The Bookworm: 'My Beer Year'

My Beer Year: Adventures with Hop Farmers, Craft Brewers, Chefs, Beer Sommeliers & Fanatical Drinkers as a Beer Master in Training, by Lucy Burningham. 278 pages. Roost Books. 2016.

As I finished my beer, I listened to the brewers and hop farmers talk about the weather and other Yakima farms they’d visited. They discussed certain hop varieties, gossiped about industry folk, and reminisced about last year. In that moment, I sensed that next year’s beers were being created at that very moment, thanks to a magical mingling of dusty heat, verdant bines, and creative juices. (p. 61)

I can’t remember when I started reading Lucy Burningham’s My Beer Year. That’s how crazy this summer has been. Was it sometime in June? I think so. Regardless, it has taken me way too long to read it, especially since the focus is a very familiar beverage.

A craft-beer journalist who dabbles in homebrewing, Burningham decides to “take her relationship with beer to the next level: to become a certified beer expert” (back cover). My Beer Year is her account of the long, arduous, and often tasty process of studying for the Certified Cicerone exam. Burningham takes readers with her as she visits hop farms, chats with brewers, learns how to clean tap lines, serves thirsty festival-goers, and travels to Europe for liquid research—all in the quest to learn the ins and outs of the beverage she loves, and to graduate from aficionado to certified expert.

My Beer Year is engaging and personable, a great adventure to follow. It is easy to read and understand, and Burningham provides rich detail about curiosities and all the small things that pique her interest—no doubt telltales signs of her journalism background and love for beer. Her beer descriptions are mouth-watering (for the good beers, at least) and inspirational; she introduced me to the word crema and drops a references to Fruit Stripe gum. She also described the color of a beer as “dried-ginko-leaf yellow” (p. 236)—an amazing description! My Beer Year also sparked a couple freelancing ideas.

Unfortunately, reading My Beer Year coincided with a steep drop in my interest in beer this summer. My interest in the book correspondingly dropped as I read it. Among my first notes on My Beer Year is how studying for and taking the cicerone exam is “A journey I should take too.” By the end, I was tired of all the superlatives and fuss about beer. It’s just beer! “What’s the point in getting a certification nobody cares about?” I wondered. I finished the book to finish it, but that says more about me than about the book: I could no longer relate to Burningham and her quest for certification, especially since the stress and time commitment started to negatively affect her life and supportive family. But she did not quit, and I respect that.

Though Burningham’s personal journey is interesting and kept my attention, the book does not break new ground in terms of explaining the brewing process or telling beer’s history. It may be new and informative to some readers, but a lot of it is old hat to me. Honestly, though, I’ve never been that interested in the crafting process or science behind beer. Explanations and techniques have always gone in one ear and out the other. I’ve always been more interested in the final product. (The writing of My Beer Year is another story. I would love to learn about Burningham’s approach to the book, get down to brass tacks about taking and collating notes and weaving a tale with them.) The same goes with the section on food pairings: it becomes tedious and boring because I’ve never been into pairings. Burningham does a good job of keeping everything simple and understandable, but some parts did not keep me interested.

Speaking of not keeping me interested, the account of Burningham’s European trip drags on and on. I think it comprises nearly half of the book, making My Beer Year a travelogue. Details of her visits to breweries in Belgium and a short excursion into Germany are interesting, but they become annoying.

The book is peppered with typos and incomplete sentences, which is a shame; Burningham’s writing deserves better copyediting. Among the typos (or at least questionable word choice) is the inclusion of Beer Sommeliers in the title. Beer sommelier is weird to me because a sommelier is, by definition, “a wine steward.” One can be like a sommelier for beer ... who is called a cicerone. But whatever.

Here’s a cool feature: hop cones are included in each chapter opener, and the number of cones corresponds to the chapter number. Clever! It’s something I did not notice until I became curious late in the book.

Overall, My Beer Year is a good read—especially for those who still have a thirst for beer. (Mine may return in time.) It provides helpful and personal insights into the process of learning more about beer and becoming a certified expert.