I don't rate craft beer books out of principle, but man alive, there were times when my fingers were fidgeting to give this book a 1 star rating. In spite of Hindy's background as a journalist and this book having 3 editors, this book was remarkably difficult to read in places. The Craft Beer Revolution suffers from a flaw many books of this sort seem to have: it hasn't identified its target audience. Is this book intended for neophytes or industry-savvy folk? In some places, Hindy discusses ind

I don't rate craft beer books out of principle, but man alive, there were times when my fingers were fidgeting to give this book a 1 star rating. In spite of Hindy's background as a journalist and this book having 3 editors, this book was remarkably difficult to read in places. The Craft Beer Revolution suffers from a flaw many books of this sort seem to have: it hasn't identified its target audience. Is this book intended for neophytes or industry-savvy folk? In some places, Hindy discusses industry peers and past events as if the reader is supposed to be at least marginally aware of how the craft beer scene in the US has evolved over times. And then he has moments where he degenerates into borderline facetiousness. He doesn't explain stuff like Oktoberfest being a beer style as well as a festival, or what Brettanomyces does in a beer, or what the three tier system actually is, but he takes a moment to explain what wort is, or what ABV stands for. Surely anyone reading this book would know that already? And there are other confusing sections, such as Russian River inventing the first Double IPA, then several pages later, Dogfish Head take the credit for inventing the first Imperial IPA - this is particularly confusing because DIPA and Imperial IPA are considered the same thing in this day and age, but Hindy doesn't take a moment to clarify this anywhere. He does take a moment to talk about silly, irrelevant nonsense, such as his two week vacation to Scotland that Vijay Mallya sponsored - to what end? My other gripe is the fact that Hindy is remarkably prone to digressions, and as a result, the timeline of the unfolding revolution is awfully out of place. I don't understand why he's going for a chronological order of events, but then fails to mention the year in which Stone Brewing became operational, or the year in which BA adopted the small, independent, traditional format for defining what a craft brewer is. Why fail to keep the timeline for such important events, but shower the reader in irrelevant details such as this or that distributor's genealogies, who they married, and who Hindy went golfing with? In a way, it does read like a series of recollections about Hindy and his super awesome buddies, or people who had some beef with him, such as the notorious Jim Koch. And speaking of Koch's in general, why not take a moment to explain that Jim Koch of Boston Brewing and Greg Koch of Stone Brewing are not related? It's a pretty important distinction to make. Unless, of course, the book operates on the assumption that the reader knows enough about brewing and the industry to know this already - but then, why even explain what IBU or bottle conditioning are?



The book is not a complete waste of time, and it's clear that Hindy was a prominent figure in the revolution, and that a lot of research went into this book. But it could have been written better.