By SHANNON O. WELLS
Hannah Powell loves to hike. And when she finishes trekking through woods and beautiful scenery, she finds a charming brew pub the ideal place to wind down, sample some suds and replenish burned calories from the pub’s food menu.
In 2021, she started sharing these two-tiered experiences in her Hikes and Hops blog, which eventually captured the attention of a Switzerland-based guidebook publisher.
While thrilled with the opportunity to write a book, the Pittsburgh native’s comfort with the subject matter wasn’t as helpful as she’d expected.
“I thought that I would be able to reuse a lot of things I had already written until I started working with an editor for a couple sample chapters before I officially signed the contract,” said Powell, who works as coordinator for the University Art Gallery in the Frick Fine Arts Building. “And I realized I was maybe not as observant as I needed to be for this type of guidebook.”
From just taking in the sights, sounds and scents of nature and taking an occasional picture on casual hikes, Powell now had to put on a journalist/documentarian hat to engage in more, as she called it, “hiking with a purpose.”
“When I was working on this project, I had to take voice memos and do so many more pictures, and really, like, track where every turn was,” she said of the book project she started in May 2023. “I had hoped to not have to re-hike every single hike, but I ended up having to do it all.”
Going those extra — quite numerous — miles paid off, however. “Beer Hiking Pennsylvania & New Jersey — The Tastiest Way to Discover the Beaches, Mountains, and Cities of the Northern Mid-Atlantic,” was released on March 4. Geared toward hikers who enjoy craft beer and beer aficionados who love walking in nature, the book describes 35 hikes through stunning natural landscapes in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, all of which end near a brewery or a brewpub.
Published by Switzerland-based Helvetiq, the full-color guidebook features well-known and less well-known one-to-six-hour “beer hikes” around the forests, mountains, waterfalls and battlefields of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as well as the Atlantic coastline of the latter.
Trail descriptions include details on their accessibility, difficulty, duration, points of interest, and at trail’s end, a recommended beer, complete with notes on its taste, appearance and aroma. Powell also shares insights from the passionate and creative craftspeople behind the brewing process.
Powell, who called this — her first book — a “labor of love,” said after all the effort, she’s relieved to have the publication out in the world. It’s currently available for purchase at Barnes and Noble outlets as well as online through Amazon, Target and bookselling websites including Bookshop.org.
“I didn’t realize how long the publishing cycle takes,” she admitted. “So, yeah, it’s exciting that it’s finally out there.”
The real deal
As documented on her blog, Powell — often with her husband, Justin Powell — has trekked across 14 states and visited 11 national parks. Her journey from dedicated hiker and brewpub haunter to blogger and guidebook author sprang from a desire to stay occupied and healthy during the COVID pandemic, circa 2021.
Her aim, as explained on Hikes and Hops, was “finding the perfect pairing for every trail and craft brewery.”
“I had started blogging about beer. During COVID, (hiking) was something that my partner and I were doing a lot of, and I was like, ‘I think people might be interested in this,’” she said. “So I started a blog and an Instagram, and just was kind of sharing our adventures.”
After someone from Switzerland-based Helvetiq Publishing came across Hikes and Hops, representatives contacted Powell about being part of their regionally grouped guidebook series “‘doing pretty much exactly’” what she’d already been blogging about.
They asked her, “‘Are you interested in writing the Pennsylvania and New Jersey book?’” she said. “Which was amazing. It was kind of funny at first. I thought it wasn’t real because I get a lot of spam email to my blog, emails from people trying to sell me stuff. So I just thought it was fake.”
The publishing agents, however, did not relent.
“They were very persistent. They were like, ‘No, this is a real thing! Here are some of the previous (titles) that we’ve done.’ Once I realized that they were a real company, we (started working) together,” Powell said. “And suddenly I was contracted to write a book. It was pretty incredible.”
The initial excitement from the opportunity was tempered by Powell’s realization that she essentially would be taking on a second, at least semi full-time job.
“I was really on the fence about taking on the project at first. I had called one of the other authors who wrote the ‘Beer Hiking in New England’ (guidebook), and he really talked me into it,” she said. “It turned into almost every weekend driving across (Pennsylvania), trying to figure out how to stay with friends and do campsites and stuff to try to make it a little bit more cost effective.”
Using her blog-tested knowledge base, Powell began — literally — broadening her horizons.
“It was always just, wherever we would pair a hike with whatever was the closest brewery and trying to prioritize ones that were locally owned and (were) small businesses,” she said. “It was just part of the fun of getting outdoors and trying a new place.”
The two worlds Powell had casually blogged about for years proved more harmonious than she thought. “There’s such a close tie between the hiking world and the brewing world,” she said. “They really go hand in hand, and they’re very outdoor friendly, especially.”
Powell strived to conjure as inviting and inclusive a tone as possible. “It was very fun trying to write a book that was going to be approachable for both audiences of hikers and beer drinkers who maybe didn’t do the other activity.”
Sometimes, however, the proximity of the best hikes and most appealing microbrews didn’t mesh.
“Trying to make sure there was something there for everybody was definitely challenging, because there were some places that would have just a truly incredible hike,” she explained, “and then there’d be no breweries within a 40-mile radius.”
The Jersey factor
As her book title indicates, Pennsylvania is not the only state that’s covered.
So how does a Pittsburgh native become an expert in Garden State hiking and beer? It turns out her Swiss publisher, which started the “beer hiking” series in Europe, figured this geographic combination would be easily marketable in the Philadelphia metropolitan area that entwines with New Jersey.
“(Helvetiq) started to kind of bring it into the U.S., and they have taken to doing groupings of states, which I think is really successful,” Powell noted. “For this book, it was kind of funny of trying to explain to them that, ‘Oh, we don’t usually group those two (states).’ I think they were basing their market research very heavily on Philadelphia.
“They were like, ‘Oh, perfect! We can do these two, (which will) probably also capture people interested in hiking in New York City, because it’s all close,’” she said with a chuckle. “I was, like, ‘Yeah, this is where you guys are clearly not from.’”
As it turned out, the somewhat incongruous pairing worked out well for Powell as well as her publisher.
“From Pittsburgh, New Jersey is so far away, so I really had not visited very often,” she confessed. “And I ended up being so impressed by the state park system there. And I always had this misconception that New Jersey was just like the suburb of New York.”
Along with assets like a 70-mile stretch of the Appalachian Trail, she discovered a “huge preserved space in Central Jersey called the Pine Barrens that is just absolutely beautiful. So, there’s a lot more green space there than I ever realized.
“I’m actually really grateful that the book ended up including New Jersey,” she said, “because I probably wouldn’t have made it out there on my own.”
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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