Brewing Classic Styles or Designing Great Beers?

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BillTheSlink

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If you could only afford one or the other next month and you had just embarked on your all grain career and want to learn as much as possible and yet not be overwhelmed, which would you buy?
 
Both are great books, but it depends on what you want to get out of them. If you want tried and true recipes that will get you off on the right foot, brewing classic styles is perfect. But if you really want to learn how good beer is made and all the details behind it, then designing great beers is the right choice (although it can be a bit intense at times).
 
I bought Brewing Classic Styles first. It's been very helpful for me to brew some great tried-and-true recipes first, and get my processes down before I start creating my own recipes. That way, if something isn't right, I pretty much know it's a brewing process problem that needs to be fixed, not a recipe.
 
For me, it's Designing Great Beers, no question. If I really need a reference for a recipe, there's plenty here, and other places on the web. The information in Designing Great Beers transcends recipes.
 
Personally, brewing classic recipes is the better way to learn. The recipe maker (usually) knows what to expect and will relay that. You as a beer appreciator usually know more or less what to expect from certain classic styles. It will help you learn which aspects of beer-making contribute which qualities.

After you have some of those under your belt, designing great beers really will give you a lot more tools and understanding. It'll take you to the next level.

Just my 2 cents.
 
For me, it's Designing Great Beers, no question. If I really need a reference for a recipe, there's plenty here, and other places on the web. The information in Designing Great Beers transcends recipes.
i agree with this, I love this book. use it near daily.
 
Brewing Classic Styles - you will buy both sooner or later (and then like 10 more) but Brewing Classic Styles is wonderful.
 
How about the obligatory "It depends".

What's your expectation? There aren't any recipes in Designing Great Beers, just tons of info to help you understand how to create great recipes to style. I don't consider that a drawback, but someone else might.
 
Give the library a try, they might have em both! Then you can decide what you need for reference.
 
Designing great beers, sorry Jamil

I have learned a whole lot more about brewing from Designing great beers, brewing classic styles gives a nice synopsis of each category and what to look for but there is a whole lot more in Designing great beers.

That being said, I have both.
 
I like having them both side by side. The recipes in BCS are simple, award winning, and easy to comprehend. The DGB book is fantastic and probably a better reference, but if you have both open at the same time to understand how a good recipe is already put together, it works wonders.

If you're just starting in all grain, I'd get BCS first. Knock out a couple of solid beers first and then get DGB to really enhance and fine tune recipes to your liking. But these should both be in your library eventually.
 
This thread needs a poll.

Designing Great Beers is a great book, and it will really help you become a better brewer. Brewing Classic Styles is just a recipe book with a little info about each style while Designing Great Beers is much more in depth.
 
I disagree that BCS is just a recipe book. There's a lot of solid info in there about processes, etc. The recipes in there are going to be great if they're brewed well...they can be used as a barometer for how well you're doing. If they don't turn out well, something needs to be fixed.

I agree that Designing Great Beers is a lot more in-depth about recipe construction, and you can learn a ton from it that you can't from BCS, but the question is "which should I buy first..." I think both are absolutely required reading for any homebrewer, and I've learned a lot from both of them. I just think a new brewer should get their processes down first (read BCS), then jump into Designing Great Beers after the processes are mastered.
 
I have both. I have read both. I use BCS more than DGB. Jamil developed a lot of his recipes using DGB.

I like taking the recipes in BCS and then modifying them to fit my process and taste. You could do the same with DGB, but you might need a few more iterations which means more beer.
 
I bought both books at the same time, and I think I found a useful comparison. Let's think Food Network.

Designing Great Beers can be compared to Good Eats, and I would compare Brewing Classic Styles to Tyler's Ultimate. Naturally, if you are not a fan, the reference means nothing, so I will try to explain myself a bit.

Alton's show, Good Eats, dives so far into the science and history of food and cooking, you may miss the recipes as he covers them. An earlier poster described Daniels book as "intense"; a more perfect description does not exist. I love Good Eats, but I love and understand food and cooking. My cooking is at a point where I can go beyond the recipes, and I want to know "why", and Alton provides me with the answers. Further, I believe that Jamil took a lot of inspiration from Daniels as he formulated recipes, so you actually pick up a lot of similar information by cutting through a lot of the fat that personally, I was not ready for.

Tyler's Ultimate featured Tyler Florence traveling the globe and piecing together the best aspects of several recipes and techniques, essentially, forming the "ultimate" recipe. Jamil's book nails this concept. For the most part, his recipes define their styles (he pretty much writes the BJCP guidelines) and they are proven. I am not at the point as a brewer where I can identify hops and grains the way I can identify herbs and spices, so I need Jamil's book for help. His recipes will be better than mine everytime, because they have been tested, tweaked, and improved. He also has an example and description for EVERY style. Generally, it is a page or two dedicated to the process and style, and a page for the recipe. Daniels goes on for 20 pages about British Bitters and Pale Ales, but many specific styles are not even mentioned.

To sum up, if you want to know "why", go with Daniels book, if you want to skip to "how", go with Jamil's. Personally, I lean toward Brewing Classic Styles.
 
I bought both books at the same time, and I think I found a useful comparison. Let's think Food Network.

Designing Great Beers can be compared to Good Eats, and I would compare Brewing Classic Styles to Tyler's Ultimate.

...

I think that is a pretty good analogy and would agree. But I would say Designing Great Beers is like Good Eats if you exclude the episode on brewing because you run into cosmic paradoxes.
 
I have about 40 brewing books in my library right now.

I've read and used all of them at one time or another. All highlighted too.

Whenever I have a thought about a particular process/technique I usually end up thumbing through 4-5 of them to get several points of view.

They are very handy. :D
 
If you could only afford one or the other next month and you had just embarked on your all grain career and want to learn as much as possible and yet not be overwhelmed, which would you buy?

I guess it depends how much it takes to overwhelm you. ;)


Designing Great Beers is the foundation for Brewing Classic Styles. When you're building a house, what you you build first? Foundation, or the first floor?
 
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