The Beer Bible - Hardcover

Alworth, Jeff

4.37

494 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0761184988 ISBN 13: 9780761184980

Publisher: Workman Publishing Company, 2015

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Winner of a 2016 IACP Award

The ultimate reader- and drinker-friendly guide to the world’s ales and beers, and the book that approaches the subject in the same way beer lovers do—by style, just like a welcoming pub menu.

Divided into four major families—ales, lagers, wheat beers, and sour and wild ales—The Beer Bible covers everything a beer drinker wants to know about the hundreds of types of beers made, from bitters, sessions, and IPAs to weisses, wits, lambics, and more. Each style is a chapter unto itself, delving into origins, ingredients, description and characteristics, sub-styles, and tasting notes, and ending with a recommended list of the beers to know in each category. Infographic charts throughout make understanding the connection between styles and families immediately understandable.

The book is written for passionate beginners, who will love its “if you like X, try Y” feature; for intermediate beer lovers eager to go deeper; and for true geeks, who will find new information on every page.

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From the Inside Flap:

Never in the long history of drinking have beer lovers had it so good, with a brewing renaissance happening around the globe. And never before have beer lovers who also have a thirst for knowledge had it so good--The Beer Bible is a lively, comprehensive, authoritative, and purely fun-to-read guide to beer in all its glory. The Beer Bible celebrates the pleasure of discovery, for readers new to beer, and the pleasure of connoisseurship, for old hands ever eager for more information. It's a book built on the premise that the best way to learn about beer isn't by trying every one out there, but instead pouring your favorite and studying it. That's what opens the doorway to history, culture, and craft, the influences that make each style of beer unique.

Like bitter, for example. Its origins in the twin discoveries of hops as a spicing agent and modern kilning, which allowed for straw-colored malts. How it took several more centuries to displace the great porter epoch. The influence of mineral-rich Burton water. The Zen simplicity of how bitter is brewed. The quality called "moreish"--a distinctly British adjective extolling the virtue of being pleasant over the course of a full evening at the pub. And the fact that it really needs to be drunk straight from the tap or cask.

To top it off, Jeff Alworth's ever-engaging style: "British bitters are characterized by a definite hop presence, but they have no violence in them. The hops ride atop a gentle biscuit sweetness and add marmalade and spice." And so it goes for bocks and lambics, schwarzbiers and Vienna lagers, saisons and Pilsners, weisses, weizens, and witbiers.

Welcome to beer heaven.

About the Author:

Jeff Alworth has been writing about beer and brewing for twenty years. He is the author of The Beer Bible (Workman, 2015), Cider Made Simple (Chronicle, 2015), and The Beer Tasting Toolkit (Chronicle, 2012). He is a columnist for All About Beer and has written for a number of magazines and newspapers, and he blogs about beer at his popular site, Beervana. He lives and brews in Portland, Oregon.

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