughout the day as I review my options, pick my victims and start the fire.

Later: OK. Things can take surprising turns as I seem to have wanted to deal with (by which I mean “eat”) the entire ark with a shoulder and center roasts of pork, beef and pork rib and lamb sausages – and corn…and bunch of peppers, too. My theory of BBQ is that if you are going to spark the dang thing up you may as well cook from match to the final orange glow. Going through Lucy’s book, I decided to do a dry rub and a beer mop for the most of it and cook everything on a slow smoke.

So I got out a bottle of Black Irish Plain Porter, chopped up some cilantro, red pepper and green onion for the mop. For the rub, I put together kosher salt, paprika, cayenne, ginger, cumin, fennel seed and a few other things. An hour and a half on the dry rub and then on to the grill with a steady supply of dampened smoking wood added as I went along.

In the end we were left with an insane amount of meat…unless you believe that is something of an oxymoron. As I mopped, I had a Southern Tier IPA as well as a Great Lakes 666 Devil’s Pale Ale, a new LCBO listing here in Easlakia. Both were solid BBQ brews for the last hot day of the year.

So was I cliche going with the BBQ? Should I have made beer ice cream or a lager and partridge tarte? Not a chance. Beer is the partner to the flaming pit and is where the sweet notes and smoky tones play out best. And that porter mop added a layer chocolate espresso over the bite of the pepper adding even more depth. Even though I didn’t follow a particular recipe, Grilling with Beer is a source of great inspiration if you are into this sort of thing and a book I will return to again and again for great ideas for cooking with beer outdoors.

The Tribute To Michael On The High Seas With Pete Brown

Plans for the international support the National Toast for Michael Jackson are taking off. Events so far are planned for across the US, London, Glasgow, Oslo and even my backyard. Getting the word out has been greatly encouraging for everyone but sometimes difficult. You all should be aware that Pete Brown, author of Man Walks into a Pub and Three Sheets to the Wind is off on the adventure of a lifetime researching his new book by traveling with a cask of India Pale Ale from its brewery of birth to the great sub-continent itself. But how to contact him? He’s already started out on his voyage. Good thing I earned that Morse Code badge in cub scouts:

Alan: [clickity-click-click…, various shortwave radio noises] Ahoy Pete! […click-clickity…] Are you there, Pete? Over!

Pete: [time passes……click-click…, faintly] Who the hell is that? The captain had to interrupt my coal shoveling! I have a deadline for a freelance piece in Coal Stokers’ Weekly in two hours!!!

Alan: [(silence)…click-click-click…] Jeesh, sorry. Have you heard about the National Toast for Michael Jackson to be held on the 30th? Can you take part? Where will you be? Over!

Pete: […clickity-click-click…] The day of the mass toast, I’ll be a day out of Tenerife on a nineteenth century tall ship with a barrel of IPA bound for India, the old-fashioned way. I wouldn’t have been doing it if it hadn’t been for Michael, and I think he would have approved. I’ll certainly be raising a glass, whatever time zone I’m in.

Alan: […click-click-click…] Fabulous! I’ll let you get back to your boilers. By the way, did you hear about the scandal in dwile flonking? Over!

Pete: […clickity-click…click…, fainter] Sorry…unclear…that did not come acro…message…as if you said dwile flon…dw… flonking!!! I’ll have to upda…article for…Flonking Monthly!!! […transmission lost…]

Wow! It sure is a bracing life of adventure for the freelance author on the high seas. But good for him to join in the tribute as he can. And you should, too. Give to the NPF or your local Parkinson organization and hold an event on September 30th wherever you are.