Beverages Books

I originally read the first edition of this book on his website for free. If you can't lay hands on this book, it's well worth it to get what information you can from this book at www.howtobrew.com.

However, if you're a budding zymurgist, or even if you've been brewing for a couple years, this book is well worth the piddly amount they're charging for it. It's saved my butt a couple of times when I've discovered I was low on a certain type of grain or on priming sugar.

Papazian is good, and there are several other books that are good to augment your library, but if you're going to get one book, I highly recommend this one.

Easy to read, informative....it'll help you brew some seriously tasty brews.

As someone who reads technical papers and blogs for a living, I found John Palmer's book to be very easy to read and extremely informative. After reading the book cover to cover, I still find myself going back to it as a "technical reference" book when I have questions about a process or approximation. This book breaks down (pun intended) the mashing process in a way that is both understandable in layman's terms with enough of the real technical process to help you really understand what is going on and why. Through this book I have enlightened many of my friends and coworkers to the joy and wonder of homebrewing.

This is undoubtedly the best single-volume resource for homebrewers. Whether you're just starting out with your first kit extract beer, or whether you're a relatively advanced all-grain brewer, this book is terrific. Lots of illustrated step by step guides to get you going on the right track, and innumerable and invaluable conversion charts, graphs, and other resources that you will return to again and again. Indispensible.

Being a rookie homebrewer, I found the book to be very helpful. It basically takes you through everything you need to know to brew your first batch, and it helps you improve it and understand what might have gone wrong.
I wouldn't recommend it as the first thing you read when starting up, as you need some basic knowledge in order to fully benefit from the book. But it's really helpful, especially once you've brewed a few batches.

Very simple to read. Has diagrams, pictures and simple to follow instructions. It even has sections ranging from beginner to expert brewer. I learned everything I needed to know about home brewing from this book.

Andrea Immer Robinson's Great Wine Made Simple (2005) succeeds brilliantly in making sense of the complex worlds of wine. I have read several introductions to wine, including Michael Broadbent's Michael Broadbent's Wine Tasting (Mitchell Beazley Wine Guides), Jancis Robinson's How to Taste: A Guide to Enjoying Wine, Mark Oldman's Oldman's Guide to Outsmarting Wine: 108 Ingenious Shortcuts to Navigate the World of Wine with Confidence and Style, and Kevin Zraly's Windows on the World Complete Wine Course: 2008 Edition (Windows on the World Complete Wine Course) and I recommend them all, but I learned the most from Andrea Robinson's book. Her original and easy-to-follow approach will greatly enhance the appreciation of wine for new and experienced wine drinkers alike.

There are dozens of wine grapes, but Robinson reduces this complexity by emphasizing the "Big Six." These are three white grapes (riesling, sauvignon blanc, chardonnay) and three red grapes (pinot noir, merlot/cabernet sauvignon, syrah or shiraz) that provide most of the world's quality wines. Each group of three is listed in ascending order of body style, i.e., light, medium, or full. She clarifies these styles by comparing their weight, richness, and thickness in the mouth to skim milk, whole milk, and cream. Robinson then lays out tasting sequences with easily available wines that show the distinctive quality and body of each grape. You quickly get an idea of the world's primary wine styles.

In the succeeding chapters on taste, Robinson recommends that you taste wines side by side in carefully chosen pairs that will highlight key tastes. This method is far superior to tasting one wine at a sitting. Wines can generate a seemingly infinite number of tastes and here Robinson simplifies things by concentrating on pairs of wine that exemplify the major style terms of dry, crisp, oaky, tannic, buttery, grassy, spicy, floral, and Old World vs. New World.

In another great innovation, Robinson introduces flavor maps of the wine world combining where grapes are grown with climates. The maps are a bit hard to read at first, but well worth the effort, because they help you predict what a wine will taste like once you know where it's from. For example, white grapes grown in cool climates may produce light bodied wines with apple or pear flavors while white grapes grown in warm climates may produce full bodied wines with pineapple or mango flavors. I found the flavor maps to be the most valuable part of the book, because they help you organize the world's wines into a system that explains why they taste the way they do.

