Book Review: The Little Book of Craft Beer (Melissa Cole)

A Craft Beer Guide Primer

I think the best way to sum up this little (roughly 170 readable pages) is that its a good craft beer guide primer. Published in 2017 – so a pre – covid book – it does a good job of summarizing the craft beer market at the time. Its now roughly 5 – 6 years (depending on month of publishing, plus length of time to write it) since its been written and released, so theres a small bit of dating to it, but not much really. This will probably change as the book ages though.

A little book of craft beer is a great introduction idea to newbies, or those wanting to familiarize themselves with beer and craft beer in particular. Each field has books like this; be it architecture, art, history, education, literature, cryptocurrency, management, leadership, etc. A basic bare bones small book of introduction and acts as a primer into that particular field.

You can find our article on “What is Craft Beer?” here: What is Craft Beer? It makes for a good primer on what is considered craft beer (versus macro, large scale beer).

Melissa Cole

Melissa Cole is a craft beer writer, enthusiast, connoisseur, journalist, and sommelier. She is primarily based out of the United Kingdom but has traveled extensively for the craft beer industry. She has done beer judging at small and large competitions, as well as traveled to write for different magazines, websites, and publishers.

For a list of Melissa Cole’s books on GoodReads you can click here: Melissa Cole’s List of Books (GoodReads).

BeerAdvocate as an interview article on their website they conducted with her. You can find that here: Melissa Cole – Beer Writer (January 2015).

The Little Book of Craft Beer: A Guide to Over 100 of the World’s Finest Brews

The GoodReads description:

There is an increasing demand for information on the best craft beers around the world, and how best to pair it with food. Look no further: this is your essential guide to knowing everything you need to know about craft beer; how to make it, the different styles and how to match it with food.

The Little Book of Craft Beer: A Guide to Over 100 of the World’s Finest Brews

Book Review

As I said above, this is a great little guide book, a primer, an introduction book to help people get into the craft beer community. Melissa Cole even prefaces it as such. She does a good job telling you upfront of what this is, what the book can be used for, who its mainly intended for, and how to basically use and read the book.

The chapters are broken down by beer types; light beers, lagers, dark beers, Belgians, fruit beers, sour beers, etc. Each chapter then proceeds to give roughly ten to sixteen different beer selections of that style (Racer 5 by Bear Republic for IPA, Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout for big beers, etc.), before moving on to a page or two of a cocktail recipe and a page or two of food pairings.

There is a lot of good examples from across the world in each chapter. Usually a beer or two from the UK, a beer or two from mainland Europe, a beer or two from the USA, and a beer or two from South America, with a few more beers sprinkled in. This gives each chapter a nice, full well rounded look at the beers of that style from around the world. Obviously the book can’t show every IPA or every Belgian or every Sour, but it does a good job of giving you the big name ones that are somewhat readily available. Rather than listing one offs by breweries, she lists flagships and staple beers from the different breweries.

The book as a whole is well written, with personal notes about the author to make it feel friendly and accessible and more personal, rather than just “here’s beer X, it tastes like X, Y, Z” and then moves on to “beer Y, it tastes like X, Y, Z”. Its nice to be able to read her voice in the little mini reviews for each beer, and also with some history behind the beer, or the brewery, or the beermaster behind it.

This is a pretty quick and easy read, its 176 pages total (hardcover format) and smaller book size. The last six or so pages are index, thank yous, etc. There is a large format chapter page to each chapter (just the name of the chapter on one page) with a side page of being large font text describing the chapter, and there is occasional Canva style beer drawings throughout the book. You can easily breeze through this book in the course of a weekend. Which makes it both accessible, quick, easy, and a good primer. A good start book of my year.

With my goal this year being 100 books (doing the GoodReads “Book Challenge” rather than the 110 like last year) this was a good starting point. I should shortly have the book called “Drunks” finished, as my second book. Seems fitting to have that be the second book completed for the year.

This year I’m planning on writing up the book reviews as soon as I finish them, so theres not as much lag time on book completion to article here on the blog – and I am also planning on doing a book review for nearly each book I read this year, unlike last year where I ended up missing most, or writing the book reviews far later.

My GoodReads rating: ***
My LibraryThing rating: ***.5
Global GoodReads rating: 3.53 (as of 1.13.23)

(GoodReads doesn’t let you do half or quarter ratings, unlike LibraryThing which does.)

Other Beer Related Book Reviews

Some other beer related books we’ve reviewed:

• Book Review: A Woman’s Place is in the Brewhouse – A Forgotten History of Alewives, Brewsters, Witches, and CEOs (Tara Nurin)
• Book Review: Beer and Society: How We Make Beer and Beer Makes Us (Eli Revelle Yano Wilson and Asa B. Stone)

Some Other Book Reviews

• Book Review: The Essential Salvador Dalí (Robert Goff)
• Book Review: Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)
• Book Review: An Atlas of Tolkien (David Day)
• Book Review: The Wit and Wisdom of Tyrion Lannister (George R.R. Martin)
• Book Review: 9-11 (Noam Chomsky)
• Book Review: The World According to Mister Rogers (Fred Rogers)
• Book Review: Life’s Journey According to Mister Rogers: Things To Remember Along the Way (Fred Rogers)
• Book Review: 1,339 Quite Interesting Facts to Make Your Jaw Drop (John Lloyd)
• Book Review: Curb Your Enthusiasm and Philosophy (Edited by Mark Ralkowski)
• Book Review: Thanks a Thousand – A Gratitude Journey (A.J. Jacobs)
• Book Review: Buddhism 101 (Arnie Kozak)
• Book Review: How To Be Interesting (in 10 Simple Steps) (Jessica Hagy)
• Book Review: The Philosophy of Snoopy (Charles M. Schulz)
• Book Review: Guardians of the Whills (Greg Rucka)
• Book Review: The Words You Should Know to Sound Smart – 1200 Essential Words Every Sophisticated Person Should Be Able to Use (Robert W. Bly)

Thanks For Reading

Firstly, I want to recall attention to the Hemauer family. They recently had a tragic fire that devastated their home, completely ruining and burning it down. You can read more about the various ways you can help the family here: Helping the Hemauer Family.

You can also go directly to the GoFundMe page for them here: The Hemauer Family – GoFundMe by Andrea Foor.

At the time of writing, they are up to 26,808$ in donations. This is a great first step for them and will help, but they can obviously use all the help and support they can. Breweries such as Boneshire Brew Works, Gift Horse Brewing, and Big Bottom Brewery are also donating some of their sales for the foreseeable future to the family as well. Read my article above to see when and how you can help by supporting those breweries as well.

As always I like to say thank you to all of our readers and those who have visited the blog. Without you I wouldn’t be sitting here writing. So thank you all very much. If you would like to keep up to date with us make sure to like, subscribe, follow; and please feel free to send us messages at thebeerthrillers@gmail.com as well as leave comments on our posts. We love hearing from our readers.

Thank you all.

Cheers!

-B. Kline

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