Hops For Today

HOPS FOR TODAY: Daily Meditations for Craft Brewers and the People Who Love Them is a page-a-day reader with a leap-year's worth of craft-brewed philosophy, written in the tradition of self-help daily reflections and intended for craft beer drinkers, amateur brewers, recovering beer snobs, and aspiring ones. Each of its 366 entries pairs a one- or two-paragraph meditation - on beer, brewing, history, philosophy, or the specific comedy of caring deeply about something most people drink without thinking - with a "Thought For Today" drawn from figures ranging from Pliny the Elder to Erma Bombeck, Ben Franklin to Neil deGrasse Tyson, Hillel the Elder to Liza Minnelli, who has, it turns out, a great deal to say about resilience and the barrel-aged stout.

The author, D.B. Gurevich, is not a beer man. He is a beer ally - a generalist by nature who arrived at hop appreciation by way of infinitesimally deliberate, somewhat excessive application of effort. "I am not the man at the bar who can tell you what's in the glass," he writes in the introduction. "I am the man at the bar who has read about Shalmaneser II, at length, and can pair his life goals with what's in your glass." He grew up in New York City, lives in Southern California, and has already sought professional help, thank you very much.

The book is meant to be read one entry at a time, with a glass in one hand, and then closed. "A short daily meditation," Gurevich notes, "is like 800mg of ibuprofen, except without the wax coating and the stomach upset."

Read it slowly. There is no rush. There are 366 of them.