I like beer (duh!). I like reading. So I try to get my hands on interesting books about beer whenever I can. Lately I have been soaking up whatever beer history books I can find – there is so much to understand about beer today from exploring our past. I haven’t written much about books in my beer writing work – either here or in my various column locales. I think I should change that. So, today I thought I would write about the beer book I just finished, Brew North by Ian Coutts. It is a look at Canada’s beer history.

Before I talk about the content, I must first say how bloody gorgeous this book is. Tons of full colour drawings, photos, old advertisements, labels and other breweriana (yes, that is a real word), adorn each page, bringing the story to life in pictures. I loved lingering over the old ads and marketing gimmicks.

The beer is a popular history of beer in Canada. Most of the content was already known to me, but Coutts tells the story well. The pace is crisp and he makes good judgments, for the most part, on where to delve into more detail. This is a great first stop for anyone interesting in Canadian beer history.

In terms of history, I think it lands quite nicely in the middle between Nicholas Pashley’s Cheers!, which is a quick and, I think, rather loose and uneven historical overview, and Craig Heron’s historical tour de force Booze. That latter is a detailed, highly academic read that probably stands as the best work on the history of alcohol in Canada, in particular on prohibition, but which can be quite dry in places (sorry!). Coutts finds us something that works quite nicely for large audiences but without sacrificing historical nuance.

My one critique may be that he spends a little too much space looking at the Molson and Labatt families rather than other equally important historical figures whose breweries no longer exist. Also, I would have liked a little more on the peculiarities of the West (other than lager vs. ale), but that is my geographic bias. But I understand you can’t do everything in a short book.

I was struck by Coutt’s description of marketing and promotional practices of the breweries in the mid-1800s. As expected, everything thing that could be was turned into brand promotion – serving trays, matchboxes, bottle openers, coasters, clocks, mirrors and so on. Then, Coutts reports: “Marketing at times crept into murkier areas. At one point … Molson even supplied tavern owners with tables and chairs. In Ontario, at least, brewers went even further, making loans to saloon keepers to help them set up in business.” (p. 41)

Makes today’s common (but officially illegal and thus not confirm-able) practice of paying for tap line installation and discounted kegs seem tame by comparison, doesn’t it?

There are a number of great sidebars looking at west vs. east, the birth of the beer lifestyle ad and the origins of the iconic stubby beer bottle. With the later, Coutts does unwittingly earn my (shortlived) ire. He describes the stubby as “that ugly little bottle” (p. 79) and “tough and squat” (p. 89). He would not know, of course (nor I imagine care) that I have a large selection of old stubbies and swear by them for my homebrewing operation. I love the stubby and personally consider it a master stroke of design. Distinctive, functional and more feminine in feel than its phallic long-neck cousin (I will let you ponder that one on your own), plus it is the perfect homebrew pour (I may do a post in the near future on the stubby, just to get my viewpoint out there – but I digress). Coutts can be forgiven his dismissal of the stubby, as he does accurately portray the economic, rather than aesthetic, motivations for its introduction.

Brew North is a quick, enjoyable read. Whether over an after-dinner winter warmer, or lingering over Sunday morning coffee, this book is a great excuse for a bit of quiet reading time.