At the time of his early death from cancer he was 37, living in Southampton, was married and had a son.
In his first book "The Big Book of Brewing", Dave Line helped people to begin to reach the quality they were looking for, by using ingredients and processes that were used in breweries, with simple homebrewing equipment.
At the time people were not getting satisfactory results, because they were using substandard ingredients, low quality syrups or beer kits, baker's yeast, and were not technically informed in the processes of brewing.
He advocated the use of proper brewer's yeast, whole-grain barley malts, whole hops, and even went into simple analysis and comparison of the chemistry of water used for brewing different beers, and rudimentary water treatment.
He was a regular contributor to Amateur Winemaker, and in a decade, probably had more recipes published than anyone else.