Reading is fundamental! I was sitting in the sauna recently trying to finish the book I'm about to talk about and someone remarked about the title of the book.
"The Audacity of Hops, that's some title," she said. Then she said that the only time she has to read is on a long trip on a plane or a vacation and as I sat there sweating, I found myself agreeing with the common trope. We're no longer readers.
I bought
The Audacity of Hops back in the summer of 2014. I know this because I used a pamphlet from the store I bought the book from as a bookmark. I remember walking into that store, not really knowing what to buy. Kegworks was a walk-in store that catered to bars and craft beer. If there was anything beer related, Kegworks had it. As an alleged bibliophile, I was looking over the library section looking for something new to read when the clerk noticed that I was interested. He pointed out this book and I capitulated. The secondary title looked alluring "the history of America's Craft Beer Revolution." Being 2014 and living in Buffalo, New York, I thought I was living at peak craft beer. How naive was I?
Part 1 hammered down on the beginnings of craft beer when it was an actual craft and not just a name. Author Tom Acitelli began telling the story about Fritz Maytag and the Anchor Steam Brewery. As I learned from a wine trip to Northern California, the craft beer scene technically started there as well. I suppose there is some kind of spiritual energy in that area because the area that is considered the Italy of America in terms of wine. In San Francisco,
Fritz Maytag was looking to expand his business acumen outside of the appliance field saved a closing brewery in 1965. He reinvigorated the
California Common lager. He was operating at the time of Big Brewery, wherein the big Post Prohibition conglomerates such as Anheuser-Busch and Miller were flooding the markets with bland but consistent beer. Maytag maintained a commitment to quality, as his family did. Maytag appliances were made to last - remember the commercials with the repairman waiting for a call? Maytag believed in using quality ingredients and sold it to bars and restaurants in the San Francisco area.
Another forefather listed in this book was Jack McAuliffe, who I consider the George Washington of craft brewing. Even for a "woke AF" beer guy, I have never heard of Jack McAuliffe but he was the godfather of the craft. When you walk into a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu place, there's the picture of Helio Gracie - the godfather of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. You bow to him when you first walk onto the mat. It should be the same with craft brewers and Jack McAuliffe. McAuliffe's foray into craft brewing started when he was in the US Navy and had a submarine stop in Scotland. While on leave, he came across
The Big Book of Brewing by Dave Line. As a passionate welder, he crafted his own brewery equipment in Sonoma, California. The same neck of the woods as Fritz Maytag in San Francisco. The book describes McAuliffe's arduous work, brewing a majority of waking hours. Local intrigue piqued and many tried to visit McAuliffe's set up, the New Albion brewery. If you didn't have an appointment, you were kindly told to fuck off. After reading this book, I often wonder what that beer would taste like. Would it be the hoppy slop of most craft breweries or some kind of hybrid? Breweries are like the yeast they employ to make alcohol - it usually comes from a common source. The New Albion brewery lasted roughly 6 years. They didn't succumb to lack of demand, but to higher demand and Jack McAuliffe's refusal to skimp on quality. He later sold the equipment to Mendocino Brewing and became the head brewer.
Part 2 of this book goes on to illustrate the second phase of craft brewing. A lot of the pages went into explaining the formation of one of the more recognizable names we have in craft beer, Sierra Nevada. Definitely worth the read, but I thought there was something more to this act. The birth of the brew pub. In 2017 that seems almost patellar response. Why would you not have a hamburger with a couple of craft beers?! Historically on the East Coast, city authorities would insist that breweries serve food with their beer offerings. If you were to go to a bar in Buffalo, they'd have to offer some type of food if you were getting something to drink. This is why a bologna sandwich with peppers and onions or popcorn are the apex of the Buffalo dive bar. In 1981, in Yakima, Washington, Bert Grant made it official. He started the first brewpub since Prohibition. Bert Grant's story is worth investigating in his own right. A Scottish immigrant who moved to Toronto, Ontario and got a job at 16 was a beer taster. With European roots, he worked on a hop farm in the Pacific Northwest. Due to legislation in 1979 and 1981, the ability brew beer, sell it on premises as long as there was food. That began a snowball which I'm glad grew. As an aside, the marijuana businesses in the Pacific Northwest and the West may be better served if they begin to think of marijuana outside of its constructs. As Bert Grant's expedition into mixing home brewed, craft beer with food; the marijuana industry could integrate with other industries. As soon as you start mixing, the harder it becomes to legislate. Akin to the Dutch coffee shops that have marijuana, baked goods and coffee products - the American market should move towards that for further integration and acceptance on a federal level.
Part 3 talks about the first shake out of craft beers in the mid-1980s. A lot of breweries fell to the recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s. This area was also the birth of one of the juggernauts of the industry, the Boston Beer Company, commonly known as Samuel Adams. One of the mantras from Jack McAuliffe "history is important in the brewing industry - but, if you don't have a history, you can just make it up." The eponymous Samuel Adams was a malter but he wasn't an actual brewer. That didn't matter to
Jim Koch, a Harvard graduate living in Boston selling home brew. Later in the book, there was a discussion about contract brewing and Central New York brewer,
F.X. Matt. Between you and I, I don't mind the concept of contract brewing. In essence, the contract brewer provides the facilities for the brewer to create the recipe per their recipe. Despite a disparaging interview between Jim Koch and
Dateline, craft beer would persevere. There was a recession to the mean between the American drinking population and Big Beer. I remember a track from Denis Leary's "Lock 'n' Load" album where he lamented about craft beer. Mentioned both in this book and Leary's tirade was Pete's Wicked Ale and the Christmas flavors of Samuel Adams. I remember specifically going to a New England Revolution game and getting a Sam Adams Christmas pack and only drinking a handful of the 12 pack. It's a good way to maintain sobriety.
Part 4 illustrated the current state of affairs. After 2 major recessions to the craft beer market, we are seeing a change in the consumer. Typically, when it comes to craft beers, you imagine dark-rimmed glasses, fashionable stubble and tight blue jeans describing the nuance of hop profiles. Personally, I've called this into question, because unchecked ego often begets an inflated sense of self. For instance, pretend to be an expert in just about anything. Feel free to use words to describe an experience that is subjective to an experience, such as taste. It happens in the world of spirits and wine all the time. How can you explain the taste of tobacco in a deep red wine? Those flavors are not congruent and you're making up words to sound important. I hate the current state of craft brew because jagoffs like me can get in on it and add whichever stupid words we want.
At the end of the day, it took almost 3 years for me to read this book. It's not as though it's uninteresting content. In retrospect, I liked learning about Maytag and McAuliffe because I had no idea of their existence before this book but also it's a recognition of their efforts to provide a quality product which involved actual work. There wasn't a group of scientists at the New Albion brewery creating a hop extract creating a uniformity in a product that can be shipped worldwide. Jack McAuliffe lived above his brewery creating art. The book ran dry because it was a collection of stories, more of an anthology. Although it told a story overall, it was rather piecemeal. I'm glad I read it because it instilled a sense of history into something that I thought was a novel idea. You can buy this book by clicking the link I provided in the article itself.
Na Zdrowie!!!
