Stephen Beaumont will be in Fort Worth October 9-11, 2014 to promote his newest book "Pocket Beer Guide 2015," which showcasing roughly 4,000 of the world's best beers. (Jay Brooks)
Stephen Beaumont makes a living traveling the world and drinking beer.
An esteemed writer and journalist, he’s crossed the globe for decades exploring countries, regions and cities by the glass.
Dallasites may remember an honor he bestowed on our great city when he named the Design District gastropub Meddlesome Moth as one of the best beer bars in the world. The world. (We agree, recently naming it one of the top 12 craft beer bars in D-FW.)
In 2012, Beaumont and fellow beer expert Tim Webb penned The World Atlas of Beer. And the duo’s latest release, Pocket World Beer Guide 2015, which came out October 1, appears to have tackled the near-impossible task of determining the world’s best craft beers, “plus or minus 4,000″ of them, according to Beaumont.
Now, that’s a bucket list.
Beaumont and Webb compiled the listings in conjunction with 15-20 trusted correspondents across the globe, rating each beer on a scale of four stars.
“Any beer that’s two stars is worth drinking without question,” Beaumont says.
He’s in town for a series of book signings through October 11, which include a five-course dinner at Bird Cafe in Fort Worth Thursday, a local brewers summit at Flying Saucer Fort Worth Friday and BeerFeast festival at Flying Saucer Fort Worth Saturday.
Ahead of his visit to North Texas, we spoke to Beaumont about three countries that are leading an innovative movement, brewing with ingredients unique to the culture in every batch. Some you may not expect.
1. Brazil
“Brazilian brewers, of whom there are not a huge number, they’re more and more using indigenous ingredients from the Amazon — fruits, aromatic woods that are harvested from the Amazon to make barrels,” Beaumont says. “And these are really placing a uniquely Brazilian stamp on some of their beers.”
2. Italy
“The Italians, they do what I describe as using a Belgian, traditional approach to brewing, but with a uniquely Italian perspective,” he explains. “A lot of the Italian breweries are in wine country, so they’re using grape must or use wine barrels. Some of them are using some microflora that gather traditionally in wine regions in order to add extra depth of wild yeast character to their beers. And as a result, Italy is a really exciting place for beer, even though most people think, ‘Italy? They brew beer there, really? More than just Peroni?’”
2. New Zealand
“New Zealand grows some of the most unusual hops in the world because they have this closed ecosystem,” says Beaumont. “And the brewers there have been working with these hops all their lives, so they really know how to use them and they use them to great effect.”