"New Brewing Lager Beer" by Greg Noonan is one the more advanced homebrewer should have.
Ya know, there's a lot of interesting info in that book, but I've never felt it was real relevant to a homebrewer..at least not THIS homebrewer!
I just got done reading "New Brewing Lager Beer" by Greg Noonan. Obviously, he was a very smart man who knew what he was doing. IMO, the writing style is just too information rich and the pearls are buried within. For example, the tip he gives to add highly roasted malts like Carafa at the end of mashing or during the sparge (to reduce the extraction of bitterness/astringency) is just one small sentence buried within a paragraph at the bottom of a page. I dont' have the book here at the office, but it is like page 152 or page 183 or something like that. The whole book is like that. I had to be amped up on 3 cups of coffee just to keep the focus up with that book. It's graduate level material, IMO. Other than the water treatement and a bunch of info on decoction (which I'm too lazy to do), I didn't find it much use for my homebrewing. I'll look at it again in a year--maybe I'll get something more out of it then when I have a bit more experience under my belt.
Not the case with Drew's book. B&N, Books-a-Million, Amazon online, etc. all carry it (as should you LHBS). IMO, you should have it, just like you should have JP's "How to Brew."