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American Craft Beer covers the craft beer movement, its news, and its lifestyle. We view the craft beer scene as an entertainment industry that is now very much a part of today’s pop-cultural landscape. And it’s probably because of our unique approach to the industry that we’re constantly receiving offers from different media groups asking us to share with our readers everything from new restaurants, cuisine, hangover cures, and beer-related products to new music, movies, and books….And yes, we get lots and lots of books to review.
So welcome to Good Books – our ongoing series dedicated not only to new and noteworthy books on craft beer, but also to anything else that we’re currently reading, enjoying, and recommending.
Locally Brewed: Portraits of Craft Breweries from America’s Heartlandby Anna Blessing celebrates the Midwest’s craft brewing movement with profiles of 20 of the area’s brewmasters and breweries. Locally Brewed is an informative yet disarmingly easy read that captures the essence of each brewery though simply told stories, beautiful photography, and dynamic artwork. But it’s the non-elitist approach and her departures from the obvious that really make her book work. Any book chronicling heartland breweries is going to cover the big names. Bell’s has got be there – as does Surly, Great Lakes, Founders Brewing, and Three Floyds for that matter. But Blessing takes a more informed overview. Often-overlooked breweries, such as the August Schell Brewing Company in New Ulm, Minnesota, are given their due – as are cutting-edge “newbies” such as Chicago’s Moody Tongue, a culinary-driven brewery. Blessing’s profiles are straight-forward, insightful, and enjoyable and will leave the reader with a real feel for the region’s brewers and their importance in today’s craft beer movement.
Beer: What to Drink Next: Featuring the Beer Select-O-Pedia by beer reviewer and co-founder of The Perfectly Happy Man website, Michael Larson, is a craft beer book like nothing we’ve ever seen before. This quirky “beer lover’s guide to more than 250 craft beers, ales, and lagers” utilizes what the author calls a Beer Select-O-Pedia to help readers find favorites. The “Periodic Table of Beer” organizes beer by ingredients and country of origin to help you discover what you like and suggests what you might want to try next. It also includes mind-blowing diagrams that break down a beer’s “atomic structure” (whoa!) with fun facts, tasting notes, and recommended breweries.
Tatiana – No one does noir thrillers based in the contemporary wastelands of post-Soviet Russia better than Martin Cruz Smith – and his newest mystery, which features his iconic hero Arkady Renko, is a total blast. Tatiana tells the tale of Tatiana Petrovna, a reporter who falls to her death from a sixth-floor window in Moscow in the same week that a mob billionaire is murdered. It’s up to the cynical and emotionally disheveled Investigator Renko to put these two events together -and his discoveries put him in the cross-hairs of the underworld and Russia’s corrupt government.
The Pocket Beer Guide: The Essential Handbook to the Very Best Beers in the World by Stephen Beaumont and Tim Webb is a paperback for the backpack – a book written and designed for that world traveling beer lover of yours. From New Delhi to Portland and San Diego to Singapore, this guide spans six continents and covers more than 3,000 beers, as well as cool beer destinations that anyone would want to check out.
