How to Brew – By John Palmer
Everything You Need To Know To Brew Beer Right The First Time

This is the book to own for home brewing. I found it especially useful after I had done a few extract batches and was looking to go into the all-grain realm. The book goes into a lot of detail and it can move quickly at times. As I continued to brew I began to rely on it more and more. Other books out there were either too detailed, or too basic in terms of all grain brewing. This book is very detailed about all grain brewing and it gives a really nice chapter on ‘how’ to do it. There are several other chapters on the specifics behind all grain brewing as well. The appendices on building out your own chiller, mash tun, and gravity system present interesting challenges to tackle as you move ahead with brewing.

The entire book is also available online at this url: http://www.howtobrew.com.

Topics unique to this book:

• Best explanation out there on your first all-grain batch

• Covers details on milling mashing, mash pH, lautering.

• Formulating recipes

• Building your own wort chiller

• Building a mash/lauter Tun

• Metallurgy and brewing

• Gravity systems

• RDWHAHB – Relax, Don’t Worry, Have a Home Brew

Covers everything from A-Z in brewing. A good text if you only had one book to buy and were a raw beginner. Some of the specialty chapters are worth checking too and go way beyond a what you might expect from a watered down ‘dummies’ book. The chapters on the ingredients in beer, needed equipment, extract brewing, bottling and kegging are good. The emphasis on secondary fermentation is good. I found the all-grain section a little oversimplified, enough information to get started but not enough to get past the basics. A good chunk of the book (100 pages out of about 400) is recipes, with extract and all grain variations on almost every style of beer. Then the book gets interesting and goes into cider and meads, a topic you rarely see. Then it gets even more interesting with a chapter on gluten free brewing (making beer without standard barley or wheat). Also covers green practices in brewing and organic ingredients, judging beer, and beer troubleshooting.

Topics unique to the book:

• Emphasis on secondary fermentation
• Basic intro to all grain brewing
• First Wort Hopping (covered in chapter 12 on all grain brewing)
• Brewing cider at home
• Brewing mead and its sub categories – traditional, melomel (fruit), and others (braggot, metheglin) in dry or sweet variations.
• Brewing green and using organic ingredients
• Gluten free brewing
• Home brew competitions and beer tasting
• Beer quality troubleshooting

Pickup this book after you have been brewing for several months to fill in some gaps in your knowledge and open the door to new ideas. The book is compact in size but thick. It is not suitable to read for a raw beginner. It gets into a lot of complicated and advanced areas. I would get it in the first year and refer back to it over the course of your progression from beginner to master. Mainly the book focuses on how to perfect your brewing processes. Every home brewer can get a lot out of this book.

Topics unique to this book:

• Sanitization techniques
• Answers about use of materials in brewing, such as CPVC vs copper pipes, stainless steel vs aluminum, etc
• Dry hopping vs using a hopback
• Brewing with different levels of water hardness
• Reusing yeast and re-pitching rates, yeast considerations for lager beers
• All grain techniques, tradeoffs with different mash schedules, and the basic chemistry involved
• Putting beer on tap using nitrogen (nitro)
• Troubleshooting to improve head stability, chill haze, DMS, etc.
• Troubleshooting with bad batches

]]> http://www.brewersfriend.com/2008/09/27/the-homebewers-answer-book-%e2%80%93-by-ashton-lewis/feed/ 0 http://www.brewersfriend.com/2008/08/31/beer-tap-into-the-art-and-science-%e2%80%93-by-charles-bamforth/ http://www.brewersfriend.com/2008/08/31/beer-tap-into-the-art-and-science-%e2%80%93-by-charles-bamforth/#comments Sun, 31 Aug 2008 22:08:58 +0000 Larry http://www.brewersfriend.com/?p=136 Beer, Tap Into the Art and Science – By Charles Bamforth

If you want to know everything about the history of beer, the processes of brewing, and the chemistry behind each of the ingredients this is the book. It is full of interesting facts and quotes about beer, yet it is a very serious approach. Contains details on the chemical composition of grains and the malting process. The chapter on hops covers the treasured plant’s original shaky introduction into beer in Europe, where and how it is grown, and all facets of its chemical makeup. The chapter on the brewing process is full of details about modern day brew house vessels, quality control, and considerations and trade offs during production.

