{"id":2188,"date":"2009-10-24T16:39:21","date_gmt":"2009-10-24T22:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/?p=2188"},"modified":"2010-07-26T12:47:32","modified_gmt":"2010-07-26T18:47:32","slug":"book-review-worlds-best-beers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/book-review-worlds-best-beers\/","title":{"rendered":"Book review: World’s Best Beers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"World's<\/a>World’s Best Beers: One Thousand Craft Brews from Cask to Glass<\/a>\"\", which I mentioned earlier this week, is a coffee table book, weighing in at nearly three and a half pounds. Although it includes an introduction to beer up front, thus qualifying as novice friendly, and a beer-and-primer apparently required in all new beer books, most will look to the 176 pages that list (disclaimer: I haven’t counted them) 1,000 beers.<\/p>\n

A half dozen things to like about the book:<\/p>\n

– Author Ben McFarland writes about Zoigl<\/strong> from the Oberpfläz Wald. Only a paragraph but I’m not sure Zoigl is mentioned in another of the other (a few hundred) beer books I own.<\/p>\n

– He includes an essay on hops from Sean Franklin<\/strong> from Rooster’s Brewery in Yorkshire. Speaking of hops, more than two (oversized) pages about hop varieties.<\/strong><\/p>\n

– For descriptions like this for Empire IPA<\/strong> from the Burton Bridge Brewery: “A celebrated brewpub in the town of Burton-on-Trent, the spiritual home of British brewing and the engine room of the IPA boom years. It’s hoppy, and it knows it; clap your hands . . . , especially for the fruity, orange aroma from the late addition of Styrian hops.” <\/p>\n

– It has lists.<\/strong> Love ’em or hate ’em they make good conversation starters. For instance, four of the five top five beers from Germany are Bavarian but none is a hefeweiss or helles or dunkles. <\/p>\n

– Because he saves a little love for Achel 5 Blond,<\/strong> generally overlooked because it’s only 5% abv and sold only in the brewery cafe.<\/p>\n

– Two<\/em> beers from Kout na Šumave<\/strong> in the Czech Republic.<\/p>\n

I hope you’ve figured out this is no cookie-cutter book. In an email, McFarland wrote he knew up front that some would question his selection of beers. To be honest, I think the Central Time Zone (the U.S. obviously) is under-represented. That’s the nature of these books. They are worth your time when the beers are thoughtfully chosen.<\/p>\n

One reason to be disappointed:<\/p>\n

Not enough McFarland. Huh? This is a 288-page book. Indeed, but while “800 Craft Brews from Cask to Glass” doesn’t have the same ring to it I’d trade a couple hundred tasting notes for an essay or two. McFarland clearly has more to him than cleverly worded descriptions. That’s what I want more of.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/code><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

World’s Best Beers: One Thousand Craft Brews from Cask to Glass, which I mentioned earlier this week, is a coffee table book, weighing in at nearly three and a half pounds. Although it includes an introduction to beer up front, thus qualifying as novice friendly, and a beer-and-primer apparently required in all new beer books, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wTn-zi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2188"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4410,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2188\/revisions\/4410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}