Beer Books: Recommended Reading?

The Brewer's Tale: A History of the World According to Beer is a pretty interesting read. Basically starts in ancient Egypt and works its way through time discussing beer's influence on that era and history of different beer styles. The author also brews a batch for each chapter/style. I enjoyed it a lot and learned a lot about beer history.

 

Also go to the source, got some local brewers/brew pubs near you? Beer tours? Etc. Most really love to talk shop. Got a good beer store near you?

 

Ok just thought I'd check. I wasn't really sure how much of that book needed updated.

 

Grab yourself a copy of The Practical Brewer. It might be an older text but it essentially tells you everything you need to know to make beer.

Forget all these stupid subjective coffee table books. The Practical Brewer is the one to learn.

 

What's everyone's opinion on the beer bible? I'm about to do an amazon order and need to get my price up for shipping.

 

Except there are some terrible articles in the OCB. All the articles written by Horst Dornbusch are total crap. There are plenty of excellent articles, too. Problem is working out what you should believe and what you shouldn't.

 

Ron, that is true of any piece of writing (books, articles, blogs,...).

I have yet to read any non-fiction book that I thought was 'perfect'.

Cheers!

Jack

 

I was considering using the term of "internet" in my post but I decided to go with "blogs" instead. just because a person puts something in a blog does not necessarily equate to "fact".

Cheers!

 

If you are interested in a book that is essentially write ups on the various styles then it's a good choice.

 

I go to Barnes and noble and I get all the beer magazines they have.

 

But some bits of the OCB are so appallingly bad it's more than just the odd small mistake.

 

Brewed Awakening is a good one I haven't seen mentioned yet. It goes through the craft beer movement of the last 20 years or so and highlights a few beers in particular along the way.

 

BTW @patto1ro , The Beer Bible seems to be aware of your work.

 

I would recommend the Brewers Publications books: https://www.brewerspublications.com/browse-our-books/

While these are books focused on brewing they also have a wealth of information and history. There is a lot to sink your teeth into.

 

Unless it's in my blog.

 

Tasting beer by Randy Mosher is really good. Perfect balance of easy reading, illustrations and in-depth.

Beer for Dummies seems to be good too.

Better take care to do the homework!

 

As always, our friend @OldSock has a fantastic list on his blog:

https://www.themadfermentationist.com/p/links.html

As do my friends over at Milk the Funk (under "literature"):

http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Table_of_Contents

 

Although it has been recommended many times over, I would highly recommend reading Charlies Papazian's "The Complete Joy of Homebrewing."

But I would take it one step further. The original print book sold out many times and Charlie actually updated the book several times, so they ended up printing multiple volumes of the book to accommodate the demand. These subsequent versions probably represent over 90% of all of the ones that are in circulation.

What I'm proposing is that you actually try to track down the original version of this book. Its probably one of the best pieces of original craft beer culture in America. Its filled with a bunch of hand-drawn and psychedelic images of homebrewing from the 70s....just wacky shit, honestly. It represents a really awesome and innocent time when craft beer had less than 1% market share, and most of the people homebrewing were a bunch of fringe freaks. If you can't track one down, let me know and I can send you a copy.

cheers


@JackHorzempa @drtth @cavedave

 

Finishing up "Malt" by John Mallet. While not directly about beer per se it does provide an interesting knowledge base to better understand it.