A lot has changed in the world of craft brewing in ten years, and the updating of Brewing Lager Beer is long overdue. It is surprising to me that the book has endured, and that so may brewers still refer to their dog-eared copies.
Brewing Lager Beer never really was just about lager brewing. The lager tradition is really the culmination of the brewing theories of all the other European brewing traditions. By examining lager techniques and technology, any student of brewing is being exposed to brewing dissected to its vital principles. Before 1985, Dave Line’s still-classic Big Book of Brewing (Amateur Winemaker Publications, 1985) was the only readily available reference for homebrewers and the pioneers of microbrewing; in deference to him, I chose the title so as not to compete with his groundbreaking work.
This edition retains the title, but broadens its scope to include more of the spectrum of craft-brewing techniques and more information specific to ale brewing. Besides updating the work and including more useful information for serious brewers, a lot of factual and editing errors that appeared in the original have been corrected.
The trickle of knowledge available to craft and homebrewers when this book was first published has become a flood; I am proud to have Brewing Lager Beer continue to be part of most serious brewers’ libraries.
Greg Noonan
Burlington, Vermont
July 1, 1995