It's been a busy few weeks for the mail. Today, this book by Joe Stange and Yvan De Baets came. Sadly, I am not personally familiar with Yvan's work, though he seems to be very much the lad - but attentive readers will recall Joe from the 2008 Christmas photo contest and may even read his excellent and envy generating blog, Thirsty Pilgrim.

I think I've mentioned I spent a few weeks in Brussels half a life ago. I drank Guinness. I knew nothing. Had I only had this sort of guide, I could have been so much more insufferable by now...or at least less easy to satisfy. The book is formatted, after some introductions, on eighty bars, shops, restaurants and other venues with eighty accompanying beers with enough dipsography for even the most ardent beer porn fan. All you need to know is there - address, website, telephone, hours of operation, number of beer and how to get there by tram, bus and underground. On your bike. Away you go. You know you want to.

Still here? You know, the book is called 80 beers not 80 bars - and that's where the book works for the non-traveler. When you have a look at a book like Jackson's The Great Beers of Belgium it's engaging and authoritative but not that handy as a field guide. It's a bit lunky. What Joe and Yvon have done with the descriptions of 80 top Belgian beers and then providing an index of the entries by beer as well as bar has created an easy-peasy North American (or Antipodean for all I know) beer hound's field guide for introducing and developing an interest in these brews. Find some or most of these beers in your favorite beer store and you will be off on another sort of trip.

So, well done. Handy, attractive, clear and compelling. And now I know a "brown cafe" is the equivalent of a dive or community pub. Get it from the publisher or here or learn more on Facebook... or is it at Facebook?