Tasting Beer: An Insider's Guide to the World's Greatest Drink

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. nearly always involve visits to brewpubs. I'll drive hundreds of miles out of my way to have a pint of 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 couldn't choke down 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!

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.

This is a review for Tasting Beer: An Insider's Guide... by Randy Mosher.I purchased this book when I worked for a large macro-brewer in order to pass the Cicerone tests. This book is an absolute technical guide on how to understand and enjoy all kinds of beers. It has colorful commentary and excellent resources to help you understanding this delicious drink.For all you wondering about how hard the Cicerone Test is, I passed the Cicerone Beer Server test with flying colors. It is time based and multiple choice. Questions will bounce around from ingredients, process oriented, taste, smell, draft system technique, and situational. If you have the access to pre-tests, take the pre-test about 10 times. Just keeping doing it over and over and over again, you will see questions if not the same, VERY similiar and you will know how to answer them.Comment if you have any questions.

A lot of great info that covers the past, present and future of the beer world. I especially enjoyed the chapters on how to truly experience your beer through tastes and aromas. If you were to read it cover to cover, you'd be set, the book flows very well.However, we were assigned random chapters in our class so the information wasn't always included in the assigned chapters. By that I mean, if we were assigned chapters 3-4, well chapter 3 is a continuation of chapter 2, so you would start out not knowing terms because were explained/described back in chapter 2. I know its not a "textbook" but had someone left a comment like mine, i would of been better prepared.

I actually do like this book quite a lot. It is well written, with lots of information. I do love the quotes he brings into the book, and this liven it up quite a lot.While I am not a beer expert, I wonder if the USA is a beer heaven, as he claims. Possibly, yes. The march of tasteless beers due to steady commercialisation is inevitable.Some of the technical aspects went over my head, and this is the only reason I give it four stars instead of five.All in all, a really enjoyable book

If a person is already into beer and beer culture this book treads familiar ground. A good portion of the lessons Randy Mosher hands down are reasonable and can certainly be learned by simple trial and error or basic knowledge of food theory (as was the case with the pairing chapter).The history of beer is fascinating and having a fun and simple overview is nice to have.The chapters on tasting and the chapters on the various styles were well worth the price of admission. The simple breakdowns of various flavors that can be found in beer as well as the nice little breakdowns of various styles with example beers to try in a tremendous resource for someone blindly walking through the world beyond macro-lagers.All in all a good book.

Livro esmiúça os pormenores do processo de fazer cerveja. Longe de ser um guia definitivo é uma ótima fonte para quem está começando ou já fez algumas brassagens e quer começar a fazer cervejas melhores. Linguagem simples mesmo para quem não é proficiente em inglês. Basta saber o básico e mais o jargão do maravilhoso mundo cervejeiro.

La impresion es de muy buena calidad y El autor explica todo muy bien además de ser un gran conocedor de cerveza.

Livro excelente do papa das cervejas, realmente Vale a pena. Ele descreve toda a história da cerveja desde sua longínqua "invenção" a mais de 5000 anos e vem remontando toda a história até os dias atuais.

A cumplido todas mis expectativas al comprarlo. Este libro me ha abierto un nuevo panorama del mundo cervecero. ¡Recomendado completamente!

Livro usado, mas muito bom. Vendendor entregou rápido, antes do prazo e um produto muito bem cuidado, limpo e completo