AS a home brewer with 20 years experience, I found the book very useful when I decided to delve into the mysteries of brewing Belgian Ale styles. I think this book and others in the series need to be periodically updated. Since returning from college in Europe in 1976, the number of European beer styles available in the US has increased dare I say, 1000 fold. In 1976 you were lucky if you could find a Lowenbrau (Germany's Budweiser at the time), St. Pauli Girl or a Becks. Now the number of beers imported is virtually uncountable.
The section in the book near the end giving us commercial examples of the types of beer, as well as offering up the author's opinion on commercially available varieties, "if you can find them" and giving us is horribly out of date. Today the number of Belgian ales avaiable at any good liquor store is mind boggling. The increase in the availability of this incredibly diverse beverage needs to be reflected.
I recommend the book to any would be belgian ale brewer. I found it particularly helpful in cloning some of my favorite belgian ales. The process for doing that could also be added to any update of the text. Get more detail about Belgian Ale (Classic Beer Style Ser).
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