Travels With Barley: A Journey Through Beer Culture In America (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
TRAVELS WITH BARLEY is a travelogue/memoir about... what else?... beer! Based around an imaginary manifestation Ken Wells makes up himself — the River of Beer — Wells traverses across the country in his quest to find The Perfect Beer Joint. During the course of his adventure, he also provides background on America's number one alcoholic beverage (battles between Big Beer and Little Beer; prohibition; yeast rustlers), interviews CEOs of beer companies, homebrewing draft beer makers, baristas and strippers, and many other colorful characters found frequenting the bars.At first I really liked it. A beer travelogue is a pretty original concept. My parents are very knowledgeable about wine and beers (Wells would probably dub them major Beer Geeks) and I thought it would be cool to find out more about their world, so I could contribute to discussion at their dinner parties, even though I, myself, rarely ever drink. Unfortunately, TRAVELS WITH BARLEY got old pretty quickly. Partly, this is probably because, as my boyfriend pointed out, “But you don't even drink!” But I never really cared for beer or hard liquor. I was more into wine, although there is a lovely raspberry lambic that I am still quite find of (and to this day remains the only exception to my no-beer rule).But another problem is that Ken Wells is just so dang repetitive. Each chapter, with the exception of the historical chapters, goes something like this:-Ken goes into a bar, which he then proceeds to describe in detail.-Ken drinks a beer. Ken critiques the beer with his “limited vocabulary” (he is not a beer expert, and ends up embarrassing himself at one point in front of two professional beer tasters).-Ken orders another beer.-Ken finds the weirdest person in the joint and tells them about his project. He interviews them about their perfect beer joint.-Ken goes off to find another bar. Repeats steps 1-5.He also writes about a lot of really weird tangents that don't really have much to do with beer, or only have a tangential relationship with beer. For example, he writes about a (pretty boring) fight between a Mormon church in Utah and the wild bars around it (the Mormons don't like the bars, the Catholic beer-fans don't like the Mormons). He also devotes a chapter to the fact that—gasp—Elvis didn't seem to drink beer, instead partying it up on seven-up (what a crime against humanity). I also really didn't like how he kept seeming to find strippers/Hooters girls/bar floozies to interview and then writes about how attractive they are/how they took off their clothes/how he enjoys looking at them/how stupid feminists are for complaining about these.OK, OK, so if the women don't have a problem with being ogled, no harm, no foul. But I found it offensive how he included several paragraphs of each of these chapters to how he and his bar broskis enjoyed looking at these woman in states of undress. It just seemed very tacky and distasteful. Yes, this is a book about beer, which is supposed to be about fun and sex appeal and having a good time. But you can still have a good time and NOT be gauche. Maybe it's just the feminist in me, but his disrespectful attitude toward women was really irritating.Also, the River of Beer analogy got pretty dumb after a while. Ken seemed to think he was a clever clogs for coming up with this analogy considering the number of times he bandied it around. I thought it was pretty lame. And referring to attractive waitresses and strippers as “Beer Goddesses” was stupid. I was hoping for Nordic legends or something about actual goddesses responsible for the creation of beer in that particular religion… not how beer tastes SO much better when you're looking down a woman's low-cut top.-Sigh-There's a reason you don't find a lot of women in bars, Mr. Wells, and it's not necessarily because they don't like beer.
This book is an absolute piece of trash. Not only is it far less than insightful or even entertaining to anyone who knows about or has a flirting interest in beer, but it does nothing to inform readers new to the subject either. The author confesses at the begining of the book that he has next to no beer knowledge and so embarks on this quest to gain some. Although he claims to be traveling down the Mississippi, he jumps around the continent as he so pleases, with no real agenda in mind. He obtains no knowledge outside of cheesy "beer world" slang: "I noticed that Keith was drinking a stout and so immediately pegged him as a Malt Man. I confessed to him that I myself was a Hop Head, but tried his suggestion anyway." Shoot me. Not only this, but the reader is constantly referenced back to the pages he or she has just read, not being trusted to absorb the knowledge on their own. This is not suprising, as the author himself seems unable to retain anything that he is told or explained. Much less time is spent exploring beer than is spent exploring the people of various towns, all of whom are so boring and nondescript that they don't even warrant mentioning. But without them, the book would be about 30 pages long. It's true, I did not finish this book, but I can't think of a way anyone possibly could short of a labotomy. In the spirit of the author, I skipped around the end of the book, hoping to find that Wells had learned to write or - at very least - learned something about his subject. But no, around page 300 he is still insulting in his lack of knowledge or even initiative to seek out some information on his own, attending a mead festival without even knowing what mead is. Way to go, asshole.
What do You think about Travels With Barley: A Journey Through Beer Culture In America (2004)?
Ken Wells probably had a lot of fun researching this book - basically traveling around the country searching for the "perfect beer joint" and documenting his journey. Along the way he presents a history of beer in the U.S. (at least up through 2002 - when this was written), stops in assorted smalltown bars, yaks with the locals and homebrewers, and tries to get a feel for American beer culture off the beaten path.More breezy than deep, Travels with Barley is a fun read, though the fact that it's over ten years old it misses out on the expansion of craft beer into the mix - which likely would have changed his travels completely.
—Rich Rosell
The narrative is structured around the author-constructed "River of Beer", an analogy that simply doesnt hold. He erroneously, in my opinion, takes the position that a trip down the Mississippi from north to south will provide a representative sample from which to extract a view of America's beer culture. He then tries to correct this obvious problem with frequest side trips to the east and west coasts. What the hell? Why use the river analogy in the first place? The whole thing is too cutesy, amatuerish and, ultimately, lame. Here's the takeway: Beer-good. Book-bad.
—Ron
Let me start that my opinion of this book and not giving it a higher rating might be due to the fact that I am Beer Geek. This book has parts that are fantastic, had me laughing out loud and appreciating the great beer world. However, that only covered about 2/3 of the book. The other third wasted time in Graceland, trying to figure out if Elvis drank beer (20 wasted pages later he doesn't), Hooters (didn't even discuss beer), and chains. Admittedly, this guy didn't map out his trip beforehand, but since he was writing a book maybe he should have so he wouldn't have wound up at the same kind of place over and over again. Also he basically refers to lagers as almost exclusively as large domestics, when lagers have a huge range of taste profiles that can be enjoyed. But on the brighter side, the home brew competition he goes to is hilarious, as is the gold of his interview and story about Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head, and the tour of the AB hop farm was so interesting as I was someone who was always curious about mass hop production. So this book is TOTALLY worth a read but my inner beer geek wanted more and isn't that what being a geek is all about?
—Amber
