Travels with Barley (40 page)

Mark Twain quotes: Twain's description of Hannibal appeared in his book
Life on the Mississippi
published in 1883. His beer escapades in San Francisco are taken from the seminal Alfred Bigelow Paine book,
Mark Twain: a Biography
, published in 1924. His commentary on the New York/Hoboken beer scene came from a collection of letters he penned to a San Francisco newspaper in 1867. It can be found at www.twainquotes.com.

Chapter 9: We Divert West to Sleuth Amongst the Yeast Rustlers

Beyond numerous interviews with beer yeast experts, this chapter relied on a multiplicity of sources: White Labs' “Beginning Yeast Basics” at whitelabs.com; Wyeast's Laboratories' “Yeast Education Info” at www.wyeast.com; BeerAdvocate.com's “Yeast Guide” Real Beer.com's “Yeast Information and Technical Info” a
Science Week
article titled “Eilhardt Mitscherlich and the Nature of Crystals” published in 2000; HomeBrewDigest's 1995 online article by Dave Draper called “Culturing Yeast and Using Slants,” which can be found at http://hbd.org; the “Beer Judge Certification Exam Yeast Study Guide” at www.bjcp.org; and the Pasteur Institute's online biography of its namesake, Louis Pasteur.

For an excellent survey on the yeast genome project, see the Web site at www.yeastgenome.org (and particularly the link “Yeast Information for the Non-Specialist”). Information on the Comprehensive Yeast Genome Database can be found at http://mips.gsf.de/genre/proj/yeast/index.jsp, a site maintained by the Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences. I also relied on a helpful short summary of the yeast genome work published by the National Health Museum in 1996 titled “Complete DNA Sequence of Yeast.”

Estimates on the number of homebrewers and sales figures for the value of homebrewing in America come from the Association of Brewers.

Chapter 10: Questing Onward

Anheuser-Busch is a publicly traded company; sales, revenue, and market share figures come from official company financial reports. Other corporate details in this chapter come from the company's annual report and other reports posted on its Web site at www.anheuserbusch.com. Statistics concerning Anheuser-Busch's foreign sales and operations come directly from a 2003 report by its Anheuser-Busch International Inc. unit.

The controversies involving the “100% Share of Mind” program and the battle between Anheuser-Busch and Jim Koch and his Boston Beer Co. over labeling are now stuff of lore in the beer industry and I rarely had an interview with craft brewers in which both didn't come up. The issue was covered extensively by both the beer trade press and the daily press at the time. To flesh out my background knowledge on the subject, I went back and read numerous archived accounts in, among other publications, the
Wall Street Journal, Barron's
, the
Boston Globe, Beverage World, Adweek, All About Beer
magazine,
BrandWeek, Celebrator Beer News
, and
Modern Brewery Age
.

Likewise, the continuing legal battle over the use of the Budweiser name in Europe has been covered exhaustively by both the trade and popular press, including numerous accounts in the
Wall Street Journal
.

I supplemented the annotated history on the founding of Anheuser-Busch provided by my tour guide with details from the history sections of the Anheuser-Busch Web site. Some technical details regarding the brewery were provided upon request by the Anheuser-Busch press office.

Details of the Soulard neighborhood and its history not gleaned from interviews come from the official city of St. Louis Web site at http://stlouis.missouri.org/soulard.

Chapter 11: Prowling Among the Beer Suits

Figures on the beer industry's contributions to the U.S. economy come from the previously cited 2003 “Beer Serves America” report published jointly by the Beer Institute and the NBWA and from the Beer Institute's 2002-2003 annual report called “State of the Industry: Industry Growth Accelerates.”

The NBWA was named the eighth most influential lobby group in America by a May 2001
Fortune
magazine ranking of the “Washington Power 25.”

Rehr's first broadside at MADD over its putative collusion with the liquor industry came in a September 2002 interview with
Modern Brewery Age
, a beer trade magazine. The NBWA's clash with the National Academy of Sciences and George Hacker over the NAS underage drinking report was widely reported in the press; one detailed account appeared in a June issue of
Modern Brewery Age
.

Chapter 12: The Quest Takes a Southern Lurch

Details about the 1911 Little Prairie earthquake were taken from the U.S. Geological Survey “Earthquake Hazards Program” Web site www.usgs.org; supplemental historical information on Caruthersville comes from the Cape Rock Gazetteer at www.caperock.com.

Basic biographical information on Elvis Presley and basic information on touring Graceland and the number of tourists it draws each year comes from www.Elvis.com, the official Presley Web site.

