Selfish? Give the gift of something you love!

Christmas is approaching, and if you don’t have a beer-lover to buy for, I have a list of beery gifts here good enough to turn any wine-lover to the light.

First of all, the books. As many of you know, I run a bookstore so, as many of you have now guessed, everyone in my family gets a book for Christmas. Here are a few of the beerlicious titles I’ll be handing out:

For the novices I’m looking at The Complete Beer Course: Boot Camp for Beer Geeks: From Novice to Expert in Twelve Tasting Classes by Joshua Bernstein. The self-described beer expert “demystifies the sudsy stuff, breaking down the elements that give each type its distinctively delicious flavor.”

For someone close whose level of cleanliness you trust

Charlie Papazian’s The Complete Joy of Homebrewing is an essential for any new brewers. This is the third edition, but the fourth isn’t coming out until after Christmas. Another new guide to brewing is called simply, How to Brew Beer by Bob Bridle. It’s a DK publication, which means it’ll be a pretty book, too. The Naked Brewer was recently put out by the ladies who wrote The Naked Pint, this a simple brewing guide companion to the Pint‘s tasting guide.

For the more experienced brewers: from the folks at CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) have out Brew Your Own British Real Ale by Graham Wheeler; and from the nut at Dogfish Head, Sam Calagione, Extreme Brewing: An Enthusiast’s Guide to Brewing Craft Beer at Home.

For those who prefer to be armchair drinkers, stay put and get weird with The Brewtal Truth Guide to Extreme Beers: An All-Excess Pass to Brewing’s Outer Limits by Adam Tepedelen, which ” featuring descriptions and ratings of more than a 100 of the most insane beers in the world.” Two that look awesome but are still in my to-read pile are Jeremy Cowan’s Craft Beer Bar Mitzvah: How It Took 13 Years, Extreme Jewish Brewing, and Circus Sideshow Freaks to Make Shmaltz Brewing Company an International Success, as is Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America’s Kings of Beer by William Knoedelseder.

A strange and wonderful book for the hipster in your life: Craft Beerds. Or, if said hipster is too cool even for that, then try Beer: A Genuine Collection of Cans by Dan Becker.

If  your beer-lover is brewing A LOT, a subscription to magazines Draft or Zymurgy may be in order.

If your beer-lover is like me and really just likes beer for the funny T-shirts and antique posters, here are a few apparel and accessories websites to try. I just recently stumbled across BrewerShirts.com, which has unique designs and some pretty clever puns. BrewTees.com is worth checking out, too.

Lastly, one of my old standby gifty go-tos is BeerBooks.com, from where I almost never actually buy books. But. They have good T-shirts, great old photographs, and spectacular old and foreign beer posters.

If, in the end, it turns out that you don’t have a beer-lover to give to this year, I’ll gladly supply a comprehensive, cross-referenced, alphabetized wish list and home address.