books – Scott Messenger

Tapping the West reviews

To those who are willing to read a book and offer several paragraphs of their thoughts on it, thank you

High-profile book reviews are harder to get than they used to be. I don’t believe it was always this way. I remember an entire section in the weekend Globe and Mail, like a little magazine, devoted entirely to long-form reviews and essays about books and writing. It was glorious.

The Edmonton Journal, my hometown daily, used to make a big deal about reviews, too. In fact, I got my start in freelance writing by doing them for that paper (thank you, editor Marc Horton, for tolerating me). There were pages of them in there more than a decade ago. Every Sunday. Now there’s not. There’s not even a Sunday edition anymore, come to think of it.

Blame the shrinking ad revenues that have led to shrinking page counts, for a start.

This is bad, because reviews in publications like these encourage reading among a broader spectrum of the population, which has to be better for us than scrolling through Instagram posts for hours. It’s bad for authors too, of course, who can always use more exposure. More importantly, though, reviews improve writing. Authors read reviews. Or at least they should. Those with open minds will use intelligent, fair criticism to make their next books better.

Authors read reviews. Or at least they should.

Happily, reviews still turn up in magazines, and bloggers have recognized that there’s a void to fill in providing thoughtful commentary on books. Arguably, their reach might be even better than the newspapers, more targeted to the communities that care about a particular topic. Also happily, a few of those magazines and bloggers have offered their own thoughtful commentary on Tapping the West. And, yet again happily, most of it is positive.

Here are those who kindly dedicated space and mental energy to my book. I am grateful (even, and maybe especially, for the constructive criticism).

Brutal Reality Digest. This zine is devoted to building culture, creativity and community of all sorts, primarily in central Alberta (home, incidentally, to more craft breweries per capita than anywhere else in Alberta). The producers even have a podcast, on which I had the privilege to appear. The review is courtesy of Josh Hauta.

onbeer.org. Does Jason Foster need an introduction? To craft beer lovers in Alberta, at least, no. Foster was the first beer blogger in the province that mattered, if not the first one of all. That story is actually part of Tapping the West (somewhere in the middle or so), which he also reviewed, favourably but for a few catches (I agree with most of them, but not all). He also recommended the book as a Christmas gift idea in 2020 during one of his spots as a beer columnist on CBC radio, which was very thoughtful of him.

Poured Canada. This magazine offers an industry-centric perspective for makers of beer, wine and spirits across Canada, and includes news, profiles and the odd book review. I was grateful to see the book, and the kind words from Lindsay Risto, in the pages of the winter 2021 issue.

whatsbrewing.ca. If you’re after real insight into B.C. craft beer, this site and magazine – named one of the world’s 10 best – is the place to get it. Ted Child offered a review of Tapping the West, in which he appreciated its potential to open the eyes of B.C. drinkers to Alberta beer. He also asked why I ever referenced the Fraser Institute, a right-leaning think tank, (it’s somewhere in the middle or so) in a book about craft beer.

Great point. See? It’s true: You really can learn something for next time by reading these things.

Tapping the West podcasts

I always knew I had a face for radio!

No, don’t worry: I am not starting a craft beer podcast to go with my book, Tapping the West. For one thing, there are all kinds of people doing a really good job of beer podcasts already. For another, technology and I aren’t exactly like oil and water, but we’re certainly not like hops and barley either.

But I do enjoy being a guest on podcasts, where someone much more capable is doing the driving (and recording and editing). Even though I know I’ve said some wild and crazy stuff in longform interviews, it’s always a nice change from the five-questions-and-cut-to-commercial format of most radio spots these days. Not that I don’t like radio – podcasts just feel a little less transactional.

I’ve been lucky to have been invited onto great shows, and interviewed by smart, inquisitive hosts. So now that I’ve been on more than two, why not catalogue them here so that friends, family and total strangers alike might listen and say, “I can’t believe he just said that.”

Thank you to all the hosts for taking the time to include me in their work, as I can imagine it’s not easy (that is, making a podcast and talking to me). Here are the shows and who’s behind them.

Brutal Reality Digest is my kind of zine, and not just because staffers Josh Hauta and Stuart Old put me on their podcast, but because it’s dedicated to promoting “interesting weirdos.” I’ve got the latter part of that down pat; I’m working hard on the former. The publication (web and print!) focuses on central Alberta and is packed with stories about the arts, entrepreneurs and more. The podcast episode I appeared on launched Sept. 2, 2020. It’s tagged as #Comedy. I like that.

The Booktruck Chronicles is one of the vehicles that Brandi Morpurgo uses to promote local literary culture. The other is the Daisy Chain Book Co., her bookstore just west of downtown Edmonton. This is the bricks-and-mortar successor of the book truck she started with, and she’s determined to use the place in a way that builds community among readers and authors. The podcast is part of that. Check it out, along with Chapter 34, when I had the pleasure of speaking with Morpurgo (who has also been a great supporter of my book). It was posted March 8, 2021.

