Craft Beer for the People

Front cover

What with work, the pub, and homebrewing, I haven't managed to do any writing this week. So here is a little book review that I wrote a while back, and has been waiting to get published.

I had heard about Craft Beer for the People somewhere during the autumn so it was one of the first books that I looked for when I got my Christmas book vouchers. 

On the whole I like BrewDog beers, although I can't claim to be a major BrewDog fan. According to Untappd I have drunk 17 of their 206 beers to date and there have only been two of them that I haven't been particularly keen on. I also like to check out their bars whenever I get a chance, not that that happens terribly often. 

The book is a well presented hardback running to 240 pages. There are lots of photos throughout, many of them full page, and the text is generously bordered, giving this rather the feel of a coffee table book.

Coffee table style

The contents of the book are very wide ranging; so much so that it really isn't possible to summarise without giving a massively long list. In fact the range is so great that I'm not entirely sure who the book is aimed at. The craft beer novice might appreciate "What is craft beer?" but probably isn't likely to use the 20 all grain homebrew recipes.

Perhaps it is no surprise that there is quite a lot of BrewDog promotion spread through the book. However, there are also plenty of references to other well known craft breweries and beers.

Advertorial

As a homebrewer, I was naturally interested in the recipes. The ten BrewDog recipes are all in the free PDF DIYDog, which I had already downloaded last year and have used several times already. As well as these though, there were another ten homebrew recipes from other breweries; I have recently brewed up the recipe given for Magic Rock's Dark Arts. Although I haven't done a side by side taste comparison, I think that I can honestly say that my homebrew version is certainly a very decent stout.

HomeBrewDog

Another significant section of the book is a review of a variety of beer styles with suggested examples. This has been a feature of a few other books that I have read recently, as has the section on food pairing which comes towards the end of the book.

Overall this is a very stylish book, which should be no surprise at all, but it is also a book with a good deal of substance, which I imagine I will be dipping into from time to time.