Good resource on styles?

When serving up a couple bottles of homebrew, I'd love to be able to impress my friends with an encyclopedic knowledge of beer styles, but unfortunately I'm having a hard time finding out that information in order to absorb it. Googling each beer style turns up either info pages about commercial beers or beer recipes, but I'm having a hard time pinning down, for example, just what exactly makes a hefeweizen a hefeweizen and not a wheat beer, or a porter a porter and not a stout, or an apfelwein an apfelwein and not a hard cider.

I'm looking for a really good resource on beer styles, since Google isn't being entirely forthcoming.

Learn it and love it! :http://www.bjcp.org/2008_stylebook.pdf

flyangler18 said:

Learn it and love it! :http://www.bjcp.org/2008_stylebook.pdf

Click to expand...

You don't need any more information about styles.

BUT

If you want to really get into the individual styles you need to look at the Classic Beer Styles Series published by the AHA.

I recently was talking to my buddy about all my beer stuff and I said "Oh did I tell you about that imperial stout I am thinking of brewing????" his reply was "I don't know man.... you tell me a lot."

Haha so I figure if I am telling him a lot I will cut down the info, like when my homebrew is ready

I found some good stuff on beer advocate also...

The other main reference for beer styles is here. The main difference: BJCP is focused on styles for competitions, BA is focused on commercially available styles. For homebrewers who are interested in competitions, BJCP is the way to go.

The Joy of Home Brewing is good. I like the ingredient chart. My second edition copy is missing some styles that the third may have. One of Michael Jackson's books would probably be good.

The book that turned alot of people around on here and certainly worked for me was Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels. It's an analysis of all of the beer styles and the typical ingredients that make up each style. Its perfect for those people who are wanting to make great beer within a category and not use a kit. It tells you how to make your own recipes!

Something fun...and makes learning it easier....maybe not as much info as you want...but hey...you can wear it.

The BEERiodic Table of the Elements

-Will

Designing Great Beers is in fact a marvel. It gives a great history of every typical beer ingredient as well as nearly all modern and past styles. Kyle

Amazon.com: Ultimate Beer: Michael Jackson: Books is a good one for general info, in addition to what others have said.

I have Michael Jackson's Eyewitness Companion. It's a nice easy read on styles, and then goes around the world describing each countries styles and gives examples from all the regions and countries.