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Christmas is coming, the Goose Island is getting brewed — and it’s time to do some shopping for the beer lover in your life. Here are a few suggestions:
Craft beer devotees tend to seek out breweries and beer experiences whenever they travel. And one of the best new beer-centric travel books is Stephen Beaumont’s “Will Travel for Beer: 101 Remarkable Journeys Every Beer Lover Should Experience” (Mitchell Beazley, $20). Beaumont details more than 100 destinations every beer lover should visit, from Copenhagen’s Ølfestival in Copenhagen to Brazil’s version of Oktoberfest.
Another great option: John Holl’s “Drink Beer, Think Beer: Getting to the Bottom of Every Pint” (Basic Books, $26) draws on history, economics and beer-industry insiders to provide a fun and compelling look at beer today. Holl’s eight essays on the state of beer will make you think while you drink.
If your beer love is an advanced beer geek, he or she may appreciate Josh Noel’s new “Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch and How Craft Beer Became Big Business” (Chicago Review Press, $20). It’s an inside look at the high-profile purchase of Goose Island Brewing by Anheuser-Busch in 2011 and how it changed the craft beer business. As the journalist who broke the story for the Chicago Tribune, Noel followed the story for years as Anheuser-Busch followed that purchase by snapping up many more small breweries and provoking a consumer backlash. This volume, by the way, won best book at this year’s North American Guild of Beer Writers’ competition.
Two Bay Area brewers have penned new books this year aimed at homebrewers. Anderson Valley Brewing’s Fal Allen published his “Gose: Brewing a Classic German Beer for the Modern Era” (Brewers Publications, $20) in September, exploring the salty and lightly sour style of beer that originated in Germany. Dick Cantwell, from San Francisco’s Magnolia Brewing, delves into how to brew modern IPAS in his “Brewing Eclectic IPA: Pushing the Boundaries of India Pale Ale” (Brewers Publications, $20).
And British beer writer Melissa Cole’s new “The Beer Kitchen” (Hardie Grant, $30) explores the art and science behind beer pairings. The book includes 70 recipes, from beer-brined porchetta to black-bean dip made with American-style pale ale.
