Shut up about Barclay Perkins - Victory to Austerity
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When I cranked up this blog, the idea was that it would track my research. A diary of my dives into the dusty depths of archives.
Ignoring rambling reports of my drunken meanderings around the beer-pots of the world, I've served up unleavened bread. Facts and numbers not quite fully formed.
Being prolific has its downside. The volume of words and numbers is hard to keep under control. Early in my blogging days, I started copying my posts into Word documents. By theme. Resulting in quite a few of my Mini Books and Mega Books. Porter! Mild! Bitter!, Strong!, London! Books like that.
They're an assembalge of research notes. Interspersed with a few crap jokes. Good as I think some of them are - Porter! I'm particularly proud of - they were never my final goal. They were a step on the way.
I was crazily over optimistic when I began my beer history swim. Soon plunging into a mad book project on British beer 1700 to 1973. The unfinished manuscript is enormous. One chapter may be the longest blog post of all time.
Victory! is an unpublished book of mine on post-WW II beer. The nailed-together blog post kind. I say unpublished, there are two copies. It was the prize for the who owns most of my books contest. And, obviously, I got one for myself.
Tell me if I start boring you with this shit. I'm listening to John Coltrane.
My bloggy books, wonderful as they may be, are really my notes. Time I started turning them into proper books. Like with Scotland! vol. II. A coherent book. I had so much fun writing, I decided to write one a year.
I got a bit stuck on the one I intended for this year. Ran out of enthusiasm. What to do?
Knock out a quick recipe book, I thought. Last years' Let's Brew sold pretty well. I've got a shitload of post-war recipes. I can bang together the recipes with some geeneral crap about brewing in the period. And lots of tables. Easy peasy.
That was the plan. Just wish I knew when to stop. The brief introduction has gained bulk. I've promised myself to stop adding new stuff on Sunday. Evening.
Austerity! British brewing 1945 to 1965. My next book. Such a sexy topic. A distillation of the unpublished Victory! And the second chapter to be published of my crazy big book. (The other is Peace!) Third, if you count the crazy long blog post.
Published when I get the recipes done. The counter is at 102, currently. I'm sort of aiming at 200, but may settle for 150. How many watery Mild recipes do you need?
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