A Classic Beer Book

[G.M. Gillman]

In the early 1980's, a book came out by American author Stephen Morris called The Great Beer Trek. Its vivid prose was full of his trade mark humour with deft line drawings enhancing the appeal. The trek described actually took place in 1978.

It is one of the classic beer books, in my opinion.

Morris, together with his wife, traveled the U.S. by van, starting out from his home base in Vermont. Their dog "Guinness" was in the van too. Object of the trip: to discover the "secret of the suds". Morris had spent a year working in London and was learning about homebrewing, so he wasn't exactly a neophyte to good beer.

By 1978, the brewing industry had undergone decades of consolidation and craft brewing had not yet gained a foothold. Most of the beers encountered were mass market or regional lagers and ales of the pre-craft type (some quite respectable), but the questers were able to visit the newly-established New Albion Brewery, portrayed vividly, and assess the products of Anchor Steam Brewery. They also mingled with the burgeoning homebrewing community in California's Bay Area. So a glimpse of the beer future was given, but apart from that the book is full of imperishable beer lore, good times and a certain wisdom gained.

It was a quintessentially American book, but more than that it always seemed to me a typically idiosyncratic product of that unique place, Vermont. When I read Cass's excellent notes about his recent beer experiences there, I thought he and some others would be interested to learn about The Great Beer Trek, since it started and ended in Vermont and the book talks about various happenings there too, tastings, odd characters, and such. Even with all the changes in the beer scene in the last 35 years, the book is still a great read. Substantial extracts can be viewed on Google Books, in fact.

It was good to hear from Cass that Vermonters still do things their own way. I knew parts of Vermont reasonably well when I lived in Montreal up to 1983.

So here is the story of the book, and the singular way Stephen Morris hopes to update it for our time (which I just learned of):

http://greatbeertrek.com/

Gary