The remainder of the book is more conventional in its approach, with surveys of French, Italian, American regions and so on followed by such topics as shopping for wine, wine and food, and wine gear. In these sections, Robinson continues to communicate key information about wine without oversimplifying.

I think Great Wine Made Simple does make a few missteps. A major omission is that only the briefest mention is made of serving temperatures. She does note that whites tend to be served too cold and reds too warm. Robinson's 2008 Wine Buying Guide for Everyone, which I also highly recommend, does a satisfactory job explaining how to serve various types of wine; but I like Andrew Oldman's general rule that white wines should be chilled for several hours and then removed 15 minutes before serving while reds should be refrigerated for 15 minutes before serving. Robinson could have said more about how to analyze the finish of a wine. Here I like the approach of her mentor, Kevin Zraly at Windows of the World in New York City, who describes what you should expect at fifteen second intervals in the minute or so after you have swallowed the wine.

Robinson occasionally criticizes other wine writers for being too technical. In part she does this because she feels that beginners will lose interest when confronted with overly technical prose, but this assumes that readers don't know how to select a basic introduction to wine as opposed to a more advanced book. Robinson's ideas easily stand on their own and are not strengthened by disparagement of those who write at a more detailed level or use specialized wine terminology.

To end, my criticisms are minor compared to Robinson's substantial achievement. She has assembled an impressive apparatus for appreciating wine. My wine knowledge increased by several orders of magnitude after having read her book, and I know I will be returning to it for years to come.

This is the first wine book that does exactly what it promises.....you will be able to read a wine bottle label in the store or wine list in the restaurant and know what you are buying and buy what you want. That is a great boon to all wine drinkers out there, the majority of whom didn't have wine training in finishing school or a butler/sommelier at home. I have always know what taste I like but now I know how to read the label to find the type of wine that I want. This book will serve the experienced drinker as well with a system of classifying wine into groups for organizing your wine celler and advice about making those all important pairings with food. This book makes a fantastic gift as well.

This book came in the mail very quickly and will make a great Xmas gift for my husband.

This is simply the best introduction to wine and winetasting that I have found. Many wine books get bogged down in minutiae, without telling you why it is significant. For example, they will spend three pages telling you about the soil and climate in a small region of say, France, without telling you how it affects the flavor and quality of the wine (i.e., why you should care). Somewhere in there will be a vague one sentence statement about how the wines taste "fruity" or "fresh." Andrea Immer's book actually concentrates on how to taste wine, using all your senses, and what specifically to look for in the color, nose, and flavor. She gives you a list of wines to taste, and through a series of tasting exercises you learn to recognize different flavors and aromas in wine. Her flavor map is an ingenious way to explain what flavors to expect from wines of the same grape grown in different climate zones, and it works! One heads up though, be prepared to drop some change on these tastings. Many of the tastings in the earlier chapters are affordable, but in the later chapters (read France and Italy), we found some of the wines to be cost prohibitive. While the earlier tastings are absolutely essential to getting the most out of the book, we chose to dispense with some of the later ones (Maybe some day I'll buy that $80.00 Barolo). My suggestion: Buy the book, do the tastings in the first five chapters, and learn a heck of a lot about wine.

If you have room for only one wine book, this is the book to own. Andrea Robinson nee Immer is a master sommelier who started out with Kevin Zraly at Windows on the World, and has become one of the great wine teachers in the world. I met her in 2001 at the Wine Expo in Boston, attended a wine tasting of Australian wines, and took her intensive three day course on wine at the French Culinary Institute last fall. My initial impressions still stand [from my wine diary]:

It was a joy to watch Andrea Immer in action and to discuss her book for a few minutes afterwards. Her approach to learning about wine is superb, and I recommend this book strongly to anyone, beginner or more advanced. Her enthusiasm and knowledge is infectious.

