Beer Book Review: The Craft of Stone Brewing Co.

When the book first came out, I was hes­i­tant to pick it up. I wanted to, but I already had a pile of books that needed to be read.  Walk­ing by the book­store at the GABF changed my mind. I saw Greg Koch and Randy at a table sign­ing books for any­one who pur­chased one. Know­ing I would even­tu­ally read it, I made the com­mit­ment to make the pur­chase and have a signed copy. It turns out, this book was really kick ass. I’ll spare you the details of where I started read­ing it, suffice to say it was an awe­some read from the start.

The book began as most beer books do; with the basics on beer and the his­tory of beer. I don’t con­sider myself an all know­ing expert by any means, but I typ­i­cally skim these types of sec­tions since I have read them in other books. I some­how found myself read­ing through the sec­tion because of Greg’s (should I Sir Greg?) unique writ­ing style. He kept the mood light and witty, which made the sec­tion fun to read through. He went into enough details to get the infor­ma­tion across with­out bog­ging the read­ing down with too much tech­ni­cal or bor­ing personal material.

The his­tory of Stone was included in the first sec­tion of the book. As a brewer that wants to open a brew­ery, I was look­ing for­ward to read­ing about these par­tic­u­lar “Arro­gant” guys and how they first got started.

The sec­tion did not dis­ap­point. Again, Sir Greg’s writ­ing style kept me engaged and want­ing to read more. Any­time there was a new “char­ac­ter” intro­duced, the story would jump into a first per­son nar­ra­tive on how they got involved with the com­pany. I felt that each per­spec­tive brought a new con­nec­tion to the story and was much more than just filler con­tent to bulk up the book.

The sec­ond seg­ment of the book detailed all the beers of Stone. From the Stone Pale Ale, the Anniver­sary Ales, the Ver­ti­cal Epics and every­thing in between; they were all dis­cussed. Of course, as I read on I was wish­ing I had been around for sev­eral of the releases, espe­cially the early Ver­ti­cal Epics.

To round out the book there were sev­eral infor­ma­tive sec­tions. The first was Beer How-To’s by “Dr.” Bill Sysak. If you ques­tion who this gen­tle­man is, take a look at his bio. Included here is an overview of serv­ing tem­per­a­tures, glass types and other infor­ma­tive tid-bits for the Cicerone in all of us.

The last two sec­tions included recipes from Stone Bistro and World Gar­dens and clone recipes of some of the beers described in the book. After read­ing details about some of the Stone beers, I am def­i­nitely excited to brew sev­eral up.

Over­all, this book was worth every penny. It was loaded with enter­tain­ing and infor­ma­tive mate­r­ial pre­sented in an engag­ing manor. Thank you to Stone and to all the authors for another great book to add to the craft beer drinker’s library.

Pröst!

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Patrick

Patrick Schroeder has two rules: 1) Drink beer good peo­ple brew. Craft brew­ers brew for the love of their craft so give every beer a try. B) Never drink the sed­i­ment cake. Other than that, Patrick spends his time home brew­ing, spend­ing time with his fam­ily and tip­ping back a few pints with fel­low beer lovers. If you wish to con­tact him, send an email to patrick@thebrewbros.com. You can also find him on Twit­ter under the name beerguru14. Prost!

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