Beer Blast: The Inside Story of the Brewing Industry's Bizarre Battles for Your Money

Rating:
Summary: Bubbly, dry and very palatable
Review: Amazing! This is definitely different from those 6-inche business textbook. You can leran the whole story about marketing or market competition. If you are in beer business, or fast moving consumer goods business you will be surprised with the similiarity between the book and your realistic business competition.

Rating:
Summary: Humorous look at the business of beer selling--very fun!
Review: Beer Blast was an incredibly enjoyable book to read and highly informative (if you are a fan of beer). I will admit that he was a bit focused on Heinekien, but considering his family background. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about beer.

Rating:
Summary: Review of P. Van Munching's Beer Blast
Review: Hopefully, it's no surprise to you that American Mega-Breweries have been less than ethical in the representation of their products and in their business practices. If you were unaware of this, I'm going to level with you... it is true. And you should also know that there is no Santa Claus, Clinton did inhale, Elvis is dead and no one could have possibly slept with as many women as Magic Johnson claims he did. No matter how comfy you may make yourself by believing the unbelievable, harsh veracity is better than obstinate naivete.

When I saw a book about indescretion in the American Brewing Industry... well, I chocked it up as just another dissatisfied customer. Just another guy who was irritated at the brewing industry... fed up with the same boring stuff from mega-breweries, year after year. Another guy... well... like me. This assumption turned out to be wrong, but I still liked the book.

Two points were evident as I began reading Beer Blast : The Inside Story of the Brewing Industry's Bizarre Battles To Get Your Money by Philip Van Munching. Van Munching has been around the brewing industry his entire life and he isn't afraid to tell you about the seedy side. Also, he's a very entertaining writer. Along with his worldly understanding and privy information, Van Munching has a rare wit and sarcastic edge to his writing. Like a seasoned ringleader, he calls out the clowns and narrates their escapades and foolhardy, cutthroat behavior. He spotlights the circus that is the modern American brewing industry and makes it more exposed than Pee-Wee Herman in an adult movie theater. Once in a while he takes a covert jab at the typical American beer drinker for empowering these brew-twits to begin with, but it's all done with a wink and a nod, and is not to be taken too seriously.

Of course I can't be completely positive about anything. Ol' Phil is more than marginally partial to Heineken and it shows in an ugly, stagnant way. He and his family are responsible for bringing that particular Dutch swill to America... a crime our country's legal system has no applicable sentance to serve him. He amusingly admits that corn meal is used in brewing Heineken, but then goes on to rail about how Jim Koch was wrong for saying they brew Heineken with adjuncts. What is Corn Meal if it isn't an adjunct? I laughed. He also says that the purpose of the Reinheitsgebot German Purity Law was to keep foreign beer out of Germany. Well, not if the foreign beer avoided brewing with cheaper, barley expanding adjuncts! Like say, oh... for example... corn meal like is used in brewing HEINEKEN.

Despite this, and though I'm sure the stories he tells are embellished for the sake of entertainment, at the core, there is the undeniable truth that brewing companies are selling an image, and what you are buying is a beer. They simply think that you aren't smart enough to know the difference and with most American beer drinkers, they are right.

The quality games and propaganda wars American brewing companies have been waging with each other for years are enough to fill a book, so I'm not surprised that someone did write a book about it. What did surprise me was how intriguing a read it really was.

Rating:
Summary: Light and Enjoyable with a pleasant aftertaste
Review: I don't drink beer much, but my father does, so I bought "Beer Blast" as a birthday gift for my dad. I started reading and I just couldn't put the book down. Now I need to buy another copy for myself. The recent history of American brewers and importers is a fascinating one. Van Munching focuses on the marketing of beer, and although he benefits from 20-20 hindsight, his analysis is very insightful. This book is an easy read that has one major flaw--it ends. I wanted more. I certainly hope Mr. Van Munching writes a sequel that exposes more of the beer industry. Note to marketing teachers: this book would make a fabulous text.

