What Price Vanity? Oxford Companion to Beer Is Not Worth the Price or Time
by Drew Long, Guest Writer
The Oxford Companion to Beer (Oxford, 2011) is an accomplishment. In the book’s introduction, editor Garrett Oliver notes that the companion consumed two and a half years of his life and took him away from his day job as brewmaster for the Brooklyn Brewery in New York. I believe it. The book is as impressive in scope as it is in size.
I’m just not sure why he bothered. In the age of Google and Kindle, the Oxford University Press has published a 920 page, 4 pound, $65 beer encyclopedia. It’s a beautiful book to be sure, but the esoteric variety of information–from abbey beers to zymurgy–and the steep cover price make it difficult to decide who the audience is supposed to be. Professional brewers need something more practical than the companion, and homebrewers and beer enthusiasts don’t need quite so much information on melibiose. And with much, if not most, of the book’s content already available on the Internet, the book was somewhat irrelevant before the ink was dry.
I should love this book. I really should. I’m a beer enthusiast and avid homebrewer. I consume entirely too much beer-related media, and I’ve been writing about beer for years. I couldn’t fall more squarely into the demographic that Oxford is targeting if Oliver pulled me out of his tasting room.
Yet, I find the book boring.
Reading the companion is like reading the Encyclopedia Britannica–well, because it is an encyclopedia. The information is excellent, but it’s a slog. So what am I supposed to do with it? As reference material, it would’ve worked better digitized on a website, as an app or on a CD (why they didn’t include a CD or flash drive of the material with the book is beyond me). As reading material, it works better for short sessions in the water closet than long afternoons in the den.
All this leaves me with an unfortunate conclusion: The Oxford Companion to Beer is little more than a vanity project for those involved, including Oliver. It’s unfortunate because much of the information is interesting and the people who contributed to the companion are clearly as passionate about beer as they are knowledgeable.
Well, not everyone. Even before I opened the book, I was surprised to see that Tom Colicchio wrote the forward. Now, I have nothing against Colicchio. He’s a wildly successful chef and restaurant owner, but I suspect he was asked to write the forward because he’s the co-host of Top Chef, a show I enjoy.
If The Oxford Companion to Beer is to be the magnum opus on beer, why have the guy from the TV cooking show write the forward? Having his name on the cover might attract the attention of casual beer drinkers who are fans of Top Chef or Colicchio’s restaurants, but the technical content is clearly not meant for them.
Why not have Fritz Maytag, who revived Anchor Brewing and craft beer in America, write the forward? Certainly, without Maytag this book (and arguably Oliver’s Brooklyn Brewery) might not have been. Or Fred Eckhardt, who’s considered the grandfather of modern homebrewing and American craft beer? Even Jimmy Carter, who legalized homebrewing in 1978, would’ve been a good choice for the forward (even if he didn’t warrant an entry).
Nope, Oxford went for the big-name, TV guy for their fancy coffee table book.
All that being said, the companion does exist in the rarified company of such works as Modernist Cuisine, the six-volume, 2,438 page cookbook from Nathan Myhrvold. Although Modernist Cuisine is much bigger in scale and price ($625), the result is the same: very expensive, very impractical. Modernist Cuisine may be a spectacular recipe book, but it’s meant for Grant Achatz and René Redzepi, not your average home cook. But the illustrations are beautiful and owning it bestows a certain cache, a wink, wink to anyone who spots it on a shelf or casually laying by the brushed steel Viking sub-zero that you are a gourmand (even if you can’t work a sous vide machine).
As much of a beer enthusiast as I am, the longer The Oxford Companion to Beer has sat on my desk, the less I’ve picked it up. There are simply too many other books on beer and better ways to spend $65. If you were thinking about buying the companion as a gift this year, don’t. Take the money and buy a few rounds. Even in the long run, the money will be better spent.
