Product Description

The world's 500 best beers!

Which beers are the best? Get the inside stories on Czech pilseners, German lagers, Belgian wheat beers and Trappist brews, classic British ales, Irish stouts, and American microbrews. The shelves of the supermarkets are packed with an every-changing array of beers from around the world. Bars, pubs, restaurants, and clubs stock an ever-greater range. Which will suit your tastes? Which is the beer for the moment? Will this beer be light, crisp, and refreshing; this one sweet, that one dry and bitter? TV Beer Hunter Michael Jackson has tasted them all. He describes the flavor and body of each beer, explains why beers taste the way they do, notes their strength and ideal serving temperature. Spot the best beers with aid of superbly shot photographs, each showing the bottle, label, and the properly poured beer in its ideal glass. Never before has beer looked so beautiful.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #66273 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

Customer Reviews

A great all around book for beer tasting aficianados
If you love to read about, and taste, gourmet beer, then chalk this book up as a must-have.

Michael "The Beer Hunter" Jackson (not to be confused with the glove-wearing pop singer of the same name) is (as of this writing) the most well known beer writer in the world.

In his book, TBH (the beer hunter) tours all the major beer producing regions of the globe, and discusses many of their most well known and widely selling offerings. It's a great book to learn about the names and styles of beer from around the globe, and there are lots of spiffy full color pictures and some fairly decent tasting notes.

TBH's books do have minor flaws - the only one worth mentioning (not that it matters to most laypersons) is that MJ is a just a beer aficianado and a paid guest speaker ... he's NOT a brewer. Homebrewers who buy his books in order to learn more about how to make the beers they read about in his books are bound to be disappointed, because MJ often omits the sort of details that brewing geeks like me obsess over ... such as which beers use which hops and (in general) which types of specialty grains; the fact that the secret ingredient of Anchor Brewing's "Old Foghorn" Barleywine is Maple Syrup; and that Mackesson Triple Stout gets it's slightly burnt backnote from slightly scorched brewer's caramel. Such information exists, but you have to hunt around elsewhere for it ... a good starting place is the "Classic Beer Style Series" (IBDoF linkage pending).

Bottom line: This is a great all around book for beer lovers.

Rather out of date
I bought this book because I was just getting into craft beer and I wanted to gain a better understanding of the different types of beers and their history. This book, however, is really just a directory of beers with pictures and short descriptions. If the beer you are drinking is in the book, then it's nice to read up on the beer. It's especially good for European beers. However, its selection of American craft beers leaves a lot to be desired and passes over tons of the best American craft beers -- even those with wide distribution.

It's a decent book to have in the library, but I probably would not buy it again. If I had previewed it in a book store I would have passed.

Not useful
Compared with other similar books that help readers understand and select products (e.g. wine, cheese, etc) this book about beers is not helpful at all. I could not use it for the main purpose I had bought it: to help me select beers when I go to a liquor store. Most of the beers featured in the book are absent from the US market (or too hard to find).
I don't think it is a useful book, at least not for me.