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opinion

Book Review: The Beer Select-o-Pedia

This is yet another beginners’ guide to beer, albeit with a gimmick: it is built around a ‘periodic table’ of beers, and is designed to help you choose what to drink next.

Michael Larson's Beer Select-o-Pedia.The author, Michael Larson, is an American, and across the Atlantic, his book is published with a different title and cover. For the UK market, under the care of the Campaign for Real Ale’s publishing arm, it has been tailored and spruced up by consultant editor Roger Protz.

An attractively designed ‘premium’ paperback of just over 200 pages in length, it could probably be condensed into 75 pages of pure text. The bulk of the space is taken up by full-page ‘atomic structure diagrams’ for each beer style, continuing the ‘periodic table’ theme. These, frankly, didn’t work for us at all, using a lot of real estate to convey very little information in a hard-to-read format which made us yearn for simple bullet-point lists.

Some of the icon-style graphics are also confusing: ‘spiciness’, for example, even when subtle and derived from yeast, is indicated with a picture of a chilli pepper as on a curry house menu. This might well lead the target audience of beginners to wonder about the Scoville rating of Marston’s Pedigree.

Gose 'element' from the periodic table of beer.The ‘periodic table’ itself, however, is rather more effective. The idea is that the beginner knows they like, say, Hoegaarden, and so finds Belgian Wit in the section of the table devoted to ‘Ales of Continental European Origin’. They then choose what to explore next based on which styles are adjacent. In practice, that would direct them to Leipziger Gose (yes, that makes sense), Belgian ‘strong pale ale’ (e.g. La Chouffe, which also works). It isn’t perfect, however: ‘Gluten Free’ (that’s a style now?) is next to ‘American Style Wheat’. Oops!

As we’re not beginners, we found ourselves picking holes in the history and griping about terminology but, on the whole, most of the worst Cornell and Pattinson baiting myths have been avoided and, anyway, this book is about learning to love beer in the here and now.

In conclusion, we found the Select-o-Pedia likeable enough, and it is as good a place as any for a would-be beer geek to start. It might also make a good gift for a beer-loving friend or relative who seems unhappily stuck in a rut with bitter or lager.

The RRP is £12.99 and it is due for release on 3 April 2014. We were sent a review copy.

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Blogging and writing homebrewing

The Homebrewer’s Guide to Vintage Beer

Detail from the Homebrewer's Guide to Vintage Beer by Ron Pattinson.

Forced into the confines of a book less than 200 pages long, Ron Pattinson’s knowledge of historic brewing seems more impressive than ever.

Cover of the Home Brewer's Guide to Vintage BeerBy his own frequent admission, Pattinson tends to be digressive and expansive on his blog: a single point can spread out across multiple blog posts packed with anecdotes, tables of figures, and rants on the side. It can be tremendously interesting and entertaining, but also, at times, hard to follow if you’re only there for the hard facts.

Either through self-discipline or thanks to the guiding hand of a stern editor, in The Homebrewer’s Guide to Vintage Beer, he finds a new, clearer voice. Swathes of brewing history are summed up almost in bullet point form, and no worse for it:

Let’s get this straight before we go any further. I don’t believe the story that porter was an attempt to re-create a mix of three different draft beers called “three threads”. No source for the first half of the eighteenth century confirm the tale, and the main piece of evidence used to support the theory was written the best part of a century later.

Right, got it!

The history of hops in British brewing is summarised in three crystal clear pages; malt, in all its complexity, in four. The various types of fermenting vessel, from Burton Union to Yorkshire Square, in a little over two. If you need more detail and references, it’s there online, but this will be more than enough for most people, at least to begin with.

There are also nuggets of trivia that, though we’re sure he has mentioned them before on his blog, have chance to stand out in this more economical style. We hadn’t realised that rice was frequently used in North German beer before 1906, for example.

