resources/BEER BOOKS
There are hundreds of books about beer. Here are the ones we own and find very informative and useful.
Homebrew
- Brew Ware: How to find, adapt and build homebrewing equipment
KARL F. LUTZEN and MARK STEVENS (Storey Publishing) >see the cover - If you've ever wanted to build your own brewery at home, then this book is for you. It tells where to get the bits and pieces and describes in detail how to modify and assemble them into your very own brewery. Even if you don't intend to build a brewery, Karl and Mark offer useful tips for the less-dedicated brewer, including designs for equipment that will make brewing quicker, easier or less messy. The book is American.
- Brew Your Own Real Ale at Home
GRAHAM WHEELER and ROGER PROTZ (CAMRA Books) - Make your own Guinness? Surely not! This book is aptly described as “a treasure chest for all real ale fans and bomebrew enthusiasts”. With it, you can do just what the title suggests, with 100 recipes for some of your favorite ales. In many cases, the respective brewery has released the recipe for their brew, or revealed what ingredients go into it. As well as Guinness, discover the recipes for Bass Pale Ale, Boddington's Bitter, Beamish Irish Stout, Eldridge Pope's 12.8 per cent alchol Thomas Hardy's Ale and scores of other fantastic beers. Unfortunately, many of the hops and some of the ingredients in the recipes are not widely available outside Britain.
The first 43 pages of this book are an essentially an abridged version of Home Brewing: The CAMRA Guide, so if you don't want to read 227 pages of small type just yet, try this book first. - The Complete Guide to Home Brewing in Australia
LAURIE STRACHAN (Simon and Schuster) - From the basic to the advanced, this book covers it all, although not in great depth. For the novice homebrewer this is fine, but when you progress, possibly to mash brews, you'll probably yearn for more information than this book offers. It is full of recipes, and all the ingredients are available in Australia.
- Home Brewing: The CAMRA Guide
GRAHAM WHEELER (CAMRA Books) - This is a must-read for the serious homebrewer. It goes into immense detail about not just the methods of homebrewing, but the science behind good beer. Topics covered include the way yeast works, how barley becomes beer, how to use different hops and working out how bitter your brew will be. Also, find out about some of the more advanced equipment that will make brewing easier.
From your first brew to the most advanced methods (including smoking your own malt), this book is an essential. There is also an extensive chapter on “ale-ments” from which your beer can suffer.
While Graham Wheeler concentrates on British ales, there is also information about lagers, and some recipes.
Beer
- Beer
MICHAEL JACKSON (Dorling Kindersley) >see the cover - The picture-book version of Beer Companion. There are fewer words, possibly fewer beers (450) and the pictures are much bigger. Every beer gets a color picture and a brief description. The first part of the book sets out many of the world's great beer styles, and classic examples of them. The second section is dedicated to choosing beers to eat with food (or is that food to eat with beer?). It will make you very hungry and very, very thirsty.
- The Breweries of Australia: A History
KEITH M DEUTSHER (Lothian) >see the cover - What a book! Keith Deutsher is a maniac. He has compiled this book of every (yes, every) brewery ever to produce beer in Australia. He records all the facts about each brewery; brewers' trials and tribulations, and failures and successes; how takeovers unfolded; humorous anecdotes; the battle with the temperance movement; and the recent boom in boutique breweries.
Deutscher has a long and grand association with beer. He used to work in the manufacture of six-ring beer can carriers. What a noble profession. More recently he has turned his efforts to collecting beer labels from Australian breweries and researching this book.
When Geoff saw this book he came to a shocking realisation. “Olly,” he said, “there are people who love beer more than us.” Shocking, yes, but perhaps true.
Some have criticised this book because it devotes more space to breweries that, for instance, may have operated for only several years in the early 1900s while other breweries, such as the family-owned Cooper's in Adelaide, which has operated since 1862, has just a couple of paragraphs. There is plenty of information out there about Cooper's, Foster's and Tooheys, but Deutsher has documented many long-closed and long-forgotten breweries. Without him, such information would have remained in the archives of government departments and newspapers. He should be commended. - The Complete Guide To Beer
BRIAN GLOVER (Anness Publishing Limited, London, 1997, 1999) >see the cover - This is the best “beer guide” that this reviewer has ever seen. It is in a glossy, large paperback style, but (with all due respect to Saint Michael Jackson) this book is all info and no padding. The bulk of this book is a world tour of beer. What makes it stand out is not only the enormous breadth and wealth of information, but the concise and objective presentation of the subject matter. For instance, of Red Stripe, the author writes, “A pale-gold, lightly hopped, strong lager (4.7%) with a full flavour, from the Desnoes & Geddes in Kingston, Jamaica. It is now brewed under licence in the UK, where it is a particular favorite with the West Indian population.” Highly recommended as an indispensable source work.
- Great Beer Guide
MICHAEL JACKSON (Dorling Kindersley, London, 2000) >see the cover - An A-Z of world beers. This is a beautifully presented, glossy, large paperback guide to 500 beers. It's in a beer-to-a-page format and features excellent photos of the bottle and the poured beer. A bit light on for content, this is perhaps the “Colour Climax” of beer books. Except that the text is not in three different languages. Not that I know anything about such publications …
- Jolly Good Ale and Old
ALISON PAINTER (LeighSet Design, Adelaide, 1998) >see the cover - The history of Cooper's, the best (in the opinion of this humble reviewer) commercial brewer in Australia. Impeccably researched, only slightly propaganda-ish (one could be mistaken for concluding that Satan himself was responsible for taxes on beer) and very detailed, this is an Aussie Beer Bible. The Book of Thos. Cooper. Thanks be to Thos. Get it.
Even if you never read it, this book will:
- a) raise the standard of your home.
- b) ward off evil CUB spirits.
- c) increase your level of intelligence by osmosis if by no other process.
- CAMRA Good Beer Guide
Edited by ROGER PROTZ (CAMRA Books) >see the 2001 cover >see the 2000 cover - If you're planning a trip to Britain, this book is essential. It's more than a book about beer; there's detailed information on every pub in the country serving cask-conditioned ale and the battle for Britain's beer. Every brewery is listed, and Belgian bars and real ale in the United States are also discussed.
- Michael Jackson's Beer Companion
MICHAEL JACKSON (Mitchell Beazley) >see the UK cover >see the international cover - Michael Jackson is the Beer Hunter, and this is one of his best works. In it, he amazes with his knowledge of the world's beers, and the information he's elicited from brewers. He goes into great detail about many of the beers discussed, including color, bitterness, original gravity, alcohol content and what type of malt and hops are used. Many people wouldn't have heard of most of the brews he's hunted down and given a huge wrap to. It's a shame more of them aren't widely available. Not enough people have tried many of the 41 varieties of beer he identifies, such as smoked beer, steam beer, imperial stout, Belgian saison, lambics or Berliner Weisse wheat beer.
- The New Guide to Beer
BRIAN GLOVER (Hermes House) - This is a similar format to Michael Jackson's Beer, but arranged into a “world tour” of 500 beers from more than 50 countries. It's a great reference book. Like Beer it doesn't delve too deeply into the character of each brew.
- The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Beer
ROGER PROTZ (The Book Company International, Sydney, 1995) >see the cover - A bloody good read. Protz is an active member of CAMRA, the international Campaign for Real Ale. While some sections of the book are obviously dated, and in some cases out of date, the historical material is compelling. The chapters on food, culture and history are particularly good, and the author scatters boxes of literary quotes, statistics and the like throughout the text to make this the sort of volume that one can pick up and open at any page and find some really interesting facts. Just don't rely on it if you are in Melbourne and looking for a good place to get a beer.
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