The approach works; Robinson has taught her approach to thousands of people -- restaurant guests, sommeliers, chefs, waiters, bartenders, in a wide variety of restaurants and bars. "The light goes on every time."

Check the Comments for a summary of Andrea's approach to learning about wine.

Along with most of the reviewers here, my wine-knowledgeable friends, to whom I gave this book as a wedding anniversary present, were extraordinarily pleased. They tell me that they learn something new from it every day, and that it has "everything about wine" within its covers.

I have been working in the wine industry for many years and I have never come across a more complete reference book. It is worth every cent.The Oxford Companion to Wine, 3rd Edition

The Oxford Companion to Wine is one of the best books about wine that I have seen.

Having a healthy interest in wine (don't drink too much most of the time) this answers so many of the questions that I've had over the years. It gives many of the expected details of different wine regions and wine classifications throughout the world in great detail. It also gives information on the winemaking process, the different varieties, how to consume wine (storage, tasting), qualities and faults in wine, famous personalities/labels in wine and wine history. All this with some beautiful fullpage photographs, maps and diagrams. Makes a great present and should be a mandatory accessory for anyone with a substantial wine collection.

While I've found the book book very informative and helpful, pages 601-624 are missing. I guess I shouldn't complain though, since I have pages 625-648 twice. Has anyone else noticed this in their 3rd edition? I can't believe mine is the only copy where this mistake has occurred.

great drink recepies in this book. i love the binder. all books should be bound this way. bring your reading glasses as the writing is fairly small.

This book is a must-have for all professional bartenders. For non-professionals it is a must-read because you will learn a lot!

Lots of drink recipes, and it's fun to flip through it and find something new to try.

The Bartender's Black Book, Eighth Edition: 2,800 New and Classic Recipes I am very satisfied. The shipping was fast and the book was in excellent condition. Thank you.

This is a very good drinks book with lot of drinks, and listed by types of drinks eg if you got a bottle of vodka you can fine about 50 drinks that can be made from that single bottle with the exception of a few other ingredients that have to be bought. The only down side there isn't any pictures to see how the drinks should look.

Love this! For wine there is no better tome to make you feel like you know what you're talking about. Mark Oldman is brilliant, very funny and entertaining...and iconoclastic and ironic. The book is SO WELL PACED. Before starting it, I would say I was about a 2 in knowing about wine...now I feel like I'm at 7 or 8.

If you're serious about learning about wine, Oldman's Guide is "the" book. The author's writing style is so attractive and laugh out loud funny that you'll feel you're with a super knowledgeable friend with the rare ability to make wine simple and clear.

This is a perfect gift for a young man who wants to get into wine. Tips are sorted into bite sized chunks, making this a good bedside read or something to keep in the briefcase on a business trip to take up that 15 minutes of dead time in your schedule.

It is really accessible for all newcomers in the world of wine, but is quite annoying for those who already have a basic knowledge of the subject. In addition, I think that the book is not addressing the issue of wine tasting with the proper detail, and this is a great flaw for a book that is expected to guide casual drinkers into the secrets and the pleasures of wine.

If you are buying your first book on wine, let it be this one. I have previously bought some other books that were advertised as aimed towards non professionals, but I found many parts of them very hard to read. Oldman's guide is worth reading, and it can awaken the love for wine in you. It is made as one or two page shortcuts which you can easily read, grab off the shelf when you feel like it or when you want to know more. This is the ultimate guide for beginners!

I love Absolut ad's and have always wanted to get one. They are expensive new , so I got an used copy from an amazon seller. It came quickly and I flipped through the book for about 20 min when it arrived 2 days later. I love all the ads and they are all so clever. I might not get some of the modern art ones, but I love the city ones in particular. Anyway, I got this book for my new house and new coffee table book, I think it is one of the best hardcover coffee table book (marketing story book) ever.

Compulsory addition to the coffee table library. An excellent example of a clever, consistent, cutting edge branding campaign helping to position a generic product at the top of consumer mind. Absolut genius.