Chapter 13: Foam Improvement

I interviewed extensively on the rise of homebrewing in America. To fill in the background, I read a number of articles on the subject; a good overview piece is “American Homebrewers: Setting the Pace” by Stan Hieronymus in the archives at www.realbeer.com. Other good resources are the Association of Brewers Web site at www.beertown.org and the Beer Judge Certification Program at www.bjcp.org.

Chapter 14: On the Road Again

Figures on the impact of casino gambling in Tunica County, Mississippi, come from a variety of sources, including “Tunica Facts,” an online Tunica, Mississippi, information guide at www.tunica-ms.com; a 1999 report called “The Effects of Casino Gaming on Tunica County, Mississippi” by James Thomas Snyder of the Social Science Research Center at Mississippi State University; an April 1999 report by the Associated Press; and a July 1999 report by the
Memphis Commercial Appeal
.

Mississippi's beer consumption and ranking information come from the SABMiller report “Beer Is Volume with Profit.”

Information on the Mississippi Delta's soil bank is taken from the Delta Blues Museum history link at www.deltabluesmuseum.org; the site also proved a highly useful refresher on the history of the Delta blues and the major figures who created the blues and nurtured its development. At least a portion of the biographical information on the blues artists mentioned in this chapter also comes from the thirty-one profiles on the site. I bolstered interviews about Clarksdale and its history with information gleaned from www.clarksdaletour ism.com; another extremely useful site about the Delta and the blues was www.blueshighway.org.

A good source of information on blues legend Robert Johnson, his influence on blues and rock, and a lawsuit over his estate can be found at www.deltahaze.com (a link on the site will let you read in full the Mississippi Supreme Court decision on the matter).

As of this writing, you could hear a clip of Bobbie Gentry singing “Ode to Billie Joe” on the Mississippi Writers and Musicians Project link on the Starkville Mississippi High School Web site at www.shs.starkville.kl2.ms.us.

Chapter 15: A Detour to the Green, Green Fields of Bud

Statistics on the operations of Busch Agricultural Resources Inc. not gleaned from interviews with Anheuser-Busch employees are taken from a 2001 profile on the unit published by Anheuser-Busch. Information on its international beer operations comes from the previously mentioned 2003 report by its Anheuser-Busch International subsidiary.

I interviewed extensively on the history of hops and hops growing in America. I also found valuable production information on the Hops Growers of America Web site, www.usahops.org, and good overall information, including valuable insights into history, at www.hop union.com, the Web site of Hop Union, a private consortium of hops growers headquartered in Washington State. I also drew from an excellent survey article called “Hops: a Brief History” first published in 1990 in the magazine
Zymurgy
, the journal of the American Homebrewers Association.

Chapter 16: A Wrinkle in the Quest

The 1849 essay “The Barmaid” by Albert Smith can be found in full on the Web site for Victorian London enthusiasts at www.victorianlondon.org. For the section about Beer Goddesses in advertising, I drew on a number of sources including a fine 2002 overview, with details about the Carling Black Label campaign, by Carl H. Miller in
All About Beer
magazine. (A reprint appears at www.beerhistory.com.) A private Web site, www.heymabelblacklabel.com, touting itself as an “unofficial Carling Black Label tribute page,” also offered interesting details.

The Hooters/EEOC lawsuit generated literally hundreds of stories, including some in the
Wall Street Journal
which I read to refresh myself on the background. A signed editorial suggesting an EEOC victory in the case would lead to males dancing in the Radio City Rockettes line appeared in the November 18, 1995, edition of the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
. A full account of the NOW/Wave sleuthing mission at Hooters can be found at the Rochester chapter of NOW's Web site, www.rochesternow.org.

Chapter 17: The Final Diversion

The estimate that 40 percent to 50 percent of beer sold within Portland's city limits is craft beer is just that—an estimate—based upon conversations with Portland-area craft brewers, beer enthusiasts, and beer journalists who regularly cover the beer scene there. Many of those believe that number could actually be higher.

Chapter 18: Quest's End

Though Dixie Brewing Co. gets only brief mention in this chapter, the beer is a sentimental favorite of mine. A nice profile of the company, its history, and contemporary marketing efforts, appeared in the November 27, 2000, edition of
Modern Brewery Age
.

You can find a more detailed description of Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop and the pirate's association with it on a New Orleans tourism Web site called atneworleans.com. An interesting overview of Lafitte's life in Louisiana can be found in the archives of www.crimelibrary.com.

