Media Draft: Beer Books Go Beyond The Generic
Posted onDespite the serious gains achieved by beer as a product in terms of respect, beer writing as profession or professional pursuit has never really achieved similar heights. In fact, beer writing doesn’t get much love, from the industry, the drinking public, and the media aristocracy. While editors and publishers over the last few months have begrudgingly begun to run favorable coverage of beer, those in the industry know that these same editors and publishers have given rise to dozens of, “beer is a fad” or “beer is dead” articles in the near past.
While beer writing in the news and magazine press is finally on the uptick, book publishers have been a little slower to see the growing popularity of such titles on beer. To date, most books on beer have either attempted (and generally failed at) an unwieldy, encyclopedic scope or restricted their focus to the local market (see American regional beer guides going back 20 years). When we look at the wine publishing industry, it’s not unusual to see a half dozen individual titles on a single varietal, say Chardonnay, in the course of a single year. Beyond that, book publishers have even been willing to release wine-related books on some pretty esoteric topics (see Wine Dogs USA Edition, a book dedicated to the dogs of American wineries…)
While it may be some time before we see a half-dozen titles per year on gueuze or even IPA, I recently came across a title that gave me some hope. Philadelphia-based beer writer Don Russell, whose lamentable shtick handle is Joe Sixpack, is set to release a book on winter seasonal beers titled, Christmas Beer: The Cheeriest, Tastiest and Most Unusual Holiday Brews, in November 2008. I’m sure the publisher spent some considerable time debating the title (especially its shelf-life post-holiday season). The title is a welcome departure from the generalized tome on far-away breweries on continents the author has never even visited (how you write about African beers when you’ve only had stale, beaten down versions in dusty, worn bottles in the states is beyond me).
I have no idea if this will be the final cover, but I have to admit being a little chagrined at a book on winter/holiday beers (and unusual ones at that) which employs the stereotypical pilsner glass and yellow beer on the cover. Baby steps, Andy, baby steps…
Published by Universe, a division of Rizzolli New York, the title will be released November 4, 2008, and will retail for $19.95.
The ubiquitous calendar, which can be found on the desk of every beer lover and half the fathers in America, has long been written by writer Bob Klein. Klein, whose controversial Beer Lover’s Rating Guide: Revised Edition has been the subject of almost as many 1 star pans as 5 star praise reviews on Amazon, is sort of a mysterious figure in the beer industry. He wrote the guide, which was last updated in 2000, and the calendar and that was about all most beer enthusiasts knew about him. In all my travels in the industry, I’ve never met him, seen him, or know anyone who has met or seen him. For all I know, Bob Klein is Charlie Papazian’s nom de plume, which brings me back to my original point and the outlandish headline on this piece.
Papazian’s name is well-known to beer lovers as the author of several books, including the seminal ‘Complete Joy of Homebrewing.’ He is also the founder and president of the Brewers Association, a trade organization which represents thousands of smaller American breweries. In his spare time, Papazian also writes magazine and newspaper articles for a variety of publications, including a bi-monthly column in Draft Magazine. From the Amazon release, it appears that Papazian has now taken over for Klein as the editor of the beer desk calendar. While I’m curious about how this came to be, a review of the publisher’s website (Workman) doesn’t provide much of an opportunity for inquiring media to contact the PR department. If I were the editor of the Celebrator or Ale Street News, I’d keep an eye over my shoulder. Charlie’s the kind of guy who apparently knows how to multi-task….
Let’s start with the cover, which featured a bleach blond bimbette (nice eyebrows) in a low cut top attempting to bite the top of a Pyramid hefeweizen. While I’m sure that beer loving dentists everywhere are excited about the prospect of the cover model’s ensuing bridge work, it’s a pretty ridiculous teaser for a lame feature topic, namely ‘7 Ways to Open a Beer.’ For those bookstore browsers considering whether to buy the magazine, you may be enticed by the cover’s offer of a “Great American Beer Challenge,� where you can learn whether the editors preferred Budweiser, Coors, or Schlitz. That doesn’t do it for you? Well, the editors all promise ratings for a whopping ’12 Beers.’ The last cover tag makes me want to track down the editors, the publisher, and their respective influences and drown them all in a bottomless vat of Aspen Edge. The coup de grace, “Toilet Paper Wipeout – Which Paper Treats You Best?� You really can’t make this stuff up.
In its Winter 2008 issue, the magazine eschews the expected design feature of tying the issue back to its subject. In the interest of disclosure, I’m a writer, not a designer. While I certainly keep an eye on the design elements, I’m not likely to dwell on them in these reviews (unless they really add to or detract from the content). Instead, I intend to focus more on the substance of the various publications. Instead of running a photo of people clinking pints or glossy snaps of copper brew kettles on the cover, the magazine instead opts for a simple photo of Mt. Hood (taken by Flynn herself). It tells readers that the magazine is definitely not going to shy away from the ‘lifestyle’ angle that is so much the buzz in journalism schools and magazine board rooms in the last decade. Putting aside the issue of whether there is such a thing as a ‘beer lifestyle,’ which I will address in a future Media Draft, Beer Northwest remains focused on beer.