Tasting Beer

This completely updated second edition of the best-selling beer resource features the most current information on beer styles, flavor profiles, sensory evaluation guidelines, craft beer trends, food and beer pairings, and draft beer systems. You’ll learn to identify the scents, colors, flavors, mouth-feel, and vocabulary of the major beer styles — including ales, lagers, weissbeirs, and Belgian beers — and develop a more nuanced understanding of your favorite brews with in-depth sections on recent developments in the science of taste. Spirited drinkers will also enjoy the new section on beer cocktails that round out this comprehensive volume.

For everyone who has known the pleasure of a pint, Randy Mosher explores and explains the tasting experience, guiding readers to a better understanding of how every batch of beer is affected by recipe formulation, brewhouse procedures, yeasts, fermentations, carbonation, filtration, packaging, and much more. Readers will learn to identify the scents, colors, flavors, and mouth-feel of all the major beer styles. There are also chapters on proper serving and storage conditions, and classic beer and food pairings. Finally, the book includes a style-by-style compendium of the different brews within major beer families, including American craft brews, British lagers, German ales, and Belgian Dubbels. For each style, Mosher includes historical and regional facts, taste and aroma characteristics, seasonal availability, food pairings, and a few terrific recommendations for readers to sample.