The book The Great Beer Trek: A Guide to the Highlights and Lowlites of American Beer Drinking, was originally published by the Stephen Greene Press in 1984. A revised version of the book was published by Viking/Penguin in 1990. The revised version of the book, the one that I have, updates some of the peripheral information provided by the author, but leaves the basic story of the author’s 1978 “trek” intact. Between these two publishings, more than 32,000 copies of this book were sold here in the US. In 1995 the book was translated and sold into the Japanese market where some there seem to credit this book for starting the worldwide microbrew revolution we are in today.

In 1978, Stephen Morris packed his wife (Laura) and dog (Guinness) into an old van and set off across the country from Boston on a coast-to-coast 100-day 20,000-mile beer adventure which takes them all the way to Yakima, Washinton. Their trek would take them to all of the then existing American breweries. At that time in US history, this was only possible because the 1500 or so breweries that had sprung up after Prohibition had dwindled, through attrition and consolidation, to only 42 large brewing companies, which at that time produced nearly all of this nation’s beer. The annals of their trip includes visits to these hallowed beer sites with familiar names as well as a descriptive (sometimes humorous) running commentary of the local American beer scene at each stop along the way, a lament of ghostly breweries of days gone by and an interesting analysis of the American culture and society from the viewpoint of a beer drinker.

The book is well written and easily holds your attention; particularly for those of us old enough to remember some of the nearly 1500 breweries that no longer exist. At various points in their journey it became, for me, somewhat of a trip back into my childhood in the Midwest to recollect then familiar brewery names such as Stoh, Carling, Sterling (my father worked here when in college), Falstaff and Wiedermann’s. Morris does not shy away from poking humor at many of the locals they encounter along the way and attempts to answer some of the more pressing questions concerning their local beer preferences. One of my favorites… do you know why Texans like their beer in long-necked “bar bottles”?… ‘Cuz they’re tall! Before any reader from Texas takes offense, you should know that I was born in El Paso and have every right to make fun of us Texans.

As the book winds down to the end, the trek has ended and Morris looks back on his travels and muses about the changes taking place in the beer industry. The full-bodied and full-flavored beer being imported from Europe and other countries was beginning to have its effect on the beer market place as Americans began to discover that there was more to beer than the bland offerings of the remaining national mega-brewers. Homebrewing has become legal again and the age of the microbrewery has begun.

We have come a long way since Morris’ original beer trek; there are now over 1500 breweries in this country again and craft beer sales are beginning to make some real inroads into the sale of beer in the US. The notion that all of these breweries could be visited in a single trip is extremely unlikely (but worth dreaming about perhaps). While I doubt, very seriously, that I will write a book about my own beer trek this summer, if that happens, I may take the time to collect my thoughts and write about it here. The beer world is a big place now and no matter where I go, like Morris in his book, I plan to savor the experience of both the beers I drink and the culture which surrounds them.