Customer Rating: 
Summary: Great beer porn
Comment: Protz is well-known as a beer man and writes well - if a little predictably (I seem to have read some of this before in some of his other, many, tomes). But the pictures are fabulous and if you're a beer bore, a ticker or just fanatical about real ale, you'll love this on your coffee table, to make you yearn for a decent pint (or bottle) rather than the usual rubbish down the local.
However I do think there are better recent beer books - for instance Adrian Tierney-Jones' Big Book of Beer - produced also by CAMRA - is pretty damn excellent and very informative (I learned lots of new stuff from it). Also Pete Brown's Three Sheets to the Wind for one man's obsessive hunt for beer around the world.
So - this one's quite good, but there are better and more intersting books around on my favourite topic!
Customer Rating:
Summary: If you drink REAL beer...
Comment: Like many people I have spent years willingly handing over good money for mass produced carbonated lager, often with no character or taste at all. More recently however, I have been trying more 'real' beer - both in pubs and by the bottle. I have come to love the taste and individuality of real ales, bitters, IPAs, Porters etc. The problem for me was where do you start? And, how do you know which of the literally hundreds of British beers will suit your tastes?This book has proved to be the solution to that problem for me. I picked it up after a beer festival where one of my local brewers was proudly showing off his entry and thoroughly recommended it is too.
The book is a veritable treasure trove of facts about these 300 beers which Protz has selected as his personal favourites. The beers are grouped into styles (of which there are many!) with each entry receiving a full page write-up. As well as a little background about the brewer and the qualities of the beer itself, there are helpful details on where to find the beer. Many of the beers are widely available in pubs or bottled in supermarkets whilst others from smaller brewers are regionally limited and a few downright scarce!
If you are happy with the standard chain-pub fizzy largers or the smoothflow branded bitters then this book is unlikley to hold your interest. However, if you are looking for more from your beer and have at least a passing interest in where it has come from, who made it and how, then this is a thoroughly recommended book! Cheers!!