The recipes, which are the real point of the book, are divided by style (porter, stout, IPA, and so on) and ordered chronologically within each section. Even those who don’t brew at home ought to appreciate the opportunity to see the evolution of each style, their alcoholic strength and ingredients changing from year to year as a result of fashion, economics and war, as explained in pithy notes. Individual beers, such as Truman’s Runner, are present in multiple versions, decades apart, which ought to make for some fascinating ‘vertical tasting’ sessions.

They are written in a simple, clear format, and simplified to avoid four-hour boils and complicated mashing, sparging and gyling routines, though the information is there for those who wish to go ‘all in’.

There is also some guess work. Relying almost entirely on original brewing records, Pattinson has had to make assumptions about hop varieties, alpha acids, the darkness of certain malts, and the identity of proprietary brewing sugars. His guesses, though, are better than most people’s facts, and certainly better than nothing.

A handful of recipes don’t, frankly, sound very appetising, and are really only of academic interest: the final porters from before the style became extinct in the mid-20th century, for example, are weak (less than 3% ABV) and filled with oats and sugars. (Or perhaps we’re wrong and the watery-weak porter is a lost classic. We will, of course, have to find out for ourselves at some point.)

Those committed to the modern-style of ‘craft’ brewing might find these recipes of limited use. Not one features hops added late in the boil for the purposes of creating aroma, even though many feature huge amounts of hops in total. Almost all of them use sugar, which ‘craft’ brewers seem to find a bit of a turn off. Some might make good bases for experimental recipes, though, especially the strong ales.

The spiral binding inside a hard folder-like cover seems an odd choice at first, but actually makes complete sense in practical terms: it lies perfectly flat, which will be great when we need it open in front of us for reference on brewday.

One small complaint: the vintage labels that decorate the pages, while lovely to look at, rarely correspond to the recipe below, which can make browsing the book something of a pat-your-head-rub-your-tummy exercise.

This is not yet another beginners guide with the same old basic recipes, but a Level 2: Intermediate text, and that’s exactly what we would like to see more of. For writers and publishers, that might be a problem — the market for general guides is potentially bigger, if more competitive — but if beer writing is going to grow up, it needs to get beyond the superficial.

We were sent a review copy. The RRP is £17.99 and it is available from AmazonWaterstones, and as a Kindle ebook.

UPDATE 27/02/2014: we didn’t realise that Quayside, who published this book, are a sister company to Aurum, who are publishing ours. They are, so we’re disclosing the relationship here.

Categories
Beer history pubs

The Renaissance of the English Public House

Basil Oliver’s The Renaissance of the English Public House was published in 1949 1947 and argues that the period between the two World Wars was a golden age of pub design and building.

Cover: The Renaissance of the English Public House.It is printed on post-war paper (rough and yellowing) but is crammed with photographs and floor-plans of specific pubs up and down the country.

In his introduction, Oliver observes that, in the period before World War I, new pub buildings were rare because of the ‘misguided idea… that to improve buildings was to encourage drinking’. He observes, however, that the prohibitionist urge actually triggered a great resurgence in pub design and building: when the state began to run the brewing and pub industry in Carlisle in 1916, ‘it permitted unhampered experiments in many directions, but especially in the evolution of the public house’.

County Arms, Blaby, near Leicester.
County Arms, Blaby, near Leicester.

An entire chapter of the book is given over to the Carlisle State Management scheme. During WWI, Oliver says, improvements were limited: the removal of hard-to-supervise snugs and ‘snuggeries’ (small compartments) to create ‘light and airy cheerfulness’. After the war, new buildings were commissioned, including The Gretna Tavern, which replaced (Oliver reckons) six ‘snug-type houses’. We could not help but think of Wetherspoon’s.

Away from specific pubs, the more general detail Oliver provides on contemporary pub culture offer a useful companion piece to the Mass Observation book The Pub and the People. On alternative names for the ‘public bar’, he observes that ‘Tap Room’ is out of fashion, and…

Saloon Bar has a faint suggestion of superiority, and is the haunt of the ‘toffs’ (or would-be toffs) but even they frequently require the inevitable darts-board. Smoking Room… is also popular…. Private Bar and Bar Parlour… are equally indicative of their purpose — private transactions and intimate conversations — and from being popular with the fair sex have virtually become, in many houses, a Women’s Bar.

