Brewer's Friend Home Brewing Software

Barley Wine, 2008 Recipe

I will brew Barley Wine every spring so it is ready by winter. Next time I will try using champagne yeast a few days into the primary fermentation to get the final gravity down. Extra hops would help give it a more awesome bitter flavor. A full wort boil would also get the utilization of the hops higher. I created the IBU calculator on this site after I brewed this batch, had I checked it I would have known to add more hops. This is an expensive batch of beer and it takes a long time to ferment and age in the bottle, but it is worth waiting for. It is not a beer you can drink a lot of in one setting. It is more of a beer you drink from a snifter to finish off the night.

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Brewing the World’s Great Beers – By Dave Miller

Brewing the World’s Great Beers – By Dave Miller
A step-by-step guide

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.

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Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff and John J. Palmer

Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff and John J. Palmer
80 Winning Recipes Anyone Can Brew

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.

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Per Batch Miscellaneous Item Costs

When calculating the cost of a batch of beer, it is easy to overlook the little items like sanitizer, bottle caps, clarifier, priming sugar, and specialty items like burton/gypsum salts or Irish moss. For those of us who keg our beer, don’t forget we have to pay for CO2 recharges every couple of years. For the time being most places in North America can take clean fresh water for granted, though some people do prefer to brew with spring water. No matter what, home brewing is STILL cheaper than store bought beer, because there is no marketing, packaging, labor, or transportation costs to deal with. Even if home brew was more expensive, it still tastes better and is more satisfying to drink.

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Healthy Fermentation Video

This video shows you what healthy ale fermentation looks like. It is an IPA, with OG 1.06, after three days in the primary fermenter.

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Extreme Brewing – By Sam Calagione

Extreme Brewing – By Sam Calagione
An Enthusiast’s Guide to Brewing Craft Beer at Home

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.

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The Homebrewer’s Garden – By Joe Fisher and Dennis Fisher

The Homebrewer’s Garden – Joe Fisher and Dennis Fisher
How to easily grow, prepare, and use your own Hops, Malts and Brewing Herbs

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

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First batch tips

Here are some tips that will keep you out of trouble for your first batch. These tips apply to an extract style recipe using malt extract (dry or liquid).

1. Scrub the kitchen, sink, stove, and all counter tops.
2. Start boiling the water early, since that will take awhile.
3. Do not use bleach to sanitize equipment, instead get a one step no rinse sanitizer.  With bleach, there is a possibility of a bleach odor left behind in your carboy unless it is rinsed many times, but that risks contamination.  Star San is a great product and it is worth being worry free in this area.
4. Do not use boiling/boiled water to sanitize or clean anything, unless you know it is cool enough to work with.  No need for this if you use a one step sanitizer.
5. If using steeping grains, make sure to turn off the burner for the first 25 minutes. Do not let the temp get above 180F or else you can get tanic flavors.
6. Watch the pot and stir a lot when it is getting close to initial boil. Boil over is where a foamy head on the wort develops and rises over the top of the kettle, making a sticky mess. Stirring avoids this problem.
7. For wort cooling, use an ice bath the first few times. Have at least eight trays worth of ice cubes on hand to get the wort chilled quickly.
8. Prepare a sanitized jug or bottle on hand to top off your wort in the carboy with water.
9. Keep the lid on the pot while the wort is cooling. Avoid smelling it, sampling it, or checking on it.
10. Don’t forget to aerate after pitching the yeast, basically that means to rock the carboy and splash the contents around after you get everything into it.

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Brewing Up a Business – By Sam Calagione

Brewing Up a Business- By Sam Calagione
Adventures in Entrepreneurship from the Founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery

In this combination auto biography, business account, and brewery guide Sam Calagione, lays down what challenging the big American breweries is like and his mission to redefine of beer to public. It was not an easy path, but it has a happy ending. Some of the stories he went through are just amazing. He is open to sharing many of his mistakes over the decade it took to build up the Dogfish Head brand.

This was a very informative read, and I’m grateful that he is promoting craft brewing as an industry in the United States. Even if you are not planning to start your own brewery, it gets you more in touch with the industry as a whole. In terms of business sense, the insights shared could be applied to almost any area. If you are an entrepreneur who likes beer you will appreciate this book.

Topics unique to this book

• Starting a brewery
• Starting a pub house
• Managing a brand identity
• Niche marketing
• Creativity in brewing

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Equipment for Starting with Ales

Here is an inventory of essential brewing equipment you will need for your first batch. With this setup you can only brew one batch at a time. This is about as ‘tight’ as you can get. Many of the items can be found used if you have the time to bargain hunt. The cost of your ingredients will run about $40, so you are looking at $250, half a day to brew, an hour to rack, and two hours to bottle for your first five gallon batch!

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