A Brief Glossary

The author acknowledges that the following sources and people were invaluable in the formulation of this glossary: beeradvocate.com; beerchurch.com; Michael Jackson's beerhunter.com; Julie Bradford at
All About Beer
magazine; and Sam Calagione at Dogfish Head Craft Brewery.

Foremost, to my esteemed
Wall Street Journal
colleague Alix Freedman who, during a books brainstorming session, first suggested there might be a book in beer and then suggested I might be the person to do it; to Steve Adler, a
Journal
deputy managing editor and head of our books unit, who encouraged me to pursue a proposal and then smoothed the way with various powers that be to make reporting and writing of the book possible; to Bill Rosen and later Fred Hills at Simon & Schuster/Free Press, who worked with me to refine my thinking into the book that
Travels with Barley
would become, and to Fred, especially, for his patience and sage advice all along the way and for his thoughtful, helpful editing of the manuscript; to Paul Stieger, the
Journal
's managing editor, for his unflagging support of the
Journals
books effort in general and my project in particular; and to Rose Ellen D'Angelo and Daniel Nasaw of the WSJ books group who kept me in the loop during Beer Year (which turned into Beer Year and a Half) and did innumerable favors, small and large, that helped keep the book and me on track. And none of this would have been possible without the wise counsel and eagle eyes of my agents, Tim Seldes of Russell & Volkening and Joe Regal, now of Regal Literary.

Though I am both a writer and editor, the advice and encouragement of other writers and editors was indispensable in this case. To my pal and former colleague Tony Horwitz, among the masters of literary nonfiction, who convinced me this book should, at its core, be a journey; and to those who read all or parts of this and gave me invaluable feedback (and who, not to mention, caught my errors, inconsistencies, dangling participles, misplaced modifiers, and typos): Aya Goto of the Words and Music Festival in New Orleans, and my
WSJ
colleagues Steve Adler, Carrie Dolan, Jeffrey Grocott (who is not just a gifted scribe but also a committed Beer Geek), and Elizabeth Seay.

The River of Beer turned out to be an extraordinarily hospitable place. This book required the cooperation and indulgence of scores of people that I met and interviewed across the country. Though I owe them all, a few deserve special attention: Sam Calagione at Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, who abided numerous intrusions into his life and business in my exploration of Extreme Beer, and who generously and promptly answered my incessant technical questions; Daniel Bradford, president of the Brewers' Association of America, who early on indulged incessant e-mail and phone queries; ditto for Jim Koch at Boston Beer Co.; and ditto for Carlos Ramirez at Anheuser-Busch Cos. Jim Massey in Dubuque became a friend overnight and has patiently answered many follow-up queries; Bev Blackwood of the Foam Rangers Homebrew Club in Houston obliged a blizzard of inquiries and helped shape my thinking on key chapters; I'm also indebted to Bev's confederates Jimmy Paige, Steve Moore, and Scott Birdwell—better ambassadors of Beer Geekdom you will not find. I also got great cooperation (and knowledge) from America's chief beer sage Fred Eckhardt in Portland, Oregon. I also owe a special thanks to the inestimable Fritz Maytag of Anchor Brewing Co. in San Francisco whose candor was invaluable, and whose lucid and passionate explication of the marvelous mysteries of beer yeast convinced me that a chapter on yeast was indeed a worthy pursuit. That chapter was ultimately possible because Randy Mosher in Chicago put me in touch with Maribeth Raines-Casselman in California and Maribeth cleared a goodly chunk of time from her busy schedule to talk yeast with me. I also owe a special reporting debt to SABMiller Brewing Co. Its annual report, “Beer Is Volume with Profit,” is as good a compendium of U.S. beer sales statistics and demographics as exists, and many of those stats were invaluable to this enterprise.

The reporting of this book was as much fun as perhaps a writer ought to have. But an entire summer and fall spent locked in an attic office writing, writing, writing, with only the demons of deadline for company, didn't necessarily make me a cheerful or accessible guy. Thus, I'd also like to thank my wife, Lisa, and daughters, Becca and Sara, for their patience, understanding, and encouragement during the long slog to the finish line.

Finally, though I traveled widely in my quest to find the Perfect Beer Joint, I would be remiss in not mentioning the beer joint where I spent a fair amount of pleasurable time plotting the reporting and writing of this book with colleagues (the Cranks, in particular) over a salutary pint or two of Fuller's ESB. So to Foxhounds, an elevator ride and a half-block walk from the office; its genial staff, notably Joe, Joseph, Jessie, Fiona, Mary, and Eddy, simply confirm my reportorial observations that the community of beer is a vibrant and hospitable feature all across the American landscape.