Yankee Brew News Archive

Book Review: Making Beer by William Mares

Originally Published: 07/95

By: Brett Peruzzi

Making Beer

Revised Edition

By William Mares

Alfred A. Knopf, New York

173 pages

The recently revised edition of William Mares' Making Beer, originally published in 1984, is less of a how-to guide than it is the chronicle of a journey. It is the Burlington, Vermont resident's 15-year journey on the path of homebrewing and craft-brewed beer.

Along the way, Mares met the early U.S. microbrewers and craft brewers of England, countless homebrewers, and toyed briefly with opening his own brewery. Mares shows himself to be an impassioned brewer-philosopher, interested in not just the process of making beer but the role it plays in our lives, not unlike his fellow Vermonter and self-proclaimed beer anthropologist Alan Eames.

Making Beer provides the basics--sections on ingredients, equipment, and recipes--but also much more. Mares goes beyond the number crunching and equipment lists to explain not just how, but why, he, and so many others, brew their own beer. And, like so many homebrewers, if you share his one-time ambition to start a brewery, his chapter "Savage Commitment" provides an idea of what you'd be getting into.

William Mares writes about beer with humor, humanity, and insight. He has produced a work that is very heavy on anecdotes of his personal experiences and perceptions, that is an enjoyable read as well as informational.

Since the original edition of Making Beer was published in 1984, however, when modern how-to homebrewing texts were not plentiful, a plethora of homebrewing books have been published. Encompassing historical perspective, a compelling narrative and a wealth of stories, as well as how-to homebrewing basics, Making Beer's scope is broad. It will no doubt end up on the bookshelves of many hard-core brewing aficionados. But the book's new edition finds itself with considerably more competition (Charlie Papazian and Dave Miller, to name two) in attracting the casual homebrewing audience than it had in 1984.