Good books for understanding beers

Tasting Beer by Randy Mosher is pretty good.
Anything written by Michael Jackson is very good.
Charlie Papazian (The Joy of Homebrewing) will teach you how to make it.
How To Brew by John Palmer is a wonderful read.
Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels is a little more technical but has it all.

 

Even though it's partially geared toward pairing beer with food, it's hard to beat the Brewmaster's Table from Garrett Oliver. He goes over different styles, history, culture, etc.

 

The joy of homebrewing (Charlie Papazian) Did me wonderings when I started home brewing. I love that book and would highly recommend to anybody looking for a book on home brewing.

 

I've built a fairly decent library this year and above all would recommend:

Man Walks into a Pub - Pete Brown
Ambitious Brew - Maureen Ogle
Tasting Beer - Randy Mosher

Happy reading! Every book goes better with a beer

 

Everyone beat me to the punch...what they said.

 

I would suggest Michael Jackson's Beer Companion.

 

I was going to suggest How To Brew as well. It's worth noting that most-if not all- of the information in the book is available for free on his website.

 

Tasting Beer is a great book. Gives you background on styles and helps teach you how to tastes beer like a beer reviewer/judge.

 

Oxford Compendium from Garrett Oliver, while many have criticized it, is still a great book, easy to read and full of fun facts

 

Lots of great books suggested above. The relatively new Oxford Companion to Beer has a great balance between scholarly material and more informal cultural stuff.

Also don't forget that a great introduction to some basic elements of different styles is right here on the site: http://beeradvocate.com/beer/style

 

I just received Tasting Beer by Mosher from Amazon yesterday. Great book, kept me up late because it was so full of great beer info.

 

My mother in law got me the oxford companion to beer for Christmas and it is the most amazing book ever created, the bible don't have shit on this book.

 

Good beer guides, Camra books, amber, gold and black and others written by Martyn Cornell. MJ of course.
Ronald Patterson has written MANY great books. and some are on kindle now!

tasting guides are Randy's book, and Garrett's book of course are the more modern day "guides".

Lots of history on the web of course...

That all said NOTHING you read is going to really make you understand beer, drinking it does that!

 

Everyone has covered the big ones. I really like any of the Pete Brown books for understanding beer culture and history. Hops and Glory is a nice one about the IPA. He writes in a casual entertaining style.

 

Beer for dummies 101?

 

All great suggestions. I'd only add that the best path to understanding beers is drinking beers... lots of different beers... and also brewing them if that's something you're interested in. But by all means, read as much as you can about it as well.

 

For general beer knowledge I definitely second the Oxford Companion.

For homebrewing novices, there's a cool little book called Beer Craft. It focuses on brewing one gallon all-grain batches, which is great if you're new to the game and want to experiment. Messing up one gallon is much easier to handle than messing up five. And of course the Papazian & Palmer books are must-reads for aspiring homebrewers.

 

+1 Tasting Beer
+1 Oxford Companion

 

Brewing classic styles is definitely geared towards brewing but it certainly outlines the styles fairly well.

Although I will say I like it more as a reference book....