Wild Brews: Culture and Craftsmanship in the Belgian Tradition Author: Visit Amazon's Jeff Sparrow Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0937381861 | Format: EPUB
Wild Brews: Culture and Craftsmanship in the Belgian Tradition Description
- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Brewers Publications; 1ST edition (May 25, 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0937381861
- ISBN-13: 978-0937381861
- Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
- Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
I've noticed that most beer books on Amazon have almost all 5 star reviews. This makes sense in some ways, since everyone loves beer and there aren't many brewing books - so we really appreciate the people that take the time to write these books!
But I do think that some beer books can be better than others, and don't always deserve an automatic 5 stars. This one was a disappointment for me.
It's a very dry read - it's a struggle to get through cover to cover. You'd think beer would be an easy topic to make for exciting and animated literature, but the author in this case has a very dry, biographical writing style. When I compare this book to The Brewmaster's Table with Garrett Oliver's animated writing style and constant humor, it's like night and day. And it's not only that book - compared to Brew Like a Monk, this is a very difficult book to get through.
I realize wild brews are a difficult topic, but that doesn't mean that useful information cannot be delivered in an expedient fashion - I learned more of value from the Brewing Network's three radio podcasts on lambics + Flanders ales than I did from this book.
The first half of the book contains very detailed histories of various traditional Belgian breweries and their wild ale processes. These are useful if you want to study up on specific beers I suppose, but not very useful if you want to learn general techniques with wild ales - the author even says himself that it's somewhat pointless to try to clone classic Belgian wild ales because there's so much random variation.
Also, it really could have used a good editor to give it better organizational structure. It just jumps around all over the place constantly.
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