A few good beer books.

A reader asks:

I'm thinking about getting into home brewing, and I'd like to just become more knowledgeable about beer and the craft beer industry in general. Do you know of any good books to read on one or all three subjects (home brewing, the industry, and beer overall)? A cursory search in Amazon yielded plenty of results, but I figured you might have a good suggestion or two.

Following are quick, off-the-cuff suggestions designed much like a personal “Top Five.” The list is not intended to be comprehensive, and reader additions are appreciated. Perhaps we can come up with a worthy “Top Ten.”

I may not think much of Charlie Papazian when it comes to his beer industry dabbling outside homebrewing, but when it comes to homebrewing, his New Complete Joy of Home Brewing probably remains the best place to start for aspiring homebrewers.

The classic “great beer” texts by Michael Jackson are still out there, and worth it for the always elegant writing, although the information is dated in older editions. Go to his Beer Hunter website and read the many archived columns there, then look around for used copies of the warhorses from the 1980’s.

Garrett Oliver's The Brewmaster's Table is a recent essential volume. The subtitle says it all: “Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real Food.” However, it’s also a wonderful overview of beer styles.

Fermenting Revolution: How to Drink Beer and Save the World, by Christopher Mark O’Brien. Need I say more?

For insight into the microbrewing business, I like Sam Calagione’s Brewing Up a Business: Adventures in Entrepreneurship from the Founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery. He has another book called
Extreme Brewing: An Enthusiast's Guide to Brewing Craft Beer at Home, but I haven’t yet read it.

Readers?

Fest of Ale recap.

Yesterday was the second annual Fest of Ales at Keg Liquors in Clarksville, and store owner and beer enthusiast Todd Antz surely must be happy with the results.

After last year’s inaugural event, Todd did some necessary tweaking. He moved the date back six weeks, brought in even more breweries and wholesalers, and relentlessly advertised. I’d guess that attendance was triple that of 2006, and in spite of an hour of stormy gusts and hard rain (given the steaminess of the day, this may have helped entertain the crowd rather than hurt), those present seemed to be having a wonderful time throughout.

The Curmudgeon’s picks of the litter?

Upland Brewing’s Eileen Martin brought a 750 ml bottle of experimental strawberry lambic; sorry there wasn’t enough for everyone. I’m trying to score some for sampling at the annual Lambic by the Glass on June 30 at NABC.

World Class Beverage had New Holland’s Existential on hand. It is another creative excursion into crossover territory, with the gravity and heft of a barley wine, but with an overt hoppiness that derives from ten hop additions. It has a clear, well defined balance between the malt and the hops. Who says one can’t enjoy gravity beers like this and Ol’ Shag, a barley wine from Browning’s Brewery, on a hot, sultry day? Not the Curmudgeon, for he did enjoy them.

Another surprise for me was the complex and tasty Shmaltz He’Brew Origin Pomegranate Ale, brewed with (duh) pomegranate juice. It’s handled in Indiana by Cavalier.

Louisville-area breweries were well represented, too, and all the styles I tasted were quite good, and to conclude, who doesn’t like fresh-fried, Elector-battered grouper from Bistro New Albany’s Dave Clancy?

Fest of Ale is sure to grow next year. Try not to miss it.

A beer's not as good as a wine -- to a blind legislator.

As noted previously, my pizza & beer business will depart from our customary Sunday closing time and open the doors for the Super Bowl. We've done it for the last four years, and if experience is any indicator, Sportstime Pizza will be selling quite a large number of carryout pies on Sunday afternoon and evening as game time draws near.

However, we’ll not be selling carry-out growlers of locally brewed beer, because the state of Indiana prohibits all Sunday carry-out sales of alcoholic beverages.

But wait – that’s not entirely so.

At the same time as the state of Indiana bans the vast majority of beer, wine and spirits sales on Sunday, it permits small craft wineries to sell their wines for carry-out ... on Sunday. This is seen as promoting tourism, but more so than that, it's a testament to the wine industry's dazzling, decades-long success at espousing the notion that a 750 ml bottle of the grape is more worthy of approbation (and legislative exceptions, and free rides) than our 64-ounce growler of the grain.

It’s hypocrisy, and a transparent travesty, and in the end, the major difference between a small craft brewery and a small craft winery is the ability of the latter to lobby effectively without the dead weight of America’s mainstream beer barons (A-B, Miller, et al), which for a half-century have pursued a policy of self-defeatism by persistently behaving in such a boorish manner as to give the “beer = dumb/wine = smart” stereotype undue credence -- and by doing so, unintentionally and hilariously spawning the Mike "Workingman's Drink" Seates of our nation.

However ... once again in 2007, there will be legislation introduced to rectify the native Hoosier inanity. This time around, it appears to be part of a startlingly comprehensive regulatory reform package that is long overdue and makes perfect sense – and consequently, probably has next to “zero” chance of passing.

The following update comes from the Indiana Beer website:

House Bill 1323 was introduced by David Crooks this week is one of the most far-reaching we've seen in Indiana in quite some time. "Requires a local alcoholic beverage board to allow an individual to make oral comments at a public meeting or hearing. Provides that a holder of an alcoholic beverage permit who is authorized by law to sell alcoholic beverages for carryout may sell carryout on Sunday from noon until 6:00 p.m. Allows a retailer to sell alcoholic beverages for consumption on the licensed premises on Sunday from 10 a.m., prevailing local time, until 3:00 a.m. Allows alcoholic beverages to be sold on election day from noon until 3 a.m. Allows alcoholic beverages to be sold for carryout on New Year's Day."

Perhaps apart from those rare times when the Colts advance to the Super Bowl, it isn’t quite as obvious in Indianapolis as it is to those of us on the borders that each and every Sunday, Indiana fairly hemorrhages tax revenues to surrounding states.

Furthermore, to me, Sunday sales restrictions are a vestige of faith-based blue laws that need to be scourged from the books.

Hey, I’d just like a level playing field – both commercially and conceptually. Craft is craft, whether wine or beer – what’s so hard about understanding that, guys?

And what's so bad about keeping tax revenue right here in Indiana?