Customer Reviews

Buying Guide To Beers: More Than 2000 Beers Reviewed By The Beverage Testing Institute

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"The Beverage Testing Istitute"--sounds pretty credible, right? Granted, not everyone will agree on beer, and these tastings were conducted blindfolded so no prior bias could come into play. But Bud light got a score of 83--this means it is "recommended" by BTI, based on their point scale. Who the hell "recommends" bud light?!?!? That's like saying, "I recommend kraft macoroni and cheese." sure, it's a beer, but it's TERRIBLE.

Enough ranting--my point is simply that in many cases the reliability of these reviewers is compromised by their own lack of skill or balls, i can't tell which. almost every american adjunct-using mass produced corn pilsner and it's "light" brother is included here--why?? who knows. maybe they were paid off. Besides giving stupid ratings, not a single beer in this book got a score less than 80, which means that every beer in the book is at least "recommended," and thus there's only a twenty-point scale, whereas they profess to use a 100-point scale. at least Bob Klein had the balls to say that some beer just plain sucks! (not that his book is any better than this one)

So, on the one hand these ratings are generally to be ignored. However, there's a lot of information here. They give tasting notes for a LOT of beers--american, canadian, british, german, french, african, and other regional beers are rated here, and loosely organized by region." There's a lot of stuff that nobody's ever heard of, and that you probably can't find unless you live in the northern half of the US or out west. But it's still fun to have info on all these beers! Plus, they're a little less pedantic than say Bob Klein.

This book is well organized. It has a section on the generally agreed-upon beer styles, giving a short blurb with flavor-traits, history, and purchasable examples for each style. It has a section on caring for/handling beer, with good info, and a section on beer tasting, with flaws and glassware described. The majority of the book is devoted to American and canadian beers (grouped together), but each section begins with history of beer production/consumption for the region in that section, and facts about current trends. In the back is a list of "highly recommended beers" grouped by style, where they list their top fifteen or-so beers for each style (some styles only have a few beers listed, for some reason). The index lists just about every beer or brewery whose beer they rated.

Overall, I doubt that I would "recommend" this book to anybody because I don't really trust these people's evaluations, which obviously comprise the majority of the book. It was published in 1999, but many of their tastings were done in previous years, so some of the beer names are out of date at this point. Basically, if you're looking for decent tasting notes on a LOT of beers that aren't just limited to the US, this is a decent place to start. I will not read it cover-to-cover like i did Oliver's "brewmaster's table," but it has well written information on the subject of beer tasting and evaluating.