Over the years Oxford University Press has brought out The Oxford Companion to Food, The Oxford Companion to Drink, The Oxford Companion to Wine, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink and The Oxford Companion to Italian Food. Now they have published a companion that celebrates beer.

The Oxford Companion to Beer, edited by Garrett Oliver (£35), is a massive tome that weighs in at 3lb 12oz (920 pages), which covers virtually everything you need to know about beer and just a little bit more. Like the other companions before it, this indispensable publication includes A to Z entries, written by 165 experts, that cover both the technical details of the brewing process and the social effects of brewing on regions around the world.

The book also considers the social and political implications of sharing a beer and offers a few quirky facts that have been added just for good measure. Many of the subjects covered have seldom been written about until now. There are more than 100 entries on hops alone.

The result is a complete compendium of the world of beer that challenges orthodoxies, illuminates histories and meticulously untangles mysteries that have been ignored for too long.

Garrett Oliver launched The Oxford Companion to Beer at Oxford Brookes University’s training restaurant, and Hook Norton Brewery. Obviously a number of members of the Campaign for Real Ale were present, along with hoteliers, brewers and Oxfordshire beer enthusiasts.

Oxford University Press always adds an element of style to their book launches and this was no exception. As Garrett Oliver has been brewmaster at the Brooklyn Brewery, New York, since 1994, he brought several of his brews for the invited audience to try, pairing them with a scrumptious array of canapés prepared by the students in the Brookes’ kitchen. These included smoked duck on fig purée served on dark rye, and rolls of Parma ham filled with goat’s cheese and rocket. These were paired with a new beer called The Companion, which Garrett and his Brooklyn team created to celebrate the publication of the book. This dry, fruity wheat beer, which Garrett described as a wheat equivalent to barley wine, was brewed in an old style from four new floor malts created by his sidekick and master maltser Thomas Kraus-Weyermann.

Raising his glass to the assembled crowd Garrett said: “The Oxford Companion to Beer will impart knowledge while The Companion brew will impart conviviality.”

Garrett admitted that he was slightly apprehensive when first approached to edit the book. He had seen the way friends who had undertaken similar tasks were reduced to gabbling idiots by the time the job was done. Fearing for his sanity, he took some time before accepting the commission, which called for him to gather up experts in their own particular field from all over the world.

He said: “The entries are not conjecture, everything had to be written by experts. When we needed information on the history of the Danish brewing industry, for example, we used a Danish historian, information on hops was supplied by the top hop scientist in America and the entry on light beer was written by someone who had been brewing light beer for more than 30 years.”

Like other Companions published by OUP, the book took more than four years to compile. Garrett said that by the fourth year, emails, letters and documents were dominating his life. His desk was covered with sheets of paper, and his face was beginning to take on that crazed look he’d seen on others facing a similar task.

Although Garrett is American, it was during his time in London, having moved to the UK and while drinking in London pubs, that he discovered that beer was not the stuff he thought it was. He had been 12 years old, when he asked his uncle Bill from New Jersey if he could taste his beer. The uncle thought about it for a few moments then said if he wanted it that bad he had better try it. Garrett gulped it down and then spat it out on the lawn. He found the taste so nasty it was years before he tried beer again. It was the British brews that converted him.

On returning to New York, he began to brew his own in a search for the kind of beer he had been served here. He even started his own home brewing club, which was when he met Mark Whitty, a beer enthusiast who had moved to America from the UK to start the Manhattan Brewing Company. Mark was looking for an apprentice and offered the job to Garrett. Although it meant giving up a lucrative job and taking a 75 per cent pay cut, Garrett accepted — such was his love of beer and brewing at that point.

The Oxford Companion to Beer is now on sale in all major bookshops.