The Great Canadian Beer Guide

by Stephen Beaumont

Covering over 163 breweries in Canada, Beaumont provides basic information such as address, phone and fax numbers and web sites, a short history of the business, and tasting notes on over 800 different beers. Each beer across the country is rated using Beaumont's four star system.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1552782034
• ISBN13: 9781552782033
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: McArthur & Company
• Length: 286 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

though a bit out of date, still an excellent survey of the Canadian beer scene

This kind of book is outdated before it's even published, so if you approach it as a reference to guide you to the best of what's out there now, you'll be sorely disappointed. There are now at least two large websites where you can rate beer, and read recent ratings, some of them from people who may be as knowledgeable or perceptive as most "professionals" in the industry - and obviously many of the microbreweries and brewpubs the author covers in this coast-to-coast survey are defunct now, or their beers radically different. The actual reviews that make up the bulk of this book are therefore the least valuable element - at least, Beaumont's star ratings are of little importance, 7 years later, though the analysis and clarity of his writing remains the gold standard. But Beaumont is an excellent writer and a discerning critic, and his analysis of where the Canadian beer scene was, and where it is (as of 2002, anyway, which is the date of the edition I read) is entertaining and illuminating. He pays most attention to British Columbia and Ontario - one of the really major changes in the scene since the book was published is the astonishing growth (both in quantity and quality) in the Quebec beer culture, now holding its own with that of any area in North America at least, if not the world. I might not pay full price for a 7-year old book on any country's beer scene - it looks unfortunately as if this hasn't been updated - but I would certainly grab this one from the library, or used and cheap, and I would say that it's as good a model as any on how to write such a guide. Worthwhile for both the novice and the connoisseur.