A couple of months ago, I received a preview copy of the galleys of Brewing Arizona by Ed Sipos. Knowing the book itself wouldn’t appear until the fall, I flipped through its pages at leisure, surprised to find that brewing in the state dates back much further than I would have imagined.
Then, a week or two ago, the final, finished book arrived. And it’s a doozy, hard-backed, full colour and 360 pages long. In terms of weight and gravitas, it exceeds even the gorgeous new Boutique Beer by Ben McFarland (a review of which is forthcoming).
All that for a book about brewing in Arizona? Forgive me, but really, in terms of the global impact of a state or province or district, Arizona really isn’t up there in the top tier.
That said, Sipos’ research appears to be remarkably thorough, and at times reveals some very surprising facts. I had no idea, for instance, that Arizona craft beer pioneer ‘Electric’ Dave Harvan stopped brewing in 1993 not because his brewery went bust, but because he was busted for possession and sale of marijuana. And neither was I aware that Arizona’s most notorious “craft” beer, Ed’s Cave Creek Chili Beer – you remember, the one with the chili pepper in the bottle that I don’t think anyone ever bought twice for themselves – enjoyed a brief status as a cult beer in Japan.
The book is also well-illustrated, which occasionally presents some problems. On page 168, for instance, we are shown a photo of the original Electric Dave Brewery and told in the caption that it was confiscated and destroyed by the BATF, but it is not until page 177, in a different chapter, that the full story is told.
Displaced photos aside, this is a remarkably thorough and mostly well-written history. Whether or not you will find it worth the $39.95 price tag will depend entirely on your degree of interest in Arizona’s brewing past and present.