How to Brew by John J. Palmer

Shooter said:

Of course, you're going to eventually have to return that book. Time to add it to the Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza/Winter Solstice gift list!

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Revvy said:

It's a recipe by John Palmer...it's not going to need any tweaking from an amatuer brewing his first batch, who understands very little about the brewing process, how ingrediants go about balancing a recipe, or what ingredients does which.

John Palmer's not an amateur, he doesn't need your help to make his recipe taste any better.

Just follow it and concentrate on YOUR PROCESS. If you mess with a recipe and it doesn't turn out, you can't then figure out then if it was your messing with the recipe, or your making a mistake in your process (like sanitation for instance).

I firmly believe initially that you shoudl brew your first few kits, and recipes "as is" not messing willy nilly with them til you understand the process...

And rather than throwing fruit or honey into an established kit recipe, to "make it better"...that if you want something else in the beer, then buy a kit, or brew a recipe with that ingredient already in it. THEN the recipe will ALREADY BE BALANCED to accept that ingredient....

Beer recipes are a balance...and if you add to one variable, that will affect other parts of it...For example if you decide to raise the gravity of a balanced beer...a beer where the hops balance out the sweetness...and you raise the maltniness of it without alaso balancing the hops, then your beer may end up being way too cloyingly sweet.

So for the first few batches just concentrate on the process, and also learn as much as possible. Each time you brew, you will learn something new.

But thinking about tweaking a recipe from one of the "brew gods" who has written or co-authored two of the "bibles" of brewing, How to brew, and Brewing Classic Styles , is sort of like wanting to go from paint by numbers to wanting to help restore the Mona Lisa, and wanting to make an "improvement" here or there.

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rico567 said:

It's easy to find posts in this forum where people counsel beginners to get into all-grain right away, or kegging, or buying / building a complex RIMS / HERMS system. I couldn't disagree more; the best way to establish a good foundation in homebrewing is to learn and concentrate on the basics, and build on that.

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rico567 said:

THIS. It's worth repeating, and re-reading if you're starting out. Two years ago, I was in this same position. I did two things that I've been grateful for since: 1. I read the online version of Palmer (I bought the book later). 2. I bought extract kits from Midwest, and concentrated on my process.

I have since moved to all-grain without any issues, making good beer, and I credit my good start with that transition.

It's easy to find posts in this forum where people counsel beginners to get into all-grain right away, or kegging, or buying / building a complex RIMS / HERMS system. I couldn't disagree more; the best way to establish a good foundation in homebrewing is to learn and concentrate on the basics, and build on that.

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Revvy said:

The next step would to me be using an extract with steeping grains kit/ They are better quality and the steeping grains give the beer bigger depth of flavor than a straight extract beer.

After I did some of those, I started playing around with non kit recipes from this site, and I also started playing around with recipe formulations....I started using free online recipe calculators like this one, Beer Calculus . homebrew recipe calculator which helped me understand how the different ingredients affect each other. FIrst I started typing in these recipes and playinig with them to see what a pound of such and such grain did to the SG of the beer, or how this hop made the beer more or less bitter.

At the same time I started reading more and more about the different ingredients I was using....I found that googling the names helped get me a lot of info on them, plus reading articles and catalogs and books about it.

The BJCP style guide was a big help too, learning the numbers, OG, FG, IBU, SRM's ranges for different styles. BJCP Style Guidelines

Next I formulated a couple of my own recipes and played around with that, making them better or different.

My next step after that was transfering some of my recipes from extract to partial mashes, where I would get the largest amount of my fermentables from mashing my own grains, and then adding some extract.

Around this time I also played with harvest my own yeast, both washing and bottle harvesting.

After that I made a cooler and started doing 2.5 gallon All grain brews, converting those Partial Mashes to All grain, and brewing them on my stove top...

After that I got a turkey fryer and wort chiller so I can do full volume boils and started brewing all grain, brewing some of the recipes on here, and creating my own...

I also still do some extract with grain recipes, Partial Mashes, and 2.5 gallon stove top brewing, depending on my mood.

This winter I tried my hand at brewing lagers instead of ales, since I discovered a few that I like and was able to have some form of temp control....

I also tried my hand at brewing some strong ales, and playing with different yeasts, then my usually clean ones, trying yeast that added their own character to the beers.

A good thing to do is to try brewing Single Malt and Hop Beers where you brew very simple beers to get an idea of how different hops work with them, or different yeasts...it's a really good way to again get an idea how, like cooking, diffeent ingredients play off of each other.

As you can see, I didn't just jump from one technique like extract to all grain, I also tried to learn as much as I could about ingredients and recipe creations as well.....An I also tried to perfect my processes, like bottling, yeast harvesting, things like that...

I still have a long way to go, there's a ton of stuff to learn, different ways to brew to explore, and new styles to try and brew as well...

There's a huge amount of things you can do in this hobby.

Hope this helps!

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