What are you reading?

So, I looked to see if there were any threads on the subject before posting this thread, but if I somehow missed one then I totally understand if a Mod nukes this one.

However! In the meantime, I'm curious to hear what everyone's reading when it comes to periodicals. I'm really starting to get into appreciating beer itself, but I also come from a hospitality/food service background and intend on testing for Cicerone certification sometime in the next few years, so I hope to develop my knowledge of beer and brewing past simply homebrew and into other aspects as well.

Part of that obviously, is keeping up-to-date with trends and such, and usually magazines are one of the best ways to do that. I've been looking online to see what there is available, and I was hoping you fine folks could offer some suggestions as well.

Right now the ones I've found are:

Draft Magazine
Beer Advocate (also happens to be one of my favorite sites)
Brew Your Own
Zymurgy
All About Beer
Beer Connoisseur


Any other ones I should check out? Ones to avoid?

Thanks!

I just picked up "The Complete Joy Of Homebrewing" by Charlie Papazian. I'm about fifty pages in and I'm already drooling over the possibilities of glorious beer from it.

My favorite from a homebrewing perspective is Zymurgy - truly top notch in terms of information. BYO is also good, though I find it to be less informative/interesting than Zymurgy.

The other ones you list are "beer culture" mags. I have read various issues of them and they can be interesting, but generally I am looking more for homebrew-related info.

I get beer advocate in the mail, and I love How to brew, by John Palmer. How to brew is a complete instruction for all things brewing. Extreme brewing is a great book of all extract clone recipes written by Sam Calgone of Dogfishhead. I adapt the recipes now to do as AG recipes.

Thanks for the replies so far - And I definetly agree that there are a ton of great books out there, but I'm specifically looking for info and advice on periodicals for the time being. I've got enough brewing books in my pipleline to last me to the apocalypse.

@JLem: Yeah, I figured that most folks here might have a heavier focus on homebrew-specific mags, but I figured it was worth asking. I'm interested in all of it, to be honest.

I'll second the endorsement of Zymurgy. I dropped my Brew Your Own subscription because I don't need two homdbrewing magazines and I want to be a member of the AHA for other reasons.

I know many people like it, but I actively dislike Beer Advocate.

Not just for beer but in the world generally I think people are relying less on periodicals and more on web -based resources like blogs. To keep up on the exploding Chicago beer scene, for example, I read a handful of blogs and social media, rather than periodicals.

@Pappers_: I definetly intend to keep up with a bunch of different online resources as well - I just like the hardcopy stuff too. It's also easier for me to archive and search if I need a particular bit of info.

If you don't mind explaining (either here or through PM's) I'd be very interested to hear why you're not a fan of Beer Advocate.

BattleGoat said:

If you don't mind explaining (either here or through PM's) I'd be very interested to hear why you're not a fan of Beer Advocate.

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My dislike of BA is probably unfair because I haven't read it or the website for at least five years. At that time, I found a combination of bad info and hyper -aggressive attitude to be annoying.

Fair enough. I've just started using it (the site) fairly recently, and so far I've found it to be a pretty good resource in regards to beer styles and reviews. Beyond that I really haven't explored it that deeply, so the hype you mention could still be there.

Just finished Radical Brewing and am going through Designing Great Beers again, looking to pick up a good in depth yeast book as well.

I don't do magazines, it is like junk food for the mind and contains nothing I can't obtain weeks earlier through online resources.

I've started reading Designing great beers. I was looking for a book that would help me to understand the different grains and how to make a beer. But so far i'm a few chapters in and it's not really explaining things well.

I understand what the difference between brownie and cookies and what the reasoning is. I'm just trying to understand that between beer.

What makes a beer a certain way and why different grain bills work together.
IS this the book i should be reading or is there a better option i should look into?

Kmart0104 said:

I've started reading Designing great beers. I was looking for a book that would help me to understand the different grains and how to make a beer. But so far i'm a few chapters in and it's not really explaining things well.

I understand what the difference between brownie and cookies and what the reasoning is. I'm just trying to understand that between beer.

What makes a beer a certain way and why different grain bills work together.
IS this the book i should be reading or is there a better option i should look into?

Click to expand...

It doesn't exactly hand you all the answers but gives you a basis to go by for different styles.

If you look at each style it has a graph of grains and the frequency of use in that style or in other words out of 100 recipes (example number only) looked at how often does grain x appear in it. Then it gies further and looks at the same recipes and graphs out what percentage of each grain makes up the total grain bill on average. This will give you a common useage guide to go by but it isn't the bible either.

There is also a breakdown of what each grain adds to a beer in regards to flavor and body as well as notes regarding average max percentage of grain bill reccomended for that grain in some cases due to various reasons.

I have read through the book twice now and randomly go back to various chapters for research while building new recipes and I always pick up something I either missed or didn't understand the last time I read it. So the more you brew, build recipes and discuss things with other brewers the more the book opens up.

You bought an excellent book that will stay relevant to you for a long time and will probably end up as one of the most read books in your brewing library.