Drinkology Beer: A Book About the Brew

by James Waller (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 352 pp., $22.50)

A good beer book will be filled with information. The best will also be filled with recommendations of tiny craft breweries. All cover some of the ins and outs of making beer, its history, and various styles. Luckily for those of us who aren’t master brewers, James Waller understands beer deeply enough to make complex concepts simple, like what IBUs are or processes of kraeusening or sparging. And while there are other books that make the complicated parts easy and also offer almost everything else that Drinkology Beer does, you almost never get a writer as entertaining as Waller, who is so gifted that he could probably make a textbook on plumbing a scintillating read. Drinkology Beer is not the ultimate beer book. That award still goes to Michael Jackson’s Great Beer Guide. But for any beer lover who takes delight in masterful writing, Waller’s book soars to the top of the must-have list.

This article appears in December 9 • 2011.

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Wes Marshall is the author of What's a Wine Lover To Do? (Artisan) and The Wine Roads of Texas (Maverick), as well as the Executive Producer of the PBS television series of the same name. Wes has written for The Austin Chronicle since 1999, covering wine, cocktails, food, and travel.