Book Week: The Beer Wench’s Guide to Beer

• What is it? A personal beer tour by Ashley Routson
• Who’s it For? Aspiring beer geeks
• Reviewer Disclosure. I know Ashley a bit and have met her a couple times–and had one unintentional online fracas with her.
• Scope. The U.S. mostly, though she touches on foreign styles

The Review

This book is aptly named. It’s not a general primer, written by a faceless writer in the classic voice-of-God third-person. It’s a personal book written in the first person in a very chatty, familiar voice. You have the feeling, very early on, that Ashley Routson has you by the elbow and is taking you on a tour of the beer world, pointing out the things that catch her eye. During the tour, she offers a very current sense of the way American beer geeks see the world–which I sense is also quite personal. Routson is in many ways the face of American craft beer, and folks who are entering that world will get a strong sense of its flavor. (She h …