This book does not touch on home brewing, nor is it a ‘how to’ guide in any sense. It gives an elevated sense of appreciation for beer, its rich history, and elaborate modern production process. The author hammers home the point of nearly freezing beer for at least three days before bottling to drop out the remaining sediment. That may be something to try in my next home brew batch.

Topics unique to this book:

• History of beer and its ingredients
• Tables on beer production and consumption
• Information on the positive health effects of moderate alcohol consumption
• Large scale brewing process schematic (page 54, 2^nd edition)
• Diagrams of large scale brewing equipment: Mash converter, lauter tun, wort kettle, hot wort receiver, and wort cooler. (starting page 132, 2^nd edition)
• Information on the various defects that can occur in beer and how to correct

For a home brewer who likes numbers and math, it is a fairly interesting peek into what brewing for a living looks like. Lots of details about how to test ingredients for quality. Making consistent beer every time on a large scale is a tough job!

The target audience of this book is brewing staff employed by large beer breweries. Covers procedures on quality assurance relating to the entire brewing process. The idea of scientifically testing beer at each stage is intriguing but not very practical for the home brewer. Large scale brewing is extremely technical, involving lots of scientific testing and data analysis. At each step in the beer production process quality control plays a huge role. There are many ‘tweaks’ that can be done along the way to a adjust a beer’s final profile. Some of these are way out there for a home brewer, and it makes me trust my home brew a lot more over commercial beer because I know exactly what is in it!

Topics unique to this book:

• Large scale brewing practices
• Using statistical measures to control brewing quality
• Twenty key quality control checks in a brewery
• Breakdown of statistics on ingredients (grain, water, hops, yeast)
• Water quality standards tables by impurity
• Chemistry involved in brewing

This book is not about home brewing, it is about beer. Every page contains vivid color images of beer labels, bottles, ingredients, production, and people enjoying beer. The first section briefly covers the history of beer, its ingredients, production, and styles. The second, and much more lengthy section is an encyclopedia of beers from around the world organized by country and brewery with many pictures of the different labels and bottles.

If you are planning a trip to Europe to sample beers, avoid Norway, Sweden, and Finland because of their high tax rates on beer and historical restrictions on alcohol. “Norway levies the highest and most punitive rate of duty on beer in the world”, page 116

The best place to go is Belgium and Germany:
“About 30% of all the breweries in the world are in Germany.” page 146

Awesome quote:
“Make sure that the beer – four pints a week – goes to the troops under fire before any of the parties in the rear get at drop.” – Winston Churchill, in a note to the Secretary of State, 1944.

Topics Unique to this book:

• History of beer and brewing

• History of prohibition and brew during war times

• Overview of large scale production of beer

• Description of 75 different classifications of beer

• Tour of beers from 32 regions

This was the most balanced book I could find on how to brew beer at home. Some books go into too much detail about all sorts of things such as PH, water balance, and yeast cell counts. This book mentions those concepts briefly but stays focused on helping you learn to brew step by step. Other books omit too many details, or glaze over certain key concepts and left me a little confused. It is easy to read and contains plenty of drawings. The tables are also useful to refer back to.

This book has great information on advanced concepts. For those of you looking into going ‘all-grain’, this book contains a full explanation of the additional equipment you will need and the procedure. Interested in kegging, force carbonation, filtering? This book has that too.

Topics Unique to this book:

• One of the best explanations on brewing for beginners.
• Brewing with malt extract plus steeping grains.
• How to start all grain brewing: mashing, lautering, and sparging.
• Using draft systems, kegs, CO2 for bottling, large batch brewing.

Browsing through the 80 recipes in this book was a great source of inspiration for my next batch of home brew. If you can’t decide what to do next, pick up this book. There is bound to be something you haven’t tried.

