I don't know if this is the cool new blue cover or the boring old blue cover but it's quite blue. I did knew from the outset that the book was not written by a Canadian as then it would be titled "500 Beer" as the plural and the singular are written the same up here. But it written by Zak, he the freelance beer writer, specialist beer retailer and author of the entertaining beer blog "Are You Tasting the Pith?" Like his blog, it is a great book full of insight and personality - even if it has the blasphemous subtitle "the only beer compendium you'll ever need." I thought the whole idea was that we need magic books about 300, 500, 1000, a billion zillion best beer eh-vah. I only drink "best beer" myself so I want every book there is about all of them.

76% of the book is filled with well organized brief beer reviews organized first by style and then, rather cleverly, according to its peers or at least beers that are in the neighbourhood. So, for example, three Bamburgian rauchbiers are reviewed along with Alaska Smoked Porter and Meantime Wintertime Winter Welcome. This invites the old double fisted, fill the table with bottles and glassware compare and contrast event.¹ The writing is equally satisfying. Solid and earthy. The hops in a Sixpoint Bengal IPA have a crunchy aroma. Duchesse de Bourgogne gives off the whiff of a pickle jar. Lots of good beer pr0n, too.

Get your reading glasses as the small font can age you rapidly. Buy it.

¹For those unaware of such a thing, I describe the far superior social predecessor to the present faddish, expensive "tiny plates of swanky food and tiny glasses of beer" movement.