First, there is the undeniably cool factor of being able to tell people that you make beer for a living, attend beer festivals for work, and can drink beer on the job (quality control, of course). And then the other side of the coin, as any brewer will be the first to tell you, is the repetitive, far-from-glamorous physical work of brewing, of dumping bag after bag of malt in the mash tun, cleaning kegs, and working the bottling line. There is the idea of a brewer as an artisan who designs recipes and crafts expressions of flavor, history, and place; and there is the brewer as a meticulous janitor who faces never-ending cleaning chores.
In his recently published book, We Make Beer, Sean Lewis takes on the challenge of marrying these conflicting perspectives and getting to the heart of the American craft beer movement: what drives it, who is leading it, and what it all means.
Lewis, a sports writer and beer journalist, is our guide as we start at Blue Hills Brewery in Canton, Massachusetts. After writing a profile about the brewery for a magazine, Lewis signed on as an unpaid apprentice, learning from Founder and Head Brewer Andris Veidis. He weaves his experience brewing there and learning about the industry into a larger narrative about the modern craft beer movement in America.
The book is rich with scenes from the modern craft beer movement in America. Lewis takes us on a tour of Firestone Walker’s unique union barrel system, on which technically minded Brewmaster Matt Brynildson learned to ferment in oak and produce consistently good, clean beer from it. We see a collaboration among Brewmasters Mitch Steele of Stone Brewing Co., Rich Norgrove, Jr., of Bear Republic Brewing Co., and Matt Cole of Fat Head’s unravel, as the brewmasters tweak the recipe on the fly; and we hear from Greg Koch about Stone’s success. We check in with Lancaster, Pennsylvania’s quasi-confrontational beer scene, meet the organic farm in Alabama where Good People Brewing Company send their spent grain, and we learn about Nebraska Brewing Company’s no-holds-barred approach.
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When so many stories about craft beer have already been told, it can be a challenge to cover the major narrative themes with a fresh perspective. As any beer journalist can tell you, there are a couple of answers that may surface in an interview with a brewer: “We brew the beer we like to drink” or “I don’t see this as work; it’s what I love to do.”
Brewers share those sentiments in We Make Beer too, but by immersing himself in their world, Lewis is able to dig deeper and offer proof behind the words and major themes of passion, community, collaboration, and growing pains.
It’s a quick read, at about 200 pages, and conversational in tone. Casual beer drinkers will enjoy learning more, while beer geeks will enjoy the technical specifics of brewing and beer, and brewers might find themselves nodding along with the stories. Regardless of brewing knowledge, all readers and drinkers want to know more about the people behind the beer, and We Make Beer accomplishes that and is an intersection for the romanticism, grand narratives, and the daily grind of making beer.