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Tasting Beer: An Insider's Guide to the World's Greatest Drink |  | Author: Randy Mosher
Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
List Price: $16.95
Buy New: $9.54
as of 3/19/2010 07:40 CDT details
You Save: $7.41 (44%)
New (31) Used (13) from $7.49
Seller: a1books
Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 4173
Media: Paperback
Edition: Original
Pages: 248
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.9 x 0.8
ISBN: 1603420894
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.23
EAN: 9781603420891
ASIN: 1603420894
Publication Date: February 11, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9781603420891 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Product Description
Beer. It's the most popular drink in the world. Enjoyed at ballparks, in home-away-from-home pubs, on the family room sofa, and in every kind of restaurant, beer is at ease in any setting. For all beer lovers who have known the pleasure of draining a pint, Randy Mosher explores and explains the complete tasting experience as it applies to all the wonderful brews of the world.
Beer may be the common beverage of the people, but it is far from simple. With 10,000 years of history, more than 900 identified flavors, dozens of styles, and thousands of breweries around the world, beer is as complex as its grape-based neighbors in the liquor stores. It is an artistic creation, brewed from dozens of possible ingredients and processed in hundreds of different ways. Mosher guides readers to a better understanding of how every batch of beer is affected by each of the brewmaster's choices — recipe formulation, brewhouse procedures, yeasts, fermentations, carbonation, filtration, packaging, and much more.
Beer can be light, dark, mild, strong, flat, or fizzy. Hundreds of tastes can be detected in beer, from resin to toast, and from apple to smoke. Readers will learn how to identify the scents, colors, flavors, and mouth-feel of all the major beer styles. There are also chapters on proper serving and storage conditions, and classic beer and food pairings.
The second half of the book is a style-by-style compendium of the different brews within major beer families, including American craft brews, British lagers, German ales, and Belgian Dubbels. For each style there are historical and regional facts, taste and aroma characteristics, seasonal availability, food pairings, and a few terrific recommendations for readers to sample.
From the back cover:
Everybody knows how to drink beer, but few know how to really taste it. Tasting Beer is a lively exploration of the culture, chemistry, and creativity that make craft beers so wonderfully complex. Heighten your enjoyment of every glass with an understanding of the finer points of brewing, serving, tasting, and food pairing.
Praise:
"A radical passion for brews." —Bob Townsend, Atlanta Constitutional-Journal
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 8
Beer Tasting! Great Book! February 11, 2010
Dixie L. Edwards (Kalamazoo, Michigan)
This is a great book for those who enjoy making beer, as well as those who just enjoy drinking different beers. I have been experimenting with making different kinds of beer and this book has been a a real help to me in defining my preferences.
A Must-Have for Current or Aspiring Beer Geeks November 23, 2009
Terry Sunday (El Paso, Texas United States)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Before I review Randy Mosher's "Tasting Beer: An Insider's Guide to the World's Greatest Drink," let me give you a few calibration points so you can decide whether to take my opinions seriously or not. I definitely qualify as a serious beer geek. My travels around the U.S. always involve visits to brewpubs. I'll drive hundreds of miles out of my way to have a good craft brew, and I attend as many beer festivals each year as I possibly can. My favorite beers are Imperial stouts, barleywines and Imperial I.P.A.s, such as Alesmith's Speedway, Stone's Old Guardian and Moylan's Hopsickle (among many others). I enjoy the occasional Belgian (the funkier the better), and I consider Fat Tire to be an overly hyped "training-wheels beer" for people who don't know any better. I wouldn't drink a Bud, Coors or Miller if I were dying of thirst, and (yes, it's true) I tend to be a little snobbish toward people who are unwilling to expand their beer tastes beyond the Big Three. So, with that said, what did I think of "Tasting Beer?"
