Book Reviews

Brewing Made Easy, 2nd Edition: A Step-by-Step Guide to Making Beer at Home

Joe and Dennis Fisher

Reviewed by Published September 2013, Volume 34, Number 4 0 Comments | Post a Comment

Reviewed by Marty Nachel

Brewing Made Easy is a handy-dandy little guide to getting new brewers up and brewing quickly. By following this book’s easy-to-follow instructions, anyone can become a confident homebrewer in short order.

This is the second edition (the first edition dates to 1996). Both editions were written by Joe and Dennis Fisher. The brothers Fisher run an organic farm in Eastern Maine, and they also co-authored the popular The Homebrewer’s Garden: How to Easily Grow, Prepare, and Use Your Own Hops, Malts, Brewing Herbs (1998).

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Cheese & Beer

Janet Fletcher

Reviewed by John Holl Published July 2013, Volume 34, Number 3 0 Comments | Post a Comment

The remarkable relationship between beer and cheese is extolled by those in the know, but can often be overlooked in the shadow of wine. Thank goodness Janet Fletcher has arrived with her latest book Cheese & Beer to set things straight. Beautifully photographed and wonderfully written, the book takes you on a well-researched and mouthwatering tour of how the two interact on the palate, no matter the style of each.

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Shakespeare’s Pub

Pete Brown

Reviewed by Julie Johnson Published July 2013, Volume 34, Number 3 0 Comments | Post a Comment

The George Inn sits south of the River Thames near the foot of London Bridge. Its district, Southwark (for us Americans, ignore most of the letters and pronounce it “SUH-thk”), is now a part of London. But for most of its long history, it existed outside the gates, a bastion against invaders and the repository for all the commerce, vice and dissension Londoners wanted close at hand but not too close.

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The Audacity of Hops: The History of America’s Craft Beer Revolution

Tom Acitelli

Reviewed by Maureen Ogle Published May 2013, Volume 34, Number 2 1 Comment | Post a Comment

After I published my history of beer in America, the three questions readers asked me (over and over and over) were: “What’s your favorite beer?” “Why didn’t you spend more time on craft beer?” and “Are you going to write a history of craft beer?”

Thanks to Tom Acitelli, I can scratch number three off that list. He’s done the job and with verve, common sense and the requisite butt-in-the-chair hard work. (That last cannot be underestimated. Here’s an insider secret about books: Each one represents thousands upon thousands upon thousands of hours of work on the part of the author.)

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Brew Like a Pro: Make Pub-Style Draft Beer at Home

Dave Miller

Reviewed by Published May 2013, Volume 34, Number 2 0 Comments | Post a Comment

Reviewed by Marty Nachel

Ask those who started brewing their own beer at home back in the early ’90s who their go-to source of technical information was, and it’s likely they’ll point to Dave Miller. It was Dave Miller’s Homebrewing Guide that went on to become one of the most influential books on homebrewing ever published.

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The World Atlas of Beer

Tim Webb and Stephen Beaumont

Reviewed by Daniel Bradford Published March 2013, Volume 34, Number 1 0 Comments | Post a Comment

Unlike Michael Jackson’s legendary World Guide to Beer, which painted a portrait of beer at its lowest ebb, Tim Webb and Stephen Beaumont’s new World Atlas of Beer tours the vibrant global craft beer culture as it is today. Whereas the Guide called attention to the vanishing classic beer styles, the Atlas gathers together the raucous world of the emerging and expanding beer culture revolution.

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