The Audacity of Hops: The History of America's Craft Beer Revolution
Read The Audacity of Hops: The History of America's Craft Beer Revolution Online
Authors: Tom Acitelli
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #History
“Everyone who cares about good beer owes Tom Acitelli a huge thanks: his history of American craft beer is lively, substantive, and thoughtful.”
âMaureen Ogle, author of
Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer
“[Tom Acitelli]'s thorough research into the craft beer revolution tells a great story and shows how a ragtag yet purposeful group of passionate individuals can build an industry. He did an amazing job capturing the characters, improbable tales, and astounding passion that make up the craft brewing community.”
âKen Grossman, founder, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company
“The Audacity of Hops
chronicles the rich history of America's craft brewing revolution with deft portraits of the resourceful pioneers, the innovative brewers, and the intrepid entrepreneurs who are changing the way the world thinks about beer.”
âSteve Hindy, cofounder of Brooklyn Brewery and coauthor of
Beer School
“Tom's narrative threads moments of insider anecdote with a historian's vision of what makes growing, outsider movements so dynamic, meaningful, and, in our case, delicious. An important achievement.”
âJeremy Cowan, author of
Craft Beer Bar Mitzvah
and proprietor of Shmaltz Brewing
“This book is a delightful read, painstakingly researched, often humorous, and filled with stories that breathe life into the birth of our industry.”
âDavid L. Geary, president of D. L. Geary Brewing Company
Copyright © 2013 by Tom Acitelli
All rights reserved
First edition
Published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
814 North Franklin Street
Chicago, Illinois 60610
ISBN 978-1-61374-388-1
Cover and interior design: Jonathan Hahn
Cover photographs: Michael Halberstadt
Typesetting: PerfecType, Nashville, TN
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Acitelli, Tom.
The audacity of hops : the history of America's craft beer revolution / Tom Acitelli. â First edition.
pages cm
Summary: “Charting the birth and growth of craft beer across the United States, Tom Acitelli offers an epic, story-driven account of one of the most inspiring and surprising American grassroots movements. In 1975, there was a single craft brewery in the United States; today there are more than 2,000. Now this once-fledgling movement has become ubiquitous nationwideâthere's even a honey ale brewed at the White House. This book not only tells the stories of the major figures and businesses within the movement, but it also ties in the movement with larger American culinary developments. It also charts the explosion of the mass-market craft beer culture, including magazines, festivals, home brewing, and more. This entertaining and informative history brims with charming, remarkable stories, which together weave a very American business tale of formidable odds and refreshing success”â Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61374-388-1 (pbk.)
1. BeerâUnited States. I. Title.
TP573.U5A25 2013
641.2'3âdc23
2013002264
Printed in the United States of America
5 4 3 2 1
To my parents
Prologue
:
America, King of Beer
Turin, Italy; Paris; Washington, DC | 2009-2010
THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST
San Francisco | 1965
DO IT YOURSELF
Dunoon, Scotland; Fairfax County, VA | 1964-1968
BEER FOR ITS OWN SAKE
Okinawa, Japan; Portland, OR | 1970
EDEN, CALIFORNIA
Davis, CA | 1970
TV DINNER LAND
San Francisco | 1970-1971
LITE UP AHEAD
Munich; Brooklyn | 1970-1973
“BREWED THROUGH A HORSE”
Los Angeles; Chicago | 1973-1978
THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BEER
San Francisco | 1974-1978
CHEZ MCAULIFFE
Sonoma, CA | 1976
THE BARD OF BEER
London | 1976-1977
LONG DAYS, LONGER
ODDS Sonoma, CA | 1976-1977
TIPPING POINTS
Boulder, CO; Washington, DC | 1978
“SMALL, HIGH-QUALITY FOOD PLACES”
Sonoma, CA | 1978
THE BEARDED YOUNG MAN FROM CHICO
Chico, CA | 1978
THE FIREMAN AND THE GOAT SHED
Novato, CA; Hygiene, CO | 1979-1980
THE WEST COAST STYLE
Chico, CA | 1979-1981
MAYFLOWER REFUGEE
Boulder, CO; Manhattan | 1981-1984
HOW THE BREWPUB WAS BORN
Yakima, WA | 1981
THE FIRST SHAKEOUT
Sonoma, CA; Novato, CA | 1982-1983
“THAT'S A GREAT IDEA, CHARLIE”
Boulder, CO; Denver | 1982-1984
THE THIRD WAVE BUILDS
Manhattan; Virginia Beach, VA; Portland, OR; Hopland, CA | 1982-1984.
