Getting back into brewing soon

So since around February I haven't been able to brew for a number of reasons but now starting in September I'll have a place to brew and the time and money to do it. I was planning on starting to brew in the next week or two so I can have a couple batches ready for the fall, which is IMO the best "beer" season. So to prepare for this I bought 3 more 6g fermentation buckets, a 10g boiling pot, and just got a basic kegging kit (5gal, 5lb co2, dual reg, hoses, and a mini-fridge with the hops of converting it). I'll be making an extract 'winter christmas ale' with my dad since he finally got interested in brewing after a few months of prodding. Once that's out of the way I want to start moving into partial mashes for a few months before trying to go AG. What I'm looking for now is a couple of recommendations for resources and recipes to I can figure out a schedule for the fall. I'd like to now more about the styles of beer, why a beer is a Marzen or a Pilsner, and I was hoping someone could recommend a good book I can look over for the next week or two. Also, if anyone has some PM recipes that they have tried and thought were of particular mention it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, I'll be lurking around here more often now.

You don't need a book to tell you about the different styles. Just go to the bjcp website. If you want a recipe for each of those styles, I would buy Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff.

rocketman768 said:

You don't need a book to tell you about the different styles. Just go to the bjcp website. If you want a recipe for each of those styles, I would buy Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff.

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Perfect recommendations; you can get the style outlines and descriptions for free from BJCP, and Jamil's book contains at least one recipe (that's won an award) for every style in the current BJCP guidelines as well as a discussion of the style more generally and approaches to brewing it.

If you want to move on from there, Designing Great Beers covers a lot of ground as far as non-Belgians, and Brew Like a Monk covers Belgians in detail.

When I started brewing I used The Joy of Homebrewing and then started trying to develop my own recipes and or using the recipes on this site. Xmas last year I was given Brewing Classic Styles and I have been brewing exclusively from it ever since.

My beer has gone from getting "Meh" reactions from my friends to late night keg killing parties. Part of it was getting my all grain process dialed in, but the recipes really help me learn. Take lots of notes!