Product Description

Which beers are the best? Get the inside stories on Czech and German lagers, Belgian wheat beers and Trappists, classic British ales, Irish stouts and American micro brews. The shelves of the supermarkets are packed with an ever-changing array of beers from around the world. Bars restaurants clubs and pubs stock an ever-greater range. Which will suit your taste? Which is the beer for the moment? Will this beer be light crisp and refreshing; that one sweet that one dry bitter and appetizing? TV Beer Hunter[registered] Michael Jackson has tasted them all. He describes the flavor and body of each beer explains why beers taste the way they do, notes their strength and ideal serving temperature. Spot the best beers with the aid of superbly shot photographs showing the bottle label and the properly poured beer in the ideal glass. Never before has beer looked so beautiful.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #600146 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

About the Author
Michael Jackson is the world's best-selling beer writer. He's written numerous books on the subject and has won many awards, including 1999 Glenfiddich Drinks Writer of the Year. Michael is also a journalist, and writes regularly for publications including The Independent and Whisky magazine. He lives in London. Find out more at www.beerhunter.com/about.html

Customer Reviews

Excellent
I've been a fan for many years of both Mr. Jackson's beer and single-malt scotch books, and I own all three editions of his scotch book.

The single-malt whisky volumes especially taught me how to isolate and appreciate the different essences and flavors in a particular whisky. Having learned to pick out all the flavors Mr. Jackson mentioned, I was even after a while able to come up with new things on my own, a true testament to a fine teacher and connoisseur of whisky and spirits.

I also learned a lot about beer from this book. Jackson provides tasting notes and interesting historical details about the 500 beers in this book. The beers are listed in alphabetical order by brewer rather than by type or style of beer, but that makes them easier to just look up to find the beer you want to learn about.

For example, Jackson discusses the Schneider Weisse brewery wheat beer. This Bavarian distillery is the oldest one to have specialized only in producing wheat beers, going all the way back to 1607. I tried it as a result of Jackson's recommendation, and it really is superb. It's a heavier, more intense example of the wheat beer style, with lots of character and fruitiness, with clove, spicey, and pineapple-like flavors.

Partly as a result of this book, I was led to try other styles and beers that I might not have tasted. As a result I feel I'm much more electic in my beer tastes than I was before, and I like and have learned to appreciate many different pilsners, lagers, ales, stouts, bocks, and many of the Belgian brews--of which there are up to a dozen or more different types--because of Mr. Jackson's erudite writing. A good example of this is the sweet Belgian lambic beers, which are not to everyone's taste but which I am now fond of, in addition to the other less sweet types.

Overall, a great book to read and learn from by a great connoisseur.

a
I'm not sure anyone in the world has sampled more brews than Michael Jackson. No, not that Michael Jackson. This one is (from what I've been able to discern) the pre-eminent beer critic in the world.

"Great Beer Guide" covers several hundred beers from all over the world but avoids the "x number of stars" format and, in fact, doesn't offer a numerical rating at all. It's assumed that if the beer was good enough to make it into this guide that it qualifies at the top of it's class, whether it be a pilsner, lager, or ale, or even one of the exotics like a lambic or barleywine.

The biggest draw of this book for me was the layout. Each of the 500+ pages is occupied by a single beer, which is pictured in both it's bottle incarnation and also as a draft, giving you not just an idea of what the beer looks like but also the official glassware it's intended to be served in. Some of the more unusual glassware includes a beer from Oregon that is served in a pint glass with a half-log as it's base!

In addition to the pictures the text also tells you what type of beer it is, where it's from, the alcohol content by both volume and gravity, and finally a description of the beer itself (again, there is no effort made to play favorites, but if the description sounds up your alley it would be more than worth your time to track the beer down).

Alas, many of the beers listed in the book have limited distribution, so depending on where you live you'll probably only have access to a reasonably small percentage of these brews. Nonetheless, I was able to track down quite a few by special order that the local liquor stores would probably have never stocked of their own accord. And who knows? If you find yourself doing a lot of travelling you might just manage to cross all of these off your list sooner or later. But I doubt it.

MUST HAVE BOOK FOR TRUE BEER ENTHUSIASTS!
This book is a fantastic, eloquently edited edition which works well either on your coffee table or in your hand, while the other hand is holding a beer. Not for Generic Beer Drinkers ("lousy beer drinkers"), this volume is both educational and endlessly entertaining. It returns us to the real spirit of beer, and allows us reprieve from the "low carb beer" trend sweeping the land, at least in America. Hoist a glass, or many to this excellent book.