If you like the Absolut ads, this is a good book for you. It's what you'd expect - big pictures of the Absolut ads with explanations from the ad agency guys who made it happen. A fun coffeetable book.

Absolut is one of the best selling vodkas in the world and the advertsing for it is second to none. In this fabulous book were are told the inside story behind the marketing and selling of this tasty treat. The paper is first grade and the pictures are outstanding to say the least. Absolut original with a bottle looking like a Roman ruin is probably my favorite one but there are so many nice advertising ideas that have become stupendous posters. Absolute Enivironment is also a nice one. This is a good coffee table book and a nice gift for the person that likes vodka and to read.

This is a wonderful, informative, and beautiful book.
This book is about the Absolut Vodka advertising campaign. How it began, and what it is about. There are many beautiful, and breath taking images which makes you see the entire light of the campaign which looks so simple from the outside. Now, you get the inside looks and it isn't simple at all but an amazing experience.
WOW!!

Great book to give wines that are solid a boost that they would never get in the Robert Parker world.

Gary Vaynerchuk's 101 wines is a very entertaining, informative must have book for anyone that is into wine. Written just as if you are sitting in Gary's living room discussing wines with him. It's the text version of his daily program at [...]. I definitely recommend this book! Get it and enjoy!

Love this book, received it very quickly. Would recommend this book to anyone wanting to start wine tasting.

Gary Vee has done what many have tried and few have succeeded in doing-- he has made the wine world accessible to people who are not brought up in that world.
His enthusiasm and character may be the driving force behind Wine Library TV, but it's his knowledge that cements himself as a true wine Expert.

Gary brings it down to earth with thunder. He brings tons of fun to a potentially boring topic. I haven't read a reference book written with this much enthusiasm. This easy read is sure to turn you on to all the right stuff. I sincerely hope this is not his only book.

I originally bought American Wholefoods Cuisine in the early 80's when my children were small. It quickly became our favourite cookbook. I like their philosophy, the recipes are very good and it has one of the most complete indexes I've ever seen. The introduction explains how to be sure you are getting complete protien when you eliminate animal protien from your diet. There is a section on food handling and storage as well as cooking techniques. I was pleased to see that it was available again. My current copy is much loved and I wanted to give a copy to each of my girls so they can recreate the favourite recipes of their childhood. In the past 20 years, hardly a week goes by without my consulting it.

we are not vegetarians, but purchased this book as a part of our effort to incorporate more vegetarian meals into our weekly menu. i really appreciate that they mark the recipes with major, minor or protein complement so you can build a nutritionally sound meal that is also satisfying. i also like to short-list of themed menus at the back that makes planning meals easier. not all recipes have been winners, but we have enjoyed several quite a bit and nothing has been inedible. i dropped it from 5 to 4 stars bc the nutritional content of the meals is not provided and thus i have to do a lot of math in order to figure out how much fat/calories are in each dish.

My sister-in-law recommended this book. She had prepared one recipe for a meal we shared during a recent visit and it was great. I asked for the receipe and she provided the title and said she had not found a bad recipe yet. I immediately ordered the book when I got home. My wife and I love this book. We keep going through it and writing down recipes we want to try. We have yet to find one that we don't like. Each is a repeat for the future

If you buy only one vegetarian cookbook, this is the one. There are no fancy pictures and the recipes are very basic, but I wore out my first copy and am now on my second. This must say something for it! It has not changed, either, for which I am thankful. The recipes cover a wide range of ethnic and North American dishes and there should be something there for everyone.

Trying to find a good all round vegetarian cookbook is quite a difficult task. Many of the vegetarian cookbooks I've come across are either gourmet and not really suitable for everyday meals or full of bland tofu recipes that resemble cardboard in taste and texture. Finding recipes that use only whole foods is even more difficult. I've only come across one or two good ones that had maybe a half dozen recipes that I could actually use in daily life. The rest were either extremely laborious or required fresh foods that weren't readily available in my area.

