Beer and wanking

One of my happy birthday beer books was Mikkeller's Book of Beer. Back in the early days of being an internet beer bore I noticed that Mikkeller beers caused a great deal of excitement amongst some of my fellow beer nerds. I've not been overwhelmed when I've them myself, but I was interested enough to get the book put on my wish list.


I had heard that Mikkel was a gypsy brewer, but I was surprised to see that he doesn't actually brew on other people's kit, as he considers the actual brewing to be just manual labour. This does make him sound a bit of a tosser. And I'm not the only one to think so, as in a comment on Stonch's blog it's alleged he spends all day lounging round his flat wanking before emailing recipes over to breweries. Presumably with his free hand.

Still nice work if you can get it. As to the book it was an entertaining enough read. As is usual with books of this type it has an overview of brewing riddled with inaccuracies, and an account of brewing history untroubled by any of those annoying facts that get in the way of a good story.

I'm not going to bother point out what errors are, as lets face it it's not a scholarly work. The story of how Mikkeller came to be is interesting, the man behind it started out as a keen homebrewer but never moved to professional brewing, instead sending instructions to professional brewers. The book also includes a range of beer recipes and an extensive beer and food section for those that like that sort of thing. It's a fun read for a beer nerd, though more like sitting down with a Sunday supplement than studying a text book. If you're into serious brewing history you'd be better off with something by Martyn Cornell or Ron Pattinson and for brewing weird shit the excellent Radical Brewing remains unsurpassed.