Scotch Ale by Gregory J. Noonan

I'm conflicted about this book.  The first 1/3 is the history of brewing in Scotland, which provides lots of background into the evolution of Scottish beer styles.  The last 1/3 is a listing of Scotch breweries and products, it's only slightly interesting and 15 years out of date at this point.

This only leaves 60 pages specifically devoted to malts, hops, water, yeast and brewing techniques.  Noonan does an excellent job of packing a lot of information in, but it's not well organized.  There's brewing technique information in the history section and even a few gems scattered in the brewery listing section.

Basically this book reminded me of eating a lobster - to get everything out of it, you really have to work over the whole book for small morsels.

That said, I do like this book.  It's the best resource on Scotch Ale I've seen and has great recipes for making both modern and historical Scotch Ales.  With the price of hops going through the roof I expect we'll see a resergence of interest in this low hoped style

So get ahead of the wave and start working on your Scotch Ales now.

Buy it here