Knowledgeable BC beer fans will note many similarities, but also significant differences, in the history of craft beer amongst the two provinces. Since he isn’t just interviewing owners and brewers, Messenger also has a chance to take solid looks at the periphery of the business, including college brewing programs, Alberta’s incredible barley, and the small but significant industries of hop growing and small-scale malting. It’s refreshing to see a writer take a wider view of beer, including regional politics, culture, and economics. He digresses in a way that many beer fans will relate to, as he describes the unique personality of those he interviews and the experiences he had while researching the book.īy not profiling every single brewery, Messenger is able to focus on the breweries that most represent the themes he is following-the main one being craft beer’s relationship to Alberta’s boom and bust economy. Messenger’s style is affable and affective. He utilizes a more personable style of journalism, including himself and his responses in his interviews and explorations. Instead, he tells the story of beer in Alberta, including a good look at pre and post prohibition brewing history. Messenger avoids profiling all 100+ Alberta craft breweries and only does quick tasting notes on a few beers in passing. Tapping the West is not a regional beer guide like we’ve seen so many times before, and the subtitle gives some indication in the author’s different tack. For a regionally based beer book, what would be a greater mark of a job well done? This great little book passes the first, and maybe highest hurdle for BC readers: to get snobby West Coast beer drinkers to dream about a trip to (gasp!) Alberta to taste craft beer.
Good news: Touchwood Editions has published Scott Messenger’s first book, Tapping the West: How Alberta’s Craft Beer Industry Bubbled Out of an Economy Gone Flat. Beer tourism is essential travel, isn’t it? No doubt all of us stuck at home in 2020 are dreaming about our next major road trip.
0 kommentar(er)
