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South Fayette’s Brewer brews up ‘Brewology’

By Harry Funk 4 min read
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Mark Brewer takes a humorous look at beer with “Brewology.”

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Mark Brewer takes a humorous look at beer with “Brewology.”

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Sketches and the finished illustration for the “Porter” entry in “Brewology”

Every book should have a hook.

“I would think that a good marketing person would say, ‘Well, your last name is Brewer, so maybe we should do a book on beer.’ That makes sense,” said the South Fayette Township resident with the first name of Mark.

“Not me. I’m like, I’ve got a great idea. I’ll draw a book about beer. I’ll do some illustrations. And guess what? My last name is Brewer. I got it reversed.

Whatever the case, Mark Brewer’s “Brewology: An Illustrated Dictionary for Beer Lovers” is coming to the attention of a lot of, well, beer lovers.

After Skyhorse Publishing released the book in June, Brewer embarked on a signing tour that took him to 67 venues in six states, wrapping up just before Christmas in Peters Township.

As 2016 takes shape, he plans appearances at some of the nation’s premier beer-related events, starting across the state at the Big Philly Beer Fest on Jan. 15-16 and including Denver’s dynamic Great American Beer Festival in October, the same month he is to be featured in the Heinz History Center’s Books in the ‘Burgh series.

Meanwhile, his licensing agent, Ben Gorbaty, is meeting with manufacturers to put Brewer’s illustrations on the likes of glasses, mugs, T-shirts and coasters. And Latrobe’s Four Seasons Brewing Co. is using his art to label some of its products.

“I just thought it would be fun to have a book, and I thought I could have a little bit of side cash coming in,” Brewer said. “It’s just taken on a life of it’s own, totally unexpected.”

The genesis for “Brewology” came about a decade and a half ago, when Brewer was, uh, living up to the family name by making his own beer.

“I had this idea scratched down in a notebook and came back to it,” he explained, “and I still thought, after all these years, that it was a decent idea.”

The book features more than 200 entries, from Abbey Beer, “originally brewed by monks in monasteries,” to Zymurgy, “the branch of science dealing with brewing and the fermentation process more specifically.”

“Even though I loved craft beer and always have, I was ignorant to a lot of the terms. A lot of us are,” Brewer said, with “zymurgy” serving as a prime example. “So I kind of did it sort of for myself, as well.”

The contents can come in handy when selected a beverage, such as knowing the relevance of international bittering units.

“If you really like bitter beer, like I do, when somebody says 85 or 90 IBUs, that’s great,” Brewer explained. “When somebody says there’s only 20 IBUs in there, then it’s not really hoppy at all. It’s more malty. So then you have more of an idea of what you might be getting.”

What sets “Brewology” apart from a mere beer dictionary is, of course, the illustrations. Brewer has a knack for using visual puns, so to speak, to give readers plenty of chuckles along the way as they learn what, say, porter is.

“A dark-colored, full-bodied ale,” he writes, with accompanying drawings of hotel bag handlers who are trying to do their jobs while balancing mugs of dark-colored, full-bodied ale.

“Sometimes you draw something that’s just fun to look at, and that can carry a little bit of weight, too,” Brewer said. “I’m always trying to come up with something with a little bit of sophisticated wit to it.”

He has been illustrating for publications since his hometown newspaper, the Shoreline Times in Madison, Conn., began running his political cartoons when he was 15. Since then, he has had his worked published in the likes of Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal, and he has a radio spot, “What’s Brewing With Mark Brewer,” on Pittsburgh’s 100.7-FM.

The name apparently lends itself to broadcast programming, too.

For more information, visit www.markbrewer.com.

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