Rating:
Summary: Smooth, crisp, flavorful.....just a great book
Review: Now here's a book about something near and dear to my heart (and mouth). I bought this book when it first came out after hearing a radio interview with Philip Van Munching and finding him not only very informative, but also hilarious. This book is very entertaining and informative (and it always makes me thirsty for a cold one, but I digress).

Being in the Van Munching family it's hard to knock him for his emphasis on Heineken (is he supposed to know more about Miller and Anheiser Busch than his own family's company?) The book gives a very detailed background of the beer industry in the US but mainly focuses on the period beginning in the seventies which he refers to as the "Beer Wars" when Anheiser Busch, Miller and Coors began to take over.

Anyone interested in business, advertising and marketing in particular, will really enjoy this book. Oh yeah, and if you like to enjoy a cold one from time to time you'll also like this book. I've aleways been more of a microbrew drinker myself (beer snob) so I've never really enjoyed anything brewed by the big three. After reading this book I don't think I'll be enjoying anything from them anytime soon. Like one of the reviews on the back of the book says, " I don't know which one of them deserves my money less." Cheers!

Rating:
Summary: Two Thumbs Up! A good look inside the Beer Industry
Review: One of the best books I have read in '97. I recommend it to serious beer drinkers and/or amateur brewers. Van Munching mixes humor with a serious analysis of marketing and advertising techniques. He begins with an interesting history of the brewing industry and how it changes into the industry of the 90's. Every person in business providing a product or service should consider the book REQUIRED READING.

Rating:
Summary: Smooth, crisp, flavorful.....just a great book
Review: This book is a great read and an interesting study of the beer industry and its history. The author due to his ties (son of the Heineken importer) provides great insight, but also some thoughtful and usable management and marketing analysis.

Rating:
Summary: Very good read
Review: This book was very informative and written quite well. I would strongly recommend this book for anyone that likes to read about industry profiles. I also liked the fact that I did not have to know that much about the beer industry in order to enjoy the book.

Rating:
Summary: Beer Blast is a blast
Review: This is terrific reading, not only for beer lovers and marketing buffs. Philip van Munching, grandson of the man who first brought Heineken to the United States, has written a non-fiction book that contains all the ingredients of a first-class thriller: megalomanic dynasties, a fatal car accident the evidence of which was tempered with, mad-gone advertising gurus, and conglomerates trying to take over the hood ("get your girl in the mood quicker, and get your jimmy thicker with St. Ides malt liquor"). Along the way, the reader learns quite a bit about marketing. That is what the Ivy-League-trainined marketing whiz kids at Anheuser-Busch, Miller, and Coors, apparently never did. Instead, they squandered away hundreds of millions of dollars in their futile attempts to win one of the most fiercely fought business wars of the last twenty five years: the war for the American beer market. Van Munching knows how they did it, and he tells it with wit and an incredible insider's knowledge. Great story, great writing, great book!!!

Rating:
Summary: Interesting insider account
Review: You can read his book in at least three different ways: as an attempt to write a business bestseller; as a history of the beer business in the USA; and as a memoir of PVM's years in the business.

I greatly enjoyed reading the parts of the book that lent themselves to being read in the third of these ways. In particular, when PVM is seething about the tactics used by Jim Koch to market Sam Adams, or the antics of the MBAs who ended up in charge of the company his family had built, he writes with great energy. Hence the last half of the book works is a tremendous read.

The first half is more detached, but most of it comprises a more than competent account of the years between the launch of Lite beer and that of Sam Adams.

The first chapter, however, is a rather rushed and disjoined account of the first few centuries of beer in America.

The introduction that precedes it is the worst part of the book. PVM opens with a reference to the Prisoner's Dilemma, and then goes on to mention game theory. He doesn't seem very interested in these topics, though, and makes little mention of them in the body of the book. My guess is that PVM or his agent or editor decided that they are trendy topics, and so might snare some trendy readers.

Hence Beer Blast is at its worst when PVM tries too hard to write a bestseller, at its best when he shares his experience in this interesting business, and somewhere in the middle when he writes part of the history of it. I recommend it, but can't follow prior reviewers in giving it five stars.