THE LESSON OF THE NYLON STRING
Newton, MA; Boston | 1983-1984
“THIS CONNOISSEUR THING”
Manhattan | 1983-1985
BECAUSE WINE MAKING TAKES TOO LONG
Belmont, CA | 1985
MORE THAN IN EUROPE
Boston; Kalamazoo, MI | 1983-1986
BEER, IT'S WHAT'S WITH DINNER
Washington, DC; Portland, OR | 1983-1987
VATS AND DOGS
San Francisco, CA | 1986-1987
TO THE LAST FRONTIER AND BACK
Juneau, AK; Baltimore; Boston | 1985-1986
HERE, THERE, AND EVERYWHERE
Denver|1987
DAVIDS AND GOLIATHS
Boston | 1986
FIVE HUNDRED MILES IN A RENTED HONDA
New Ulm, MN | 1986-1987
NEW YORK MINUTES
Brooklyn; Manhattan | 1987-1988
THE REVOLUTION, TELEVISED
San Francisco; Cleveland; Chicago | 1987-1990
A MANIFESTO AND ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
Venice, Italy | 1990
THE VALUE OF GOLD
Utica, NY | 1991
“THE TYRANNY OF FAST GROWTH”
Baghdad, Iraq; Marin County, CA | 1991-1994
GHOSTS AROUND THE MACHINES
Washington, DC | 1993
CHERRY BREW AND NAKED HOCKEY
Manhattan | 1992-1993
IN PRIME TIME
San Francisco | 1994
CRITICAL MASS
Durham, NC | 1995
THE POTATO-CHIP EPIPHANY
Kailua-Kona, HI | 1993-1995
THE BREWPUBS BOOM
Denver; Palo Alto, CA | 1993-1995
SUDS AND THE CITY
Brooklyn | 1995
ATTACK OF THE PHANTOM CRAFTS
Denver; St. Louis | 1994-1995
“BUDHOOK” AND THE BULL BEER MARKET
Seattle; Portsmouth, NH; Frederick, MD | 1995-1996
LAST CALL FOR THE OLD DAYS
Hopland, CA; Portland, OR; Portland, ME | 1995-1997
BIG BEER'S BIGGEST WEAPON
Merriam, KS; Chico, CA | 1996
THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S COAT
Brooklyn | 1996
TO THE EXTREME
Rehoboth Beach, DE | 1995-1997
THE TOTAL PACKAGE
Petaluma, CA | 1995
THE MOVEMENT'S BIGGEST SETBACK
New York; Philadelphia | 1996
LUCKY BASTARDS
Los Angeles; San Marcos, CA | 1996-1998
A TALE OF TWO BREWERIES
White River Junction, VT; Philadelphia | 1996-2000
THE GREAT SHAKEOUT
Nationwide | 1996-2000
VICTORY ABROAD, DEFEAT AT HOME
Palo Alto, CA; Boston | 1997-2000
PLOTTING A COMEBACK
Atlanta | 1998-2000
“MCDONALD'S VERSUS FINE FOOD”
Manhattan | 2000
CRAFT BEER LOGS ON
Boston; San Francisco; Atlanta | 1999-2001
GROWING PAINS AGAIN
Brooklyn; Cleveland | 2000-2003
STILL THE LATEST THING
Guerneville, CA; Oklahoma City, OK; Houston | 2002-2005
WITH GUSTO
Manhattan; Boulder, CO | 2003-2005
BEER, PREMIUM
Durango, CO; New Orleans | 2006-2008
EXIT THE GODFATHER
San Francisco | 2009-2010
BIG CROWDS AND THE NEW SMALL
Santa Rosa, CA | 2010-2011
“THE ALBION BREWERY”
Sonoma, CA; Denver | 2011-2012
AMERICA, KING OF BEER
Turin, Italy; Paris; Washington, DC | 2009-2010
I
t was the last week in
October 2010, cloudy and cool, and hundreds of thousands of people were streaming toward the Olympic Village in Turin, a united Italy's first capital in the 1860s and the ancestral home of the nation's royal family until after World War II. History had everything and nothing to do with the reason the crowds were gathering: Salone del Gusto, the biannual trade show and tribal gathering of Slow Food, the international movement that grew out of a 1986 protest in Rome over Italy's first McDonald's. Slow Food's show, like the movement itself, was a middle finger to homogenization and mass production. It meant to highlight locally produced, communally enjoyed foodstuffs: cheeses, fish, jams, oils, meats, nuts, legumes, wine, honey, breadâand beer.
The last one was a bit of a surprise to me. The surprise was not that there was beer at the show, but that most of the beer came from Italy, a nation known more in the same breath as France for its varied wines. These included the drier Barolo and Barbera of the north; the heavier, lusher central Italian wines like the Montepulciano in Abruzzo; and the sweeter Nero d'Avola and Marsala of Sicily. Italian beer, though? Whoever heard of the porters of Florence? Or the pale ales of Bologna? The pilsners of Reggio di Calabria? Wrong part of Europe,
signore,
surelyâit was supposed to be all blandly industrial Peroni and Moretti. But there they were: Italian-made craft beers, tasting in their complexity and depth very much like the American-made ones I could find back home in Brooklyn.
I would learn that those American craft beers had had a profound influence on the nascent Italian craft beer movement in the 1990s and 2000s, as had American beer figures at that 2010 Salone del Gusto like Sam Calagione, a brewer whom I recognized from an epically detailed
New Yorker
profile published two years before, and Charlie Papazian, an author whom I had just seen at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) in Denver the previous month.
They were on a panel together about American influences on Italian beer, where their observations prattled through several near-instantaneous translations into dozens of earphones in a college classroom-like setting.