Read Online The Audacity of Hops: The History of America's Craft Beer Revolution by Tom Acitelli - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Tom Acitelli
Tags: History, Non-Fiction
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recounted by Elhardt. It had to be; information on how to make good beer, we can surmise, had to be shared through word of mouth, printed or verbal. Aside from the older, more technical homebrewing books and Eckhardtâs
A Treatise on Lager Beers,
there was
Quality Brewing: A Guidebook for the Home Production of Fine Beers
by Byron Burch, published in 1975 with a borrowed five hundred dollars because Burch tired of repeatedly answering the same questions at the Berkeley, California, homebrewing and wine-making shop where he worked (much the same motive that compelled Eckhardt six years before).
Fourth, Elhardt tossed dashes of humor and whimsy into the newsletter with his talk of radioactivity from a blown keg and the need only for a ready glass to relieve the pressure. This suggests that the original initiates of the American craft beer movement enjoyed their pursuit and found pleasure in it rather than pretention. It was a good time as much as it was a passion.
Fifth, that Elhardt was the newsletterâs author suggests he had some expertise recognized by the wider group, and we know that Elhardtâs expertise came in large measure through his experience with European beer. The craft beer movement in America, such as it was, followed an undisputed leader: Europe.
Finally, a feeling of expectation infuses Elhardtâs paragraphs. It was what a financial analyst might call a forward-looking statement, meant to not only inform its readers but also prep them for something in the near future. The news of Eckhardtâs beer-tasting booklet tells us that the Maltose Falcons members knew they had to keep their taste buds in ready shape for the beers that would surely come (the âJohnâ that Eckhardtâs booklet was available through was John Daume, the clubâs financial sponsor, who hosted its meetings from the beginning at the wine-making shop he opened in 1972 in L.A.âs Woodland Hills). Homebrewers like those in the Maltose Falconsâearly members included a utility lineman, a PhD student at UCLA, a church deacon, and an artistâemboldened the movement with their growing interest and their growing numbers. (The Maltose Falcons would soon count more than a hundred dues-paying members.) They were by far the largest leg of an emerging three-legged stool: Fritz Maytagâs Anchor was the commercial leg and the other was writers like Fred Eckhardt and Byron Burch, who also visited Anchor as he set about assembling his homebrewing guide. Maytag gave him a tour of the Eighth Street brewery that ran to three hours. It was not just generosity on Maytagâs part; he knew that the more informed homebrewers there were, the more craft beer consumers there might be.
Information was becoming a premium commodity in the American consumer marketplace. The very notion of the âinformed consumerââthe savvy shopper who peers around the corners of advertising to the nuts and bolts of a particular product, including its geographic originâhad only just come into vogue. This was in large part due to Ralph Nader, whose 1965 book
Unsafe at Any Speed
chronicled the campaigns of major automakers against safety improvements, including seatbelts, and made him and his legion of Nader Raider lawyers media darlings. The creation of Earth Day (1970) and new federal bodies like the Environmental Protection Agency (also 1970) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (1972) further drove the notion of the informed consumer (as did, in no small measure, the criminality exposed by Watergate in 1974âif you couldnât trust the president to properly police things, who could you trust?). And if consumersâ pursuits of information left them particularly skittish about a product, they could decide to opt out of the marketplace in some measure. As Nader pointed out in an October 1975 interview, consumersâ skepticism of a food supply increasingly dominated by factory farming was âtied to
A Treatise on Lager Beers,
there was
Quality Brewing: A Guidebook for the Home Production of Fine Beers
by Byron Burch, published in 1975 with a borrowed five hundred dollars because Burch tired of repeatedly answering the same questions at the Berkeley, California, homebrewing and wine-making shop where he worked (much the same motive that compelled Eckhardt six years before).
Fourth, Elhardt tossed dashes of humor and whimsy into the newsletter with his talk of radioactivity from a blown keg and the need only for a ready glass to relieve the pressure. This suggests that the original initiates of the American craft beer movement enjoyed their pursuit and found pleasure in it rather than pretention. It was a good time as much as it was a passion.
Fifth, that Elhardt was the newsletterâs author suggests he had some expertise recognized by the wider group, and we know that Elhardtâs expertise came in large measure through his experience with European beer. The craft beer movement in America, such as it was, followed an undisputed leader: Europe.
Finally, a feeling of expectation infuses Elhardtâs paragraphs. It was what a financial analyst might call a forward-looking statement, meant to not only inform its readers but also prep them for something in the near future. The news of Eckhardtâs beer-tasting booklet tells us that the Maltose Falcons members knew they had to keep their taste buds in ready shape for the beers that would surely come (the âJohnâ that Eckhardtâs booklet was available through was John Daume, the clubâs financial sponsor, who hosted its meetings from the beginning at the wine-making shop he opened in 1972 in L.A.âs Woodland Hills). Homebrewers like those in the Maltose Falconsâearly members included a utility lineman, a PhD student at UCLA, a church deacon, and an artistâemboldened the movement with their growing interest and their growing numbers. (The Maltose Falcons would soon count more than a hundred dues-paying members.) They were by far the largest leg of an emerging three-legged stool: Fritz Maytagâs Anchor was the commercial leg and the other was writers like Fred Eckhardt and Byron Burch, who also visited Anchor as he set about assembling his homebrewing guide. Maytag gave him a tour of the Eighth Street brewery that ran to three hours. It was not just generosity on Maytagâs part; he knew that the more informed homebrewers there were, the more craft beer consumers there might be.
Information was becoming a premium commodity in the American consumer marketplace. The very notion of the âinformed consumerââthe savvy shopper who peers around the corners of advertising to the nuts and bolts of a particular product, including its geographic originâhad only just come into vogue. This was in large part due to Ralph Nader, whose 1965 book
Unsafe at Any Speed
chronicled the campaigns of major automakers against safety improvements, including seatbelts, and made him and his legion of Nader Raider lawyers media darlings. The creation of Earth Day (1970) and new federal bodies like the Environmental Protection Agency (also 1970) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (1972) further drove the notion of the informed consumer (as did, in no small measure, the criminality exposed by Watergate in 1974âif you couldnât trust the president to properly police things, who could you trust?). And if consumersâ pursuits of information left them particularly skittish about a product, they could decide to opt out of the marketplace in some measure. As Nader pointed out in an October 1975 interview, consumersâ skepticism of a food supply increasingly dominated by factory farming was âtied to
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