Last Thursday, beer maven and writer Michael Jackson died. If you've never heard of him, you've probably never read about beer. For almost four decades he had been the blessed brew's most tireless supporter, describing — occasionally with flowery love and occasionally with frank calculation — the popular and obscure styles of the world's beers.
I still use an old copy of his New World Guide To Beer on an almost weekly basis (sometimes as a checklist for beers I still need to try). His Great Beers of Belgium was a classic that rivaled Robert Parker's Burgundy. The proliferation of US microbreweries, the popularization of home-brewing and the re-discovery (at least in England and here in the US) of a vast array of almost forgotten European beer styles all has a lot to do with Jackson's efforts.
Let's drain a cold one for the man.
This article appears in Aug 29 – Sep 4, 2007.