The Little Black Book Of Beer: The Essential Guide to the Beloved Brewski

by Ruth Cullen, Ruth Cullen

This ''Essential Guide to the Beloved Brewski'' provides a world of beer knowledge at your fingertips! The perfect gift book for your favorite beer connoisseur!

Genres: Reference, Food and Drink

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

So while spending a lot of time home during the 2020 lost year and cooking at home a lot, we decided it was time to review what cookbooks were on the shelves. It was time to see if there was something we wanted to make out of these books, or if they were unjustly taking up space and energy from better books. If we couldn’t see ourselves using the books, then we determined whether or not we would want to pass these along to someone who might.

This has the form factor of a pocket notebook with an elastic band to keep it closed. After fifteen years, the elastic is not in terribly good shape. It doesn’t have room for taking notes, so the form factor is just for kitsch value, and the dying elastic band reduces its desirable lifespan. Also, makes it really hard to put this in the recycle bin with all the mixed media in its construction - plasticy cover, elastic band, spiral binding, and the heavy stock paper.

It’s cute and full of beer positivity. However, it shows its age from the beginning of the craft brewery boom. And for such a slender volume, were they really hurting for content that they needed to cover beer styles twice in slightly different fashions?

Finally, I really question the use of the illustration of a beer bong at the beginning of the section on young folks furthering their education on beer styles. Those are only used for cheap garbage beers whose sole purpose is to get tanked for a low cost. I’m not sure that celebration of binge culture is really a worthy goal.

[Olivia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This kitchy card store book about everything beer, infused with pop culture references, is entertaining and surprisingly well-written, if not half-pint sized, and somewhat A.D.D. in topic span. The Little Black Book of Beer, one in a new marketing pretty, leather, black book series, fits in your pocket and can add cool talking points for a bartender, college binger, or any beer fan. The book includes a listing in the back of the quality characteristics of the many different brews and how to pair them with food.

"Beer is probably the most dispensible thing ever known to man." p. 1 Beer's role in spirituality, nutrition, sex, medicine, and currency is briefly explored with neat little pictures and, suprisingly again, plenty of references and footnotes. Wicked Fun Fact: There are theories that nomads turned to agriculture because beer enabled early civilizations to not only preserve food for periods of time, in the form of beer cakes, but also to get more nutrition out of grains due to the fermentation process.

I actually used some of the many quotes from The Little Black Book for my Home Brew workshop! But I never spent the $13, just visited Copley Flair and took notes. It may be a good starter book, or make a nice giftoid, but if you want a more indepth look at beer I recommend "The Fermenting Revolution-How to Drink Beer and Save the World" by Christopher O-Brien--

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative and interesting.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A handy and easy to read book all about beer. Small enough to keep handy while shopping for a brew. Don't be fooled by it's size as it is packed with information about where beer comes from, styles and so on. Gives you a very broad picture about beers, styles and so on. Does it have every last detail about beer? No, but is a very good starting point to learn more about it.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pound-for-pound INDISPENSABLE!