The last, lingering remains of Victorian morality can be detected in a coy discussion of toilets: ladies’ and gentlemen’s lavatories, he insists, must be apart from each other, secluded, but also easy to supervise. (The horrifying fact that people of both sexes piss must be kept secret, but there should be no opportunities for hanky-panky either.) Even today, it occured to us, the easiest way to find the ladies’ toilet is usually to walk as far from the gents’ as possible, and vice versa.

As for beer, Oliver is quite clear: ‘From the consumer’s point of view, the ideal way of receiving his beer is direct “from the wood”, and — on a hot summer’s day — from a very cool cellar.’ Cellars, he suggests, should be cut off from the outside world, running with damp, have earth floors, and be exposed as much as possible to the cool soil beyond their walls. The ideal, he concedes, is rarely possible:

More likely is it that new ways of drawing draught beer will be invented for conditioning draught beer which will eliminate all the complicated paraphernalia of beer engines, air-pressure installations, flexible pipes…

The grand ‘Tudor mansions’ of Mitchells & Butlers in Birmingham are also granted a chapter of their own, highlighting the advantages to brewers of building on new sites rather than restoring old pub buildings: restaurants, car parks, gardens, and even bowling greens were common. London gets a chapter of its own, too, with the rest of the country, from Liverpool to Devon, wrapped up in two more general surveys of urban and ‘wayside’ pubs.

We spent a bit of time looking up pubs mentioned on Google Street View. Many are gone altogether. Others were rebuilt on the same scale but with less style. A few remain, but often defaced with plastic banners, ugly signage, and accumulated grime: the Apple Tree in Carlisle, featured in the big image at the top, is now ‘Pippins‘, and still a handsome building.

For a rather specialised, technical book, Oliver’s prose is very readable, with the occasional amusing turn of phrase and impassioned diatribe. We paid around £20 for our copy, which is not in great condition, but it isn’t rare or hard-to-find. Depending on how interested you are in the detail of pub design and/or this particular period, that might seem a bit steep, but we enjoyed it.

Categories
Blogging and writing featured

Book Review: Great Yorkshire Beer

Like us, Leigh Linley is a beer blogger of the class of ’07, so we were excited when he announced the publication of his first book earlier this year, and bought a copy without hesitation.

Great Yorkshire Beer.
Small-format hardback, RRP £10.99, 190 pages.

On his blog, he has tended to accentuate the positive rather than dishing out savage criticism (the Michael Jackson approach) and this small press book continues in the same manner, declaring itself as wholly celebratory — an expression of regional pride. Fortunately, with more than a hundred Yorkshire breweries to choose from, Linley has no trouble picking a handful which he can endorse with a clear conscience.

Let’s get one substantial ‘point for improvement’ out of the way: the book would have benefited from tighter editing. There are several instances of close repetition (the phrase ‘our fair county’ appears twice in as many pages); too many exclamation marks (screamers) for our taste; and a variation on the dreaded ‘cannot be underestimated’ makes an appearance in the foreword.

Those superficial points aside, what surprised us on this second, closer reading (the first time was on a long train journey without a notebook at hand) was that, though pitched as a lightweight local interest book, Great Yorkshire Beer also functions as something of a ‘microhistory’. By focusing so closely on one region and one particular generation of brewers — those who have entered the industry in the last decade or so — trends in the wider market are highlighted.

For example, an interview with Pete Roberts of Sheffield’s The Brew Company reveals a shift in tastes in the last few years: a beer released in 2008, Frontier IPA, was shelved because it was considered too bitter by local drinkers. In 2013, however, it has returned with exactly the same recipe to general acclaim, suggesting that drinkers’ palates have evolved in the post-Thornbridge, post-Brewdog era.

