Oxford Companion To... (Hardcover) The Oxford Companion to Beer, (Hardcover)

The most essential beer book you can buy . . . You open a page at random and you start reading, and you lose yourself in trivia, history, and bits of brewing science you always wanted to know but never got round to asking . . . Just about everything any sane person could want to know about beer is in this book . . . if you write about beer, study it or brew it, you simply cannot do without this book" --Pete Brown's Beer Blog "[T]he largest amount of knowledge about beer ever assembled in one book." --Huffington Post "The rise of craft beer has meant a lot of happy developments for beer lovers -- more quality breweries, more great bars and, lately, lots of interesting books. Among the most ambitious beer books is The Oxford Companion to Beer." --Chicago Tribune "[T]he volume is encyclopedic in both scope and detail, and though I've spent hours looking through it, I've barely made a dent. What I have read, though, has been consistently fascinating." --Chicago Reader "If ever you were in need of knowing every single fact there is to know about beer, this is apparently where to find it." --TotalBeerEnlightenment.com "A book every beer lover must have . . . This is the new beer bible: the Encyclopedia Beertanica . . . You must have this book. It is magnificent. Whether you are an aspiring beer geek, an avid home brewer, or a professional brewer, you must have this book. It is the beer book." --Washington Beer Blog "[A]ll sorts of fascinating beer-related facts have been poured into this 920-page everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know beauty of a book that has the answer for everything . . . In all sincerity, the book is terrific. It looks good, thanks in part to 16 pages of beautiful color photographs and hundreds of tasteful black-and-white images. It's got the heft you'd expect from a $65 scholarly tome. And it covers all the bases-from the variety of agricultural commodities that go into beer to the vast number of ways it can be brewed, with each method imparting its own taste and texture." --Fortune.com "Now, beer's faithful have their bible. The Oxford Companion to Beer, a formidable 920-page volume, chronicles the drink's history, from its birth more than 5,000 years ago in the grasslands of ancient Iraq to the modern craft-beer movement." --Globe and Mail "[T]he only book you will ever have to read, from this point on, to survive. The Oxford Companion to Beer is your new BFF." --USAToday.com "The Oxford Companion to Beer joins the drink-book canon as perhaps the most important tome on the subject. Why? Because it offers serious scholarship on everything from the details of the German hop industry to the controversy of California's 'steam beer' designation . . . a remarkable work. Even if you think beer is better drunk than contemplated, you'll find yourself cross-referencing this into the wee hours." --San Francisco Chronicle "Garrett Oliver has become widely acknowledged as an expert not only in making beer, but in tasting it, pairing it, and talking about it."--New York Times "[E]ncyclopedic in scope . . . In putting together the 'Oxford Companion' now, Mr. Oliver has captured the blossoming of a global beer culture at a thriving moment. . . . [A] definitive resource not just for beer enthusiasts but for amateur brewers, professional brewers and the thousands of restaurants that serve great beers but are staffed by people who may know little about them. . . . The 'Oxford Companion' is simply a wonderful resource for what, even when it's complex, unusual, unfamiliar or strikingly different, is still just beer, regardless of how it is dressed up." --Eric Asimov, The New York Times "The Oxford Companion to Beer [is] an unprecedented compendium that encompasses global hops history, new-wave brewing techniques and anything else you could possibly want to know about the world's most popular alcoholic beverage." --Time Out New York