The Great American Ale Trail - Christian DeBenedetti [1]
While some built breweries, others built restaurants, bars, bowling alleys, and movie theaters around great beer. Not only did we have our own beer—we had everyone else’s beer too. The complex beers of Belgium, the fruity ales of England, the malty, bracing lagers of Bavaria, all began to flow from America’s taps. Great restaurants, once content with lengthy fine wine lists and dismissive gas-station beer lists, started to realize that industrial beer was an insult to their food and to their beer-savvy patrons. Today I can find the best beers of Belgium faster in a twenty-minute walk from my front door in Brooklyn than I could walking from Grande Place in Brussels.
Do you know beer places and beer people? You should, because beer brings on a sort of fellowship that wine rarely inspires. When you get off a plane and head into an American town, do you know where to find the best of everything, places where people speak your language? Frankly, despite having been all over the world, I can’t say that I do. But that’s okay, because we have Christian DeBenedetti to show the way. I’ve read many beer books, of course, but none that capture the spirit, the philosophy, the people, and the feeling of the American beer scene the way that The Great American Ale Trail does. This book will tell you what you really want to know—where to go, why you want to go there, how the place came to be, what kind of food they serve, what types of beers you can enjoy with it, and who’s going to be sitting next to you at the bar. At the same time, you’ll read the stories of men and women who turned their backs on lucrative careers, mortgaged their houses, and put everything on the line to follow their passions and build the kinds of places where they’d want to spend their time. Occasionally, just occasionally, until 3:00 am. So read this book, follow Christian’s well-laid path, and build your own ale trail. You’ll have your own epic evenings with good people and the world’s most exciting beverage. And if you should miss your plane, don’t worry. Another one will leave soon, and in the meantime, there is some awfully nice beer at the airport bar.
—Garrett Oliver
Garrett Oliver is the brewmaster of The Brooklyn Brewery and the author of the award-winning book, The Brewmaster’s Table. He is also editor-in-chief of The Oxford Companion to Beer (2011), and has hosted more than seven hundred beer events in ten countries.
Introduction
THE MOUNTAINS AHEAD ARE BRUSHED WITH CALIFORNIA CHAPARRAL and piñon juniper, bathed in low angle sunlight, but I’m pulling over in the quiet little town of Alpine, California—a forty-minute drive into the Coast Range foothills outside of San Diego-to visit Alpine Brewing Company. Now the sweet, earthy smells of steeping grains and the tang of hops envelop me. There Pat McIlhenney, a former full-time fire captain with a handlebar mustache, is leading a tour of his handmade brewhouse built in an old TV-repair shop. His operation has been racking up accolades in global competitions. “I cannot make beer fast enough,” he says, handing out samples.
Those beers are among the finest I’ve tasted anywhere: his balanced but tangy “Duet” is full of the fresh, citrusy flavors of Simcoe and Amarillo hops and a grainy, toasty backbone. Even without a bar or taproom, a stream of visitors—beer pilgrims—comes in to meet McIlhenney and buy fresh-brewed beers to go. It’s a scene I find again and again across the United States, in cozy beer bars and