Well, there's a remarkable amount of information in its 247 pages, all of it presented in a very nicely integrated text-and-picture form. No matter what aspect of beer culture you're interested in, you'll find it covered to a useful level of detail in "Tasting Beer." Do you want to know more about the history of beer? It's in there, from 10,000 years BCE to the present, in a fascinating 22-page section. Do you want to improve your abilities to taste beer, and to accurately describe its qualities and complexity? It's in there--you'll learn how to distinguish 25 common flavors such as diacetyl, isoamyl acetate and fusels, and whether they're desirable or not. Are you interested in becoming more sophisticated in pairing beer with food? It's in there, both general guidelines and specific recommendations. Do you want to bone up on the bewildering variety of beer styles available? They're all in there, from the lightest adjunct lagers to Imperial stouts. Each style is described and characterized in great detail, including suggestions for which beers you should try that best represent the styles. There's a whole chapter on the modern American craft beer movement and its new styles such as wet-hopped ales, ultra-strong beers and other experimental types. I found the charts showing beer color, strength, etc., as a function of style to be especially interesting and useful, although all of the graphics and figures are exceptionally well done.
"Tasting Beer" is the best single volume of beer lore that I've read in many years. It is so good that a few of my other older beer books became redundant and have now found their way into the public library donation box. There should still be a place in the beer lover's inventory for such books as Roger Protz's "The Ale Trail" and Garrett Oliver's "The Brewmaster's Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real Food." But if you own only one beer book, "Tasting Beer: An Insider's Guide to the World's Greatest Drink," should be it. Cheers!
Great book August 28, 2009
bbj712 (TN)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is a great book for any beer lover whether you are going to be a beer judge or not. Mosher goes through history, tips, and loads of information on beer and tasting. The book begins with a very brief history of beer and moves pretty quickly into the aspects of tasting. Mosher uses the most up to date information (apparently we can taste 6 types of flavor rather than the main 4 that we were all taught in elementary school - and the old locations on the tongue were incorrect) to educate and teach the reader as well as to enhance the experience of tasting in general. The final section of the book looks through the different styles and what to look for in each one. Overall a great resource for any beer lover.
A Complex, Full-Bodied Education on America's Frothiest Beverage: Beer July 27, 2009
Sacramento Book Review (Sacramento, CA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
As complex as a full-bodied ale, //Tasting Beer// reveals the depth and versatility of this ancient brew. Author Randy Mosher provides an in-depth history of beer, the scientific reaction our bodies have to taste, sight, and smell, and notes on beer vocabulary (which includes words other than "cheers!"). It must be noted that this is a richly educational book, and passive enthusiasts need not approach it. Mosher wants his reader to gain a deeper appreciation of the brewing process, the differences between pale ales and lagers, in which glass to serve your frothy beverage, and how regions of the world from America to Belgium are crafting unique varieties. Mosher even grants you permission to send a beer back--and you'll learn why. Beyond popping open the bottle at a pizza parlor, you'll learn about pairing beer with food and how to make the most of a beer festival. Once hooked (as if you weren't already), you'll learn how you can continue to expand your beer appreciation through beer forums, home brewing, and more books about beer. Most true beer lovers understand this is a complex beverage. If you want to know why, dive into this satisfying book--and make sure to do so with a cold one in your hand!
Reviewed by
Amber K. Stott
 Very Recomendable Overview of Beer's Diversity and History June 18, 2009
Daniel Lobo (Washington, DC More often than not.)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
Tasting Beer is a good all around introduction to the history, diversity, and enriching ways to explore beer.
While it might be useful to share with beer novices and help break quite a few stereotypes and misunderstanding, it is also a nice volume for beer aficionados with plenty of advice and insightful background.
If anything the book might suffer from some top-down style narrative. Mosher tries hard to be amicable and casual, and more often than not does it well, but his occasional cheekiness sometimes can have a patronizing undertone. And while certainly this is a book that emcompasses a broad Western global perspective of beer, he slips a few times adressing exclusively a US readership, which for obvious reasons I find limiting and unnecessary.
And yet, these flaws remain in the background of what is a quite recommendable book. While I am just a small aficionado, he supported and expanded those things that I felt comfortable in knowing already, and excited the senses to explore quite a few that I did not know about, or did not know at that level of detail.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 8
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