Let’s Meet for a Beer is an extension of what Mark Kondrat does for the Alberta beer community, which is to endlessly shift the spotlight from one member to the next. As the CEO of Alberta Beer Festivals, Kondrat knows these people well (far better than I do) and it shows in the informed, thoughtful questions he asks on his show. I attempted to answer some of those in Episode 6, posted on Jan. 26, 2021.

Do you have a podcast that needs an episode featuring a guy who wrote a book about Alberta craft beer and is given to saying wild and crazy stuff? Who doesn’t! My email is somewhere on this site, last I checked.

Tapping the West to represent Canada in international competition

Award offers readers a chance to learn about beer writing from around the world

Gourmand World Cookbook Award winner Tapping the West

If you look at the “Awards” section of my site, you’ll probably roll your eyes. I make a big deal about how awards never do enough to acknowledge that writing – be it a book or a magazine article or whatever – is a collaborative exercise. Sure, the editor got the story, but the writer gets the glory.

The former often deserves more credit. So, I don’t list any awards I’ve received, because the editors aren’t mentioned.

I stand by that today. But I’m also about to be a huge hypocrite, because this post is about how Tapping the West, my book about Alberta craft beer, has been recognized with an award.

I’m about to be a huge hypocrite.

This July, the Gourmand Awards named it the best recent book on beer in Canada. I have no idea what the book was up against. How many books about beer can possibly be written in this country in a year? Shrug. (My wife, a librarian, points out that roughly 10,000 books are published in Canada each year. Odds are that more than one is about beer.)

But I like the award because of this: It now puts Tapping the West up against top beer publications from other countries. One of them will emerge from that battle royale of books as the world’s best (at least according to Gourmand).

That’s a chance to highlight an often overlooked global body of literature about a globally enjoyed drink, the variety of traditions surrounding it, and the myriad perspectives on it. So, allow me to make an exception just this once and talk about an award, or, more specifically, some fascinating finalists.

The competitors

The challenge here is that not all the books on the list are in English. This is beautiful, though not exactly practical for readers. That said, you can glean from one entry that homebrewing is a not just a North American preoccupation but one that’s gaining popularity in Italy, and from another that thobwa is a fermented drink made from white maize flour and that’s common in Malawi and Zambia. Now you know.

A couple of the other entrants, for me, however, invited deeper investigation.

Jef van den Steen is one. He’s a Belgian writer and brewer, and up for Bieres d’ Abbayes Belges, a book that covers all existing abbey breweries in Belgium (there appears to be an English translation of an earlier version as well). So I guess it’s a guide to nearly three dozen of the world’s best breweries.

Van den Steen seems like a character written for craft beer: eccentric, passionate, a polymath. He was once the guitarist in a rock band, a math professor, then picked up writing about Belgian breweries a decade or two ago, when locals just took them for granted as a part of the cultural landscape.

What’s more, Van den Steen knows his subject in a very intimate way. He owns De Glazen Toren, the brewery where he perfects his beloved saison, as well as a few other traditional styles.

Another entry of note comes U.K. food and beer writer Pete Brown. During the recent lockdown, Brown pounded out a treatise on the nature of craft – writing to publishing in 13 weeks flat. Amazing what a person can get done when they’re not allowed to leave the house (and have no children).

Craft: An Argument explores that not-very-old but suddenly essential question of, What makes craft craft? Is it an ethos? A matter of marketing? An idea as much as a thing? A feeling, for gawd sake?

In any case, it sounds like the kind of book that will thereafter send you deep into the lengthy back catalogue of one of Britain’s most highly decorated beer writers.

Then, of course, there’s me. Somehow. Scott Messenger. Author of Tapping the West: How Alberta’s Craft Beer Industry Bubbled Out of an Economy Gone Flat.

We all know that Belgium and England have been brewing what’s essentially craft beer for hundreds of years. But how did Alberta come to craft? That question is the (beer) engine of my book.

The editors

Brown credits the editing of his award-winning lockdown project to his wife, who also designed it and such. My wife was not my editor, though she was very supportive.

In my case, the job went to Curtis Gillespie, who served as the primary editor on Tapping the West. He’s easily one of Canada’s best writers of narrative journalism and I’m very lucky he was willing to work with a book-writing novice like me.

Once he’d finished reading my first draft, he said something along the lines of, “This is great! But …”

Then, we got on with making the whole thing way better (i.e., rewriting, front to back). It’s a team effort. Lockdown or not, you can’t do it alone.

Thank you, Canadian Beer News: Announcing the release of Tapping the West

Alberta Beer Book “Tapping The West” by Scott Messenger Out Next Month

I’m very grateful to Canadian Beer News, an online voice for beer industry developments across the country, for sharing news of the upcoming release of my new book, Tapping the West.

The book officially launches May 5, and is available at local bookstores (like Audreys in Edmonton, which offers curbside pickup) and online at Amazon and Indigo.