Beer for dummies - Steve Ettlinger

Are you overwhelmed by the selection of beers available at your local pub or favorite restaurant? Do you know the difference between a lager and an ale? Would you like to try brewing your own beer but are too afraid that you'd blow up the kitchen? Well, fear no more!

Beer For Dummies is your prefect introduction to the world of beer, covering everything from microbrews to homebrewing –– with tips for how to match beer with food, how to pour and store beer properly, and how to enjoy your beer at its fullest!

Inside, you'll find barrels of information on how to:

• Taste beer and evaluate its hops, malt, color, and clarity
• Decipher beer labels and read a beer menu like a pro
• Understand the "technical stuff" about beer and homebrewing techniques
• Recognize the characteristics of ales, lagers, and other beer styles
• Try beers from all over the world
• Pour, store, and drink beer from the right kinds of glassware
• Brew your own beer in the basement or kitchen
• Locate cool beer festivals, tastings, and events held around the world
• Join beer clubs or associations and subscribe to beer publications, online forums, and more

Steve Ettlinger has been the book producer, author, or coauthor of over 20 consumer–oriented books since 1985 (he produced Marty's first book). He is president of Ettlinger Editorial Projects, an idea–developing and book–producing firm, and was president of the American Book Producers Association, a trade group, from 1991 to 1995. Among his own titles are The Restaurant Lover's Companion and The Complete Illustrated Guide to Everything Sold in Hardware Stores. He also covers dining–related subjects for national magazines and Web sites.; A former welder and steel fabricator, Marty Nachel is a freelance writer on beer and brewing, an award–winning homebrewer, a Certified Beer Judge, and a beer evaluator for the Beverage Testing Institute. He is also a member of the North American Guild of Beer Writers, former president of the Chicago Beer Society, and founding member of the Brewers Of South Suburbia (B.O.S.S.) homebrew and beer appreciation club.
His first book, Beer Across America: A Regional Guide to Brewpubs and Microbreweries, was published in July 1995.

Marty Nachel has been the lead writer and editor for the newsletters that accompany monthly shipments of microbrewed beer from Beer Across America since October 1992. His articles have also appeared in All About Beer, Beer & Tavern Chronicle, Brew Magazine, Brew Your Own, Fine Cooking, Heads Up, Midwest Beer Notes, On Tap newsletter, and Zymurgy.
Travel in search of good beer has taken Marty to over 150 breweries and brewpubs and assorted beer festivals and shrines in Europe and North America. When he can find the time, he likes to collect breweriana.