Buy the best book ever on British beer styles

The most comprehensive guide to Britain’s many and glorious beer styles ever, Amber Gold and Black is essential – and controversial – reading for anyone who enjoys a pint, as well as all those involved in brewing and pubs,

Amber, Gold and Black is the first ever in-depth look at all the beers that have been made in Britain, one of the world’s greatest brewing nations, from the well-known, such as bitter and mild, to the deeply obscure, such as West Country white beer and gill ale.

Long-standing stories about beer, lovingly retold over pints by beer drinkers and brewers down the ages are comprehensively debunked in the book, The tales repeated by almost every other writer about beer but knocked on the head in Amber Gold and Black include:

• IPA – India Pale Ale – wasn’t, as most writers claim, invented specifically to survive the long journey from Britain to the East, and it wasn’t made specially for British soldiers in India. Instead it was a lucky accident …

• Porter, once London’s most popular beer, wasn’t invented by a man called Harwood in Shoreditch in 1722, and neither was it invented to match the taste of a mixed drink called Three-Threads. Instead it took decades, and a man who bcame Lord Mayor of London and once gave away his horse to Louis XV …

• Mild, Britain’s most popular beer until the 1960s, wasn’t originally dark, or weak, but pale and strong …

• Lager brewing in Britain didn’t begin in the 1950s, or even the 1880s, but the 1830s, in Scotland, thanks to a visit by a young Bavarian brewer …

Amber Gold and Black is due to be published in April 2010 by The History Press, and can be pre-ordered now via Amazon UK. It is a celebration of the depths of British beer, a look at the roots of the styles we enjoy today, as well as those ales and beers we have lost, and a study into how the liquids that fill our beer glasses, amber gold and black, developed over the years.

Order it now, and learn all there is to know about the history of porter, bitter, mild and stout, IPA, brown ale, Burton ale and old ale, barley wine and stingo, golden ale, gale ale, honey ale, white beer, heather ale and mum, and much more.

* The writer of Amber Gold and Black, Martyn Cornell is the author of Beer: The Story of the Pint, a history of brewing in Britain which won him the Beer Writer of the Year Award from the British Guild of Beer Writers, one of three beer writing prizes he had picked up from the guild. He is also a regular contributor to What’s Brewing, the Campaign for Real Ale’s newspaper, a writer on beer for publications as diverse as Country Life and Caterer & Hotelkeeper, a beer judge in competitions held by the supermarket chains Tesco and Sainsbury’s, and author of the Zythophile beer blog at Beer Connoisseur.

What readers are saying already about Amber Gold and Black:

“Amber Gold & Black is a really good read. It’s well-written and captivating throughout. Just bought it myself and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in British beer history”.
Evan Rail

“A unique insight into the course of British brewing over the last 200 years, well-researched and well-written … I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to gain a greater understanding of the history of British beer.”
Ron Pattinson