Eyewitness Companion: Beer

Back on my birthday, my friend Tommy gave me a book.  This was surprising because Tommy is not much of a beer drinker and happened to grab a book where the late Michael Jackson was the Editor-in Chief.  I immediately began reading the book and have recently finished it.  Here is my review of Eyewitness Companion: Beer. 

First impressions of the book are that it is high quality paperback with great pictures and in a nice compact design, perfect for a backpack while on vacation.  The book comes in at just under 300 pages but given the small size, is a very quick read.

There are essentially two part to this book.  This first part is a history of beer.  This includes just about everything you’d ever need to know about beer.  This takes up only 69 pages, so while it covers all topics, it doesn’t go into great depth on anything.  If you homebrew, much of the information is probably old to you, but the history tied to specific styles and regions could prove to be interesting.

The second part of the book is more like a beer phone book than anything.  Breweries are broken down into “Great Brewing Nations” and it encompasses the globe.  Each nation or region
is given a brief description then all the breweries are listed alphabetically with a quick decription and a couple of lines on some of their more popular brews.  I was a little disappointed in this section at times.  I find it amazing that Michael Jackson publications never list Anderson Valley Brewing Co. and found some popular and commonly found brews were left out of their breweries list.  That being said, it’s fun to simply flip to a random page and find out about an obscure beer from a distant land.

This is a handy book to have for someone learning to love great beer.  For someone who has brewed beer and tried a great deal of beers, this might not contain much new information, but the list of breweries by region is hard to pass up.  My only wish is that the writers would be a little more critical in their descriptions of individual brews.