A review by ajkhn
Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out by Josh Noel

4.0

It's a nifty enough book to read a few minutes at a time on my phone -- more as a social media replacement than as an honest-to-god book. I don't mean that as a dig; Noel is a good and concise writer, and he does a good job of keeping what could be an enormous cast of characters manageable.

I could never figure out if Noel was making fun of the Hall family or not. John Hall is...well, he's a Hinsdale executive who found out he could make a lot of money selling beer. There aren't a lot of heroes, just cynical entrepreneurs and the folks they strung along. I'm not sure if Noel knows that or not, if I'm reading this book against the grain or not.

The fact that the book is clear-eyed is great. It's not a diatribe either way. I think it could have been more interesting if it went into the second and third wave of brewers in Chicago, but it was clear that they wanted to keep the book national and not a Chicago story. It's an interesting book, that maybe could have been a bit more interesting (for me) and be less of a best-seller. It's all the same, a good book if you're interested in how the phenomenon of craft brewing began.