While you spend time in self-isolation, there’s plenty of time to read and learn. It’s a great opportunity to grow your knowledge and understanding of beer, before venturing back into the world. I’ve compiled a short list of beer education resources online, that I’ve used during my time as tour and education program manager at Drake’s Brewing. Hopefully these websites can be useful, while breaking into cellared beers you didn’t know you were saving for such an occasion.
CraftBeer.com
This website is a relatively diverse resource for style information, trending info on happenings in the industry, printable training tools, and contains a very thorough food pairing guide (available as a PDF download for $9.99).
Oxford Companion to Beer
For those of you looking for an in-depth reference work, the Oxford Dictionary has an entire companion dedicated to beer. The print version is expensive as hell, and is nearly 800 pages, but its entire contents are available for free via BeerAndBrewing.com. There are very few things this work doesn’t cover. I’ve relied on the Oxford Companion as my primary reference for most educational projects at the brewery, and it’s well worth a passing glance, but definitely deserves some recognition.
Shut Up About Barclay Perkins
This is admittedly a blog, but it’s written by one of the most well-informed beer writers and historians. The title is a gag about the origin story of the India Pale Ale, but there are hundreds (or thousands of posts by now) that cover some of the most detailed observations and uncoverings of beer history. The author, a Brit by the name of Ron Carrington, covers worldwide information, and it’s the kind of source that you can spend a few hours reading over and just lose track of time.
The Beer Hunter Archives
This is in the vein of prior recommendations, and it’s not a traditional education resource. It’s a poorly constructed website with a ton of broken links, and clearly hasn’t been updated in over a decade. BUT, not too long before, beer journalism could roughly trace its roots to one individual, Michael Jackson (The Beer Hunter). He was a beer and whiskey connoisseur, Oxford educated writer, and James Beard award-winning journalist. His clever writing style has always been nothing but charming, sarcastic, and clever. A more well organized collection of his work can also be found on AllAboutBeer.com. My personal favorites are “The Silence of the Ram,” his lamentations on the closing and consolidation of brewpubs along the river Thames, and “Did I Cheat Mort Subite”, his last written work after a heart attack, and just before his death in 2007.
Hopefully these beer education resources provide a bit of reading material while you’re waiting for the green light to go back outside. Until then, I hope you can put on something cozy, enjoy a beer, and make the best of a shitty situation.
Cheers,
Eric Ortega
Tour & Education Program Manager
