Over on RateBeer’s Hop Press, I go on a bit of a ramble this week about what gives beer it’s beeriness.
Despite the range of flavors you can find in the multitudinous (over 80, according to RateBeer) styles that exist, I still expect a certain beeriness from my beers. What do I mean by that totally improvised word, you ask? Well, I expect what pretty much everyone expects – some malt sweetness, some hop bitterness, and maybe some esters from the yeast.
I’m not picky. These simple factors cover a rainbow of flavors. The malt can taste like coffee, chocolate, bread, biscuit, oatmeal, roast grain… you guys know how much the grain bill can cover. Similarly, hops range from the grassy varieties of the UK to the spicy Czech families, from citrusy Cascade hops of the American Northwest to the strawberry taste of Pacific Gem hops. Yeast, the oft-unpredictable loose cousin of the other ingredients, produces everything from buttery notes (Ringwood) to George Clinton-level funk (Brettanomyces).
Check out my full thoughts over on my weekly column.
Event announcements aren’t my favorite thing to post on Brews and Books, but this one is too cool for me to not mention. I mean, if you were to miss this because I forgot to post it, how do you think I’d feel? Plus, Casablanca Comics is my LCS, so I owe it to them for pulling my comics every week.
* deep breath *
Novelist, comic creator and short story author extraordinaire Joe Hill is coming to Portland!
On August 14th, Joe Hill will be at Casablanca Comics in Portland from 4-6 PM. August is a big month for Hill’s comic series Locke & Key, with the hardcover edition of Locke & Key Vol 3, the beginning of the new story arc “Keys to the Kingdom”, and a $1 reprint of the very first Locke & Key story all coming out on the 11th. Hill will be at Casablanca to sign these new books, along with all the previously released volumes of the series.
Joe Hill’s prose has had it’s ups and downs for me (short version is that I like his short stories and I’m not quite as enamored by his novels), but I have nothing but good things to say about Locke & Key, one of the most consistently outstanding books coming out these days.
When Hill comes to Portland, you better make damn sure that you get over to Casablanca, even if you’ve never read the series before. If you’re a fan, you get some damn fine signed merchandise. If you aren’t, the first issue reprint (which ends with 8 pages on “the story so far”) and the new arc are both great jumping on points for the series.
Tags: casablanca comics, joe hill, locke & key, Maine, Portland
Wondering where all the updates have been? Well, I’ve been reading. A lot. Like, a lot a lot. Here’s a look at the books that have been capturing my time and attention.
Kraken by China Miéville
“An everyday doomsayer in sandwich-board abruptly walked away from what over the last several days had been his pitch, by the gates of a museum. The sign on his front was an old-school prophecy of the end: the one bobbing on his back read FORGET IT.”
London is full of cults, religious sects, and magic-users - and they’re all preparing for the end of the world. This is the world readers are thrown into at the beginning of Kraken, the new novel from “weird fiction” auteur China Miéville. Miéville deftly juggles a large cast of characters and multiple points of view, but we see London chiefly through the eyes of Billy Harlow, curator of the Darwin Museum in England. When the star attraction of the museum - the massive nine-meter-long titular squid - goes mysteriously missing, Billy is sucked into London’s Lovecraftian underworld by the squid-worshiping Krakenists, the police’s Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime unit, and a cavalcade of magical and just-slightly-magical oddballs. The book meanders a bit in it’s 500+ pages, but creates a rich world - each mysterious sect provides enough fodder for entire novels. Highly recommended for fans of Neil Gaiman, Haruki Murakami and other purveyors of the fantastic.
Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi
“Nailer clambered through a service duct, tugging at copper wire and yanking it free. Ancient asbestos fibers and mouse grit puffed up around him as the wire tore loose.”
Paolo Bacigalupi’s young adult novel Ship Breaker is my favorite pirate story in recent memory - and I didn’t even realize it was a pirate story until two-thirds of the way through the book. The surprisingly prescient book takes place in a near-future American Gulf Coast, in a world where the polluted ocean has destroyed many coastal cities and fossil fuels are an artifact of the past. Teams of youths scavenge the wrecked ships of the Gulf, pulling copper and other valuable materials for their bosses. The protagonist, Nailer, is a “light crew” member who hopes to one day escape his life of hard labor and his incredibly abusive father, and the book begins with his discovery of a rich girl who might be his golden ticket. Bacigalupi keeps the action-packed book moving at a lightning pace, and is smart enough to weave the backbone of the dystopia into the novel without any clumsy or unnecessary exposition. Head-and-shoulders above the young adult post-apocolyptica that is quickly becoming a bit too crowded. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Books, china miéville, gary shteyngart, kraken, lost states, Michael Chabon, michael trinklein, paolo bacigalupi, Reviews, ship breaker, super sad true love story, the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay, wednesday comics
Today, my column on the RateBeer Hop Press is about a trip I took to Germany just before my 20th birthday. Why? Because it’s the trip that turned me on to the libation known as beer.
One of my favorite terms in the world of craft brewing is “gateway beer.” The fact is, despite being beer geeks, most of us haven’t always been in love with beer. Let’s face it - a pint of Budweiser, Miller or any other readily available beer that’s typically an American kid’s first doesn’t exactly inspire love in the craft. It takes a special beer to inspire confidence in brewers and make you want to try even more of the good stuff. For me, this ended up being a little beer from Kilkenny, drank at an Irish pub in a German city by an American kid.
Read the full post over on RateBeer, and leave a comment with the beer experience that started you drinking the good stuff.
Tags: Beer, gateway beer, hoppress, kilkenny, ratebeer
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