The title is misleading, the sub-title would be more accurate. It is primarily recipes. The book contains short introductory chapters on ingredients and brewing that other books have covered in more detail. If you don’t know what terms like lovibond, OG, FG, and IBU are I would read an introductory how to brew book first.

The recipes are primarily setup for all grain brewers. For extract based brewers the recipes are modified to ‘fit’ the style. I get the sense the authors are all grain brewers who wanted to broaden the market for their book by adding the extract formulations.

This is a great book to browse and see what a style has in common in terms of grains, hops and yeast.

Topics unique to this book:

• Recipe categories include: Light Lager, Pilsner, European Amber Lager, Dark Lager, Bock, Light Hybrid, Amber Hybrid , English Pale Ale, Scottish and Irish Ale, American Ale, English Brown Ale, Porter, Stout, Indian Pale Ale, German What and Rye , Belgian and French Ale, Sour Ale, Belgian Strong Ale, Strong Ale, Fruit, Spice Herb or Vegetable, Smoke and Wood Aged, Specialty Beers.
• A nice chart of hops and the various characteristics of each is on page 20.

This book contains 25 fun and ‘extreme’ beer recipes. The introduction surrounding the makeup of ingredients is well done and more detailed than most books. This book contains a lot of photography and the images are excellent. The intro to brewing chapter is a good review, but there are other books out there that go into more detail. Get this book for the information about using fruits and spices in your beer, or the best beer and food pairings. The recipes are extract based, which makes them accessible to beginners, but some of the recipes are also quite complex.

Topics unique to this book

• Brewing with fruit: (apricots, arctic cloud berries, black currants, blueberries, white muscat grape concentrate, raisins, raspberries, sour cherries, strawberries, sweet cherries)
• Brewing with spices: (allspice, anise, cardamom seed, chicory, coriander, cinnamon sticks, coffee, ginger, grains of paradise, juniper berries, licorice root, rosemary, saffron threads, spruce tips, st. john’s wort, valerian).
• Brewing with other ingredients: (pumpkin, pepper corns, molasses, wood chips, etc)
• Adding sugar during fermentation to boost ABV
• High gravity beers

I love the passion of this author and the Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, and highly recommend both of his books.

If you have ever considered growing hops, barely, or herbs this is a wealth of information. The book also contains 29 recipes that call for some of these exotic and historical ingredients. Very useful if you want to brew beer without hops or brew in styles from centuries ago.

I feel confident setting up my hop yard based on the information contained here. Contains details on everything about growing hops, from planting, stringing, watering, feeding, eliminating pests, and treating disease, to harvesting and drying. Each hops plant can yield over a pound of dried hops after the second year, and at current hops prices this is well worth looking into if you have a sunny unused area.

In terms of growing your own grains, you will need a lot of space and time. According to the book, a 20′x40′ plot can yield up to 47 pounds of grain, which is only about five all grain batches. This book also covers how to malt, which is a detailed and time intensive process.

Topics unique to this book.

• Profile of 40+ herbs used in historical brewing processes: (Alecost, Anise Hyssop, Basil, Bee Balm, Betony, Birch, Blackberry, Blessed Thistle, Borage, Chamomile, Clary Sage, Coriander, Dandelion, Elder, Elecampane, Gentian, Ginger, Ginseng, Greek Oregano, Heather, Horehound, Hyssop, Juniper, Lavender, Lemon Balm, Licorice, Milk Thistle, Mint, Nasturtium, Nettles, Raspberry, Rhubarb, Rose Hips, Rosemary, Sage, Savory, Spruce, Sweet Woodruff, Thyme, Valerian, Wintergreen, Yarrow)
• 29 Recipes containing specialty herbs, including: (Dandelion bitter, Quinoa Bitter, Chica De Jora, Chili Beer, Rhubarb Ale, Gingered Ale, Gotlandsdrika, Pumpkin Ale, Oregano Pale, Sorghum Ale)
• Growing and malting your own grain