Then I stumbled across American Wholefoods Cuisine. I was intrigued with the notion of vegetarian recipes that contained all whole foods. I expected and would have been quite happy with a cookbook that gave me a dozen decent dishes to try. Therefore, when I received the book and it contained 1300 meatless whole foods recipes, I was thrilled beyond belief.

American Wholefoods Cuisine has already become one of my staple cookbooks, along with a few old standbys given to me by my mother and mother-in-law. This book has a lot of everything from quick tasty snacks that I can make in a few minutes to full gourmet meals that I can make when I'm in the mood. In between there are all sorts of appetizers, soups, sauces, main dishes, side dishes, desserts, and baking treats. All easy to create with ingredients that I already have in my kitchen.

Most importantly, the food made from these recipes actually tastes good. For the first time in my life, I can eat completely healthy and not feel like I'm missing out on something. What's more, I have an ever-expanding group of young adults that are devouring everything I make as fast as I can cook.

As the wife of a homebrewer, I often pretended to listen to my husband's dreams of one day starting his own brewery. After five years of pretending, I realized he was serious when he handed me Beer School and said, "If you're ever going to get on board, you've got to read this book." As a medical professional, the idea of reading a "business" book made me yawn. To my surprise, I couldn't put it down. I felt as if Tom and Steve were sitting across the table, telling me their story over dinner. Their honesty was both eye-opening and inspiring. I learned so much from Beer School and enjoyed every second of it. Reading this book gives you a good idea of how difficult it is to be successful in starting and running your own business, all the while making you feel like you can do it.
BTW-after reading Beer School, I finally got on board with my husband....founder of Tallgrass Brewing Company!

I've no great interest in the brewery business, but I do enjoy well-written, instructive tales of entrepreneurship. 'Beer School' definitely falls into that category. One-time journalist and co-founder Steve Hindry can really write. No surprise there. The pleasant surprise is that ex-banker and fellow co-founder Tom Potter's chapters are just as enjoyable. Like their beer, the chapters go down smooth. The arrangement of the book makes it clear who's written what parts - the chapters are given names that start with either "Steve Tells..." or "Tom Tells...". Where Steve has written a chapter, we get Tom's viewpoint with "Tom Weighs In," and vice-versa. Sounds sort of clunky, but it's well executed by the co-authors. They clearly worked very closely in shaping a final, cohesive product. As a result, the format works well.

What drew me to the book originally was the forward by Mike Bloomberg. His endorsement is good enough for me.

By nature, I am not a "reader"... I have a large stack of books that I've picked up over the years to pacify me while traveling. Most still have their respective airline ticket stubs safely marking the spot where I left off reading. So yes, it's a tad ironic that I'm now leaving a book review here... However, I read this cover-to-cover in two (long) evenings (that alone will tell anyone that knows me that this was a really good book!) so I'm at least qualified to comment on THIS one.

I've homebrewed for a couple of years and am in the early stages of investigating the feasibility of trying to make a living out of brewing. The story in the book really struck close to home for me... My potential partner and I work in fields that really couldn't be further from the brewing industry, much like the authors. While I know that the odds are against us, it was refreshing to read a story of someone that took a swing at it and hit a home run.

The book is by no means a step-by-step business plan for starting a brewery. It is much more a story of the trials and tribulations that faced them as they progressed from a crazy dream to a crazy success. It's a story about partnership. It's a story about taking a leap of faith. So don't purchase it expecting a step-by-step recipe for you to go out and quit your day job, but do purchase it and expect a general high-level look at starting a brewery, some good general business ideas that you may not have thought of, and a good story to tie it all together.

I found it to be a very honest, open story... The authors take turns writing chapters, and there were at least a couple of times that they were so honest that I caught myself thinking "Jeez, I'm pretty sure that the other guy's going to read this... Are you sure you wanted to say that?!" As you progress through the book though, you learn that this is just the relationship that they've built over the years... Very honest and open with one another whether it is good news or bad. I think that reading about the partnership was really one of the biggest take-aways that I got out of the book, but it certainly has more to offer than that.

