The State of the Beer

The Van Pelt library at the University of Pennsylvania truly is the type you can get lost in. I know 'cause I did. Early in my research I discovered that there was a person named John Beale Bordley, who was a colonial hotshot and one of the first production-scale brewers in Maryland. Bordley was friendly with Thomas Jefferson and as concerned as he was about what we now call sustainable living. Part of that, for Bordley, was not having to rely upon the British for ale. After reading his book online and fumbling across some of his papers, it became clear to me that it might just be possible to find his recipe. Finding the first Eastern Shore beer recipe and including it in my book , would be a massive coup. I had to head to Philly to have my computer repaired. The best way to have your Mac die, it turns out, is to get behind on your writing schedule and then engage on a wild goose chase. The Apple people took it from me and sent it off to have the hard drive replaced. I thanked ...

Maryland's Eastern Shore had a complicated relationship with beer for much of its history. Brewers fell into (roughly) two categories: people who needed the work and people who needed great beer. In  this book , I trace that history and show how the two different kinds of brewers overlap. If you're interested in coming to a talk or signing, here's a list of events . If you would like me to come and speak with your group or at your business, just message on Facebook , Twitter  or G+  and I'll arrange it.

Castle Haven Photo courtesy of the Choptank River Heritage Center I went to college as a 30-year-old and, as I made for the graduation finish line, my first marriage came apart. If I ever write that story it will read like the lamest version of the poor man's Fear and Loathing.  Come to think of it, Fear and Loathing in Delmar  would be an awesome title. Doing primary source, original research was a graduation requirement, so I combined my appreciation for a good tavern with the fact that I had to write about something. While researching taverns in colonial Maryland I discovered that there was such a place a Castle Haven. More than a decade later, that paper became the first chapter in my first book, and the second installment in my blog about writing the book. This is the story of our attempt to breach Castle Haven in search of photos.

Oddly, though, Boxer Light hasn't taken Belgium by storm Twenty years ago, I would tell you that Belgium was the greatest brewing country in the world. And today I would say it's the United States. -- John McDonald, Founder of Boulevard Brewing Company, in an  +NPR   story. Exporting a revolution Late last year, Belgian beer company  +Duvel Moortgat  closed a deal to buy  +Boulevard Brewing Co.  primarily to secure an American craft beer for export (or, I guess, import, depending upon your perspective). The word from all involved is nothing will change about the beer, and, while there's tons of historical evidence that corporate culture will have an affect on the beer, there's no evidence that Duvel isn't a quality beer company. It's billed as a Belgian craft brewery and is a family owned company. More recently, Lagunitas sniped at Boston Beer for making a West Coast IPA  that was, they say, an attempt to horn in on their market....

The recently-reported discovery of an o n-campus brewery at the  +College of William & Mary  highlights a point that we've forgotten, a little bit. Yes, it's cute to make jokes about having beer on campus, but where there are people, there is beer. This is a fact of civilization. What was difficult was making good beer. It not only took time, but also resources that most smaller places didn't have. Maltsters were rare in the country, but they could make a living in cities, larger communities and even on plantations, if the plantation owner was rich enough and liked beer that much. Anyone can make a passable cider, but colonists who liked beer had trouble getting good brews. What's exciting about the discovery is that we might get additional insight into the recipes they were using. A good beer recipe, like a good maltster, was, if not rare-ish, less common than we would like. Brewers wrote to one another about their processes and occasionally some of the ingredi...

I've been working on a book about a local brewery for three years. Like many would-be nonfiction authors I wrote as much as I could when I wasn't at my day job. I was a reporter when I started, then (mostly because I was cheap and the newspaper was bleeding cash) I was an editor and finally a section editor at a bigger paper. Between my day job and my book I was cranking out a phenomenal number of words every week. When I finally left the newspaper business for the nonprofit sector, my first draft was nearly done and I was cruising toward a second draft. It was time to try selling my book. I've learned since that it is foolish (or at least amateur) to first write and research a nonfiction novel before selling it. My first proposal (I also learned nonfiction authors don't query) was to  +The History Press . As I'd never written a book professionally before, I included the first four chapters of the second draft as an example. Having not heard from them, I started...