Designing Great Beers - not impressed

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rocketman768

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I'd heard a lot of good stuff about this book, so I put it in with my last order. I did a quick read through of it last night, and (don't flame me) I didn't really come out of it with much new or useful information. The first 10 chapters or so of the book are focused on the methods of calculation of parameters in a recipe, which you should already have down pat from a first-time book like How to Brew. All of the style chapters were basically a discussion of the styles and some charts on how some 1993 and 1994 competition beers were formulated (although some styles lack these charts, like the section on wheat beers).

Perhaps what I found the most useful was the section on hop oils. There is a good discussion about what each of them do and taste like, and there are charts about the average content of each oil in each type of hop. However, he devotes only 2-3 sentences to actually figuring out how to dry hop (something like: use 1 or 2 oz, then if you don't like it, adjust accordingly).

But, maybe I got the wrong impression of the book since I just skimmed it since I was eager to read it. If you like the book, would you mind sharing your favorite chapters or concepts in the book?
 
Mostly, it is just the best book available for getting guidlines of grist composition for the styles it covers as opposed to being another recipe book.

I don't even read the earlier stuff any, I just go straight for the styles sections any time I want to brew up something I have not tried yet.

THAT is why DGB is such a good book. It does not just give you a recipe for a beer styles, it gives you a how to and some insight as to what makes the substyles different.


I just wish the Daniels would right a follow up to include the full gamut of styles and substyles.
 
I fail to see how you did a "quick read" of this book. Its no text book, but not something I'd consider light reading. I've just started reading it, and so far like it a lot. It may not be for everyone though. If you want a good recipe book, get Brewing Classic Styles. I'm someone who geeks out on stuff like Good Eats. I like to have the knowledge on how and why we do things with brewing/cooking.
 
I'll +1 Gila's review and analysis, but I think the major shortcoming is that Daniels based his grist composition information on HB examples as opposed to benchmark commercial examples.

There's a wealth of knowledge to be gleaned from those pages, regardless.
 
I'm not thrilled with the book either to be honest. I do read it when I'm venturing into a new style though. I use BCS, Radical Brewing and DGB and get a feel for what I want to do.
 
It has been ages since I read it, but if I recall correctly he also goes into the history of many beer styles and talks about why these styles came around and why they use the different malts/hops etc. That info may or may not make you a better brewer, but I still found it interesting.

And +1 to the "not just another recipe book" comment.
 
You aren't going to get anything out of a quick gander at it. There's a ton of information about the historical context of the beers and how to build a recipe from the ground up. If you just want a good recipe, buy JZ's book; if you want to know how to build a recipe yourself, there's none - NONE - better than DGB.

As to Daniels basing his grist comp info on homebrew examples, that's probably the dataset he had most ready access to. I'd hope that if he ever writes DGB II, he's got the clout within the brewing community where he might be able to get that information more easily.
 
I consider it a reference text....I would not recommend sitting down and reading it cover to cover-its alot of information and don't go into the practical side of homebrewing. I also do what others have already mentioned....read relevant sections as they apply to beers you are interested in making.
 
I fail to see how you did a "quick read" of this book. Its no text book, but not something I'd consider light reading. I've just started reading it, and so far like it a lot. It may not be for everyone though. If you want a good recipe book, get Brewing Classic Styles. I'm someone who geeks out on stuff like Good Eats. I like to have the knowledge on how and why we do things with brewing/cooking.

It's only about 200 pages, and filled with charts and stuff. I read (word by word) How to Brew in less than a day...it's not hard to skim the book if you sit down with it for 2 hours. I'm also a big Alton Brown fan and absolutely love the book On Food and Cooking where he pulls a LOT of his info from (get it if you don't have it). Thanks for the suggestion of Brewing Classic Styles.

You aren't going to get anything out of a quick gander at it. There's a ton of information about the historical context of the beers and how to build a recipe from the ground up. If you just want a good recipe, buy JZ's book; if you want to know how to build a recipe yourself, there's none - NONE - better than DGB.

I suppose, but what I was getting at is the following. If I want to design a brand new recipe, I look at the most popular recipes on hbt of that style, then decide which grains and hops and yeast etc. I like/dislike. Then, maybe add some flair if I want. Then figure out acceptable ratios of grains to stay within style guidelines for color, flavor, gravity, blah blah. Then figure out how much hop flavor and bitterness I want within the guidelines. If the beer doesn't turn out the way I want, I modify the ingredients on the next batch of it until it tastes awesome.

I think this is pretty much common sense to anyone, but the book seems to basically restate the above paragraph except by expanding it to multiple chapters, and in place of the gadjillion recipes here to draw from, it just has an overly condensed table in that style's chapter (when it exists).

A bunch of you have mentioned the history of the styles that gets highlighted in the book. You are right, and I think he does a fairly good job with that. I'm just not quite sure it belongs in a book entitled "Designing...".
 
I find it interesting that the first post mentions some of the contest winning beers were from 15 years ago when they make a point that the recipes are current winners. confused?

I love technical stuff and I flip through this book all the time.

It is neat for the intermediate brewer to go to a section and find out what is important in a particular style. Comparing the recipes gives me good ideas for my own recipes.

I think the book is more geared for the intermediate brewer, it only touches on the basics and finer points. For me it is what I need, I had Charlie P's books and Extreme Brewing and this seemed to cover a lot of ground that those don't.

Check out Sam C's Extreme Brewing for a good article on dry hopping.

I just need a good book on all grain brewing now...
 
I really like the book as it serves as a good guide on how to build a recipe from the ground up. It tells you the malt and hop combinations for different styles of brews and I really liked the chapters on hops and hop utilization. It is not a page turning novel. It