1001 Beers You Must Taste Before You Die
If you’ve ever wanted a truly comprehensive world beer guide, your new Bible has arrived. Forget about those books promising dozens, hundreds or even 500 beers – add them all together, and you don’t have nearly as many must-try brews as there are in 1001 Beers You Must Taste Before You Die.
I found a review copy of this massive bicep-builder of a book on my doorstep last week. The tome, the newest in Universe Publishing’s “1001 [blank]s You Must [blank] Before You Die” series, is summarized on the jacket as “a comprehensive guide to the very best beers in the world.” Under the watchful eye of general editor Adrian Tierney-Jones, over 40 international beer experts (including Hop Press columnist Lisa Morrison) selected and reviewed beers from large and small breweries around the world.
The book is, interestingly, not split up by specific style or country. Instead, the brews are split into five broad chapters based on color; Amber, Blond, White, Dark and Specialty. While this might seem like sacrilege to the hardest of hardcore beer geeks – how dare they put a barleywine next to a helles? – it makes for much more interesting reading that page after page of imperial stout. Within each chapter the beers are organized alphabetically by name, another choice that keeps the reading interesting. Thankfully, these stylistic choices don’t make any beer harder to find, as there are indexes by country (at the front of the book) and brewery name (in the back of the book.
A good chunk of the introduction labors to explain exactly why these 1,001 beers were chosen, but I think this sums it up nicely; “Even though this book is full of magnificent beverages, it is not a list of the world’s “best beers … It is a list of beers you should try before you shuffle off this mortal coil – if only to discover what you dislike.” The choices in the book are broad and cover some of my favorite and least favorite beers, and I certainly can’t argue with the reasoning the editor put forth for the choices. Of course, as the author states, one of the reasons these books are fun is the debate they encourage, and I’m sure that most people can find a beer that they think is missing or shouldn’t have been included in the 1001.
Each page is set up similarly, with either two beer reviews on the page or a single review with a photograph beside it. For each beer, you’ll see the proper name for the brew, the brewery name and website, country of origin, year first brewed, ABV, serving temperature, tasting notes and about three paragraphs about the beer or brewery.
The number of contributors gives the reviews a nice variety, and obviously none of the authors are slouches. It is a bit strange what the writers choose to focus on, however. Sometimes, the entire review is devoted to the history of the brewery or brewers, with hardly a sentence devoted to the specific beer. Sometimes, the opposite is true. This is certainly not a bad thing, but was odd enough that I did notice it.
The book is beautifully designed, with full color photographs throughout. The beer pictures are a real treat, as most of the picks include a picture of the bottle as well as the beer in the appropriate glassware. Just seeing the glasses for the beers like the Viking Big Swede or the Almond ’22 Irie is a kick. The beer choices are truly international, with almost 70 countries represented.
The biggest weakness of 1001 Beers You Must Taste Before You Die is simply that it is, at the end of the day, another book listing excellent beers. Yes, it is the most comprehensive. Yes, it is the best produced, and yes, it represents the tastes of a great group of reviewers. However, at 959 pages and nearly $40, it is a hard sell to craft beer enthusiasts that have already spent on various other “best beer” books.
If you’re on the fence about 1001 Beers You Must Try Before You Die, swing into a store and flip through the phonebook-sized compendium after it comes out on March 23rd. Even if you already have a few beer guides, it’s quite possible you’ll see enough here to warrant a purchase – or you’ll consolidate and get rid of your older guides. If you don’t have any beer guides, you’ve just found a book that’ll keep your attention and having you seeking out new beers for months to come.
12 Comments to “1001 Beers You Must Taste Before You Die”
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I find this a kick in the teeth for the craft beer fans. It’s all very well someone going through ranks and ranks of beer reviews to summon a top 100 list but with Rate Beer we can already do this.
The 300 Beers To Try Before You Die by Roger Protz was extremely compelling and hard to achieve with many retired beers inside the book. Some breweries may close very quickly after the book’s releases so again it’s pretty floored.
He has revised and re-leased his version of his book and I will definitely be acquiring that. Joris has a collaberation book out on Belgium beer which is worth mentioning too.
I will rather look at raters’ lists more than buy this and go from there for how I seek out my top beers to taste before I die. I think the Rate Beer top 50 Belgian list is exceptional as a top list goes.
I meant re-issued. duh.
Doesn’t ratebeer stats render this book kind of useless? I’d rather have a list of 100,000 beers compiled by thousands of people, than a list of a thousand beers compiled by 1 person.
Over 40 people worked on it.
There has been a few good looking beer books out recently. ‘Brewing with Wheat’, ‘Amber, Gold & Black’ to name two.
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I like it – and the author does state “it isnt about the best beers”. It is ones to try.
As for ratebeer – given it feels like 60% of the best beers are apparently all in the US, I would think that more people doesnt equate to better quality decisions.
I don’t think Ratebeer makes this book useless at all. The Ratebeer top 100 is the top 100 of beers that score well on Ratebeer. Surely, there will be some beers that are on both lists, but Ratebeer doesn’t list the beers you need to try before you die. There is no editorial thinking behind the Ratebeer lists.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find Speedway Stout in the book, to take one example. But I would be surprised to find barrel aged and funny coffee one-offs or special editions.
And when looking through the black beer chapter, I’m sure you’ll find Köstritzer Schwarzbier, as that’s the one schwarzbier you need to try before you die. Looking through Ratebeer, you first have to know that there is such a style as schwarzbier. And then, Köstritzer is only #34 in the style. For various good and bad reasons.
The availability issue is more problematic. You have to try all 1001 within the next few years, or they’ll not exist anymore when you go looking for them five years from now. It’s a fun way to make a beer book, but not realistic. On the other hand, I’m making progress in the 1001 Movies to Watch Before You Die book, and in that book it’s perfectly possible to find the movies, whether old or new…
I think people are missing why someone issues a book like this. It’s not for the people like us who use RateBeer and such (although many of us are interested in it). This book is for our friends, the ones on the outside looking in. They are the people who will flip through and say “I’ve seen that on tap” or “I can buy that at the grocery store” and start ticking off the beers in the book.
This book goes great on a coffee table and would be an awesome way to introduce your friends to great beer.
By the way, my copy has Anchor Steam on the cover
Hi Josh
thanks for the review, as the editor just a comment why I think this is slightly different — I like to think I have over 40 of some of the world’s best beer writers within its pages (Joris is mentioned above, he did a lot of Belgian ones), that’s a lot of opinions, a goodly bunch of diversity, a lot of the beers were chosen by them, but I also chose a lot; sure it’s not going to impress everyone, but as Mario notes, this is for those who might be slightly intimidated by beer, who are ripe for moving on from Bud, enjoy Sierra Nevada occasionally but wonder what on earth is or who is Dogfish Head; I also included about 40 or so beers from the emerging Italian craft scene, a scene that really deserves to be well covered.
As for the comment on the beer coverage, individual authors have their quirks (I sometimes had occasion to curse several writers’ reviews, which is when the job of editor really springs into view, no names!) but as long as I felt it was making people think about the beer then I wanted to leave well alone.
cheers
Adrian Tierney-Jones
I enjoy flipping through these books but now that I read that these are for those who want to move up to a better or unknown beer, I will recommend it to quite a few people.
We need more people who can gently nudge the almost believers into the fold.
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