In allowing brewers to tell their stories in full, subtly different approaches between ostensibly similar businesses are illuminated. Mallinson’s refusal to have a ‘core range’ vs. Leeds Brewery’s reluctance to dabble in ‘one offs’, and Ilkley’s eye on the national market vs. Kirkstall’s determination to remain a Leeds speciality, act as useful case studies for anyone thinking of going into brewing.

A second small point for improvement, though: a couple of the interviews occasionally stray into ‘sales pitch’ territory, and it would be nice to see a little more challenge if next year should see the publication of More Great Yorkshire Beers.

With our interest in the development of ‘alternative beer’ from the 1960s onward, we were also fascinated to read that Sierra Nevada Pale Ale — named by one contemporary brewer after another as a key influence — found its way to British beer festivals, and on to supermarket shelves c.2003, thanks to the efforts of Leeds-based importer Steve Holt and his company Vertical Drinks. There are many other such interesting details throughout.

Though brewery profiles make up the bulk of the book, it also has recipes (Linley is a keen advocate of food and beer pairing), suggested pub crawls, and nuggets of Yorkshire beer trivia. Perfect, in short, for dipping in to on train journeys or solo pub visits. Any tourist visiting Yorkshire for the beer would be daft not to take a copy with them, and it would make a great Christmas gift for the Yorkophile in your life.

Disclosure: we paid for our copy of the book, but when we met Leigh for a pint in Leeds and he gave us three bottles of beer and some second-hand books as a gift. We’ve also known him (virtually, anyway) for quite a few years and think he’s a nice bloke, so can’t claim to be entirely objective.

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Uncategorized

Jonathan Meades on Beer

Ray Ban sunglassesSource: John McStravick, via Flickr Creative Commons.

9781908717184We’re very grateful to commenter BT for suggesting that we read Jonathan Meades’ essay ‘Pint Sized’, written in 1994 and collected with other pieces in Museum Without Walls (2012).

It is a rare treat to read something substantial about pubs and beer by someone who is not A Beer Writer, not least because, though he apparently thinks beer important, he does not love it unconditionally.

Writing of a childhood ‘spent… in pub car parks’, Meades recalls thinking that the adult world, as represented by the bar where is father and uncles drank, was ‘bad, stale, fungal, fusty’. Those xenophobic uncles considered beer a sacred part of Englishness, along with Vaughan Williams and G.K. Chesterton:

The Boy’s First Pint was about as close as middle-class, middle-century, middle-England got to the bar mitzvah.

Meades’ uncle was, it turns out, town clerk of Burton-upon-Trent, which recollection prompts this wonderful passage:

He and the councillors he despised and the brewers he sucked up to would have seen no virtues in hundred-year-old-industrial buildings. Especially not in the white heat of the Keg Era: that sort of beer, no nicer and no nastier than the preceding stuff, I thought then, was the brewing industry’s contribution to ’60s neophilia. This was the beer of the future. Soon the world would be all monorails and robots… And we’d toast our success in Red Barrel and Party Sixes…

Beer, he goes on to argue, is an ineffectual intoxicant; it makes British people poorly, because it is just nourishing enough to stop them eating while they down pint after pint; and wine is in many ways a better drink.

And yet, he concludes, to drink anything else in ‘deepest England’ would be ‘an act of ingestive treachery, dead wrong’. Beer is part of Britain, and Meades has apparently come round to his uncles’ way of thinking.

Elsewhere in the same anthology (we have not read it all yet) opponents of the term ‘craft beer’ might find useful ammo in Meades’ railing against classification and style frameworks in creative endeavours. ‘Do not judge by genre but by accomplishment’, he writes, and then quotes Duke Ellington: ‘The question is not whether it’s jazz music or whether it’s classical music but whether it’s good music.’

We bought Museum Without Walls in the Amazon Kindle store for £6.83. Isn’t the cover dreadful?