In summary, I really enjoyed this book and would have no issues whatsoever giving it a very high recommendation for anyone that is considering starting ANY new business, brewery or not.

I just finished Beer School and thoroughly enjoyed it. As a beer lover, and a fan of Brooklyn Brewery's products, I enjoyed learning about how the beer came to life, as well as the birth (rebirth?) of craft brewing in the United States. Mayor Bloomberg was right in the introduction, the book will make you thirsty.

As for the business aspect, I teach high school economics and intend to use some examples cited in Beer School to illustrate my lessons. If I taught on the college level, this book would be one of the required readings. It is a great example of entrepreneurship, economies of scale, marketing, start-ups, and business plans.

Just from a title perspective, this book was too good to pass up... Beer School: Bottling Success at the Brooklyn Brewery by Steve Hindy and Tom Potter. But even better, the book delivers the goods on a number of levels. One of the most enjoyable business book reads I've had in awhile...

Contents: Steve Tells How Choosing a Partner Is Like a Second Marriage; Steve Discusses the Importance of Building a Solid Team; Tom Talks about Creating the Business Plan - A Money-Raising Tool and More; Tom Asks, "What's the True Mission of the Business?"; Steve Discusses the Keys to Successfully Motivating Employees; Tom Tells the Story of Their Dot-Com Revolution - Fishing for Finance and Failing; Steve Talks about Building a Brewery in Brooklyn; Steve Discusses Publicity - The Press Wants You!; Steve Reveals How the Revolution Kills Its Leaders First; Tom Talks about Cashing Out and Reinventing the Business, Again; Tom Wants to Know If You Have What It Takes; Timeline; Index

Hindy was a foreign correspondent for a news agency, and Potter was an executive at a bank, but both felt as if they wanted to do something different in their lives. Their love of home-brew beer gave Hindy the idea of starting a brewery in their hometown of Brooklyn, a city rich with brewery history. Potter was less convinced about the whole project until he visited a homebrewer's convention in 1986. This was right at the start of the microbrew phenomenon, and they decided to seriously pursue their dream. The book chronicles their work from 1986 through 2005, while also distilling what they learned about entrepreneurship along the way. And since this is beer "school", each chapter ends with them giving themselves a grade on how they did in that particular area. Unlike many business books that make the principals all-knowning and omniscient, Hindy and Potter are brutally honest about what worked and what didn't, where they were skillful and where they got lucky. It's a fascinating read, both for the brewery story and for the business insights.

There aren't too many business books with stories about being robbed at gunpoint of $30000, visiting a metal fencing operation to get a fork-lift battery charger back, and getting a visit from organized crime and union leadership, intent on getting a piece of their business. Even if you dropped the business lessons, the narrative of the Brooklyn Brewery would be enough to make this a recommended read. When you add in the small business information, this becomes a must-read for anyone dreaming of starting their own business. And if you're already interested in homebrewing or microbrews, then this book will probably end up being read in a single sitting.

An excellent read on a number of levels...

I love this book. It makes wine easy to understand and the recipes look awesome. I haven't tried any yet but am looking forward to trying the pairings. Thanks for a fun, easy to understand book!

I bought this to share with a wine tasting group we started. We started one 7 years ago in another city and it was really successful. Trying to introduce wine to people in Texas in the dry counties is a challenge, however. I also bought a copy of this book as gift for someone. Very helpful.

The recipes are phenomenal and the wine suggestions really do teach you about the different wines. Our wine club has had so much fun with the month-by-month guide.

Start your own wine club for and with your friends and learn about wine with the help of THE WINE CLUB: A MONTH-BY-MONTH GUIDE TO LEARNING ABOUT WINE WITH FRIENDS. A seasonal arrangement offers monthly varietal focus in a title which includes recipes for complimentary dishes, tips on how to taste and learn, overviews of wines and glass styles, and much more.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This book has it all. I love the suggestions and recipes that accompany the wine selections. It is very simply written and easy to follow.