We received an e-mail today (see it below) from our friends at All About Beer Magazine with sad news for beer lovers everywhere.

 

It reports the passing last night of Michael Jackson, the world’s greatest beer and whiskey writer. He was known as the “Beer Hunter” and even had his own PBS special about beer. He wrote fantastic, beautiful books about beer and whiskey, such as the “New World Guide to Beer,” “The Malt Whisky Companion” and the “Pocket Guide to Beer,” which always accompanied me on my travels.

 

Nobody did more to elevate beer, the world’s most popular adult beverage, in the eyes of a food-snob community that often saw it fit only to celebrate beer’s less popular, less complex and less food-friendly relative, wine.

 

For the small community of beer writers and true aficionados out there – including myself – he was an inspiration: a great writer who wrote beautifully about our passion.

 

Jackson was a British resident but a citizen of the world: he was of Russian descent, grew up in the U.K., had many friends around the world and family in the United States, most notably in the Boston area.

 

He was also a friendly colleague of mine, if only tangentially. I talked to Jackson on the phone many times over the years, often to interview him for various stories, and hung out with him on numerous occasions. We had many pleasant conversations about beer, literature, history and politics.

 

He was very much in love with America, which is refreshing for those of us who have spent a lot of time in Europe and sometimes deal with people with other views. One time about two or three years ago, I attended a wonderful, lazy, lavish dinner at the Old Bank pub on Fleet Street in London hosted by the folks from Fuller’s Brewery. The guests were all British and American. Jackson gave an incredible toast to the Anglo-American relationship and the shared history of our nations. It was a very moving little speech and helped lend a rich, warm, familial atmosphere to the evening.

 

There was the other side of Jackson, too.

 

A few years before that dinner in London, I was in New York City to hang out with some writers I had met on a tour of Iceland. Jackson, who spent a great deal of time in New York, just happened to be in town. I called him up and, on a whim, he met us for drinks at a wonderful German-style beer hall called Zum Schneider, one of my favorite Manhattan watering holes.

 

After pounding beers there, we went to Sammy’s Romanian Steakhouse, a famous but schlocky underground restaurant with Yiddish music and heart-clogging food, including massive steaks, jars of schmaltz (liquefied chicken fat) and liters of vodka frozen in blocks of ice. The group of us must have downed three liters of vodka and we were all, including a blot-eyed Jackson, utterly ham-boned by the end of the night. We sang Yiddish tunes being played by some guy on an organ who, swear to God, looked just like Gene Simmons of Kiss. 

 

It was a great night … and then Jackson paid for our cab ride back uptown.

 

I never did get to pay him back. And now, of course, I never will.

 

Sorry, Michael.

 

The beer lovers of the world have lost a great friend and advocate.

 

***

 

 

 Dear Friends,

We learned this morning that Michael Jackson died last night at his home in London. We’re feeling stunned, and know his many friends will, too. We are both devestated and saddened since he was a friend, a mentor and one of our favorite writers. We talked with his staff and his death appears to have been peaceful. You may also know of the extent of his illness which he had begun discussing publicly in the past several months. Ironically, we were just editing his most recent column for All About Beer, which, poignantly, concerned his having “cheated Mort Subite” this year. (Ed. Note: "Mort Subite," a beer brand, means "sudden death" in French.)

We are preparing a memorial for Michael on our website, to be echoed in the pages of the magazine that is in production. In a few hours we will publish his final column, along with his first column from 1984, on our website and open a memorial page where his friends can share their thoughts and stories. We will capture some some of these memories in print.

We’re sure we speak for all of you when we say our community has lost a good friend and champion. He gave beer a language and taught so many of us to speak it.

Daniel and Julie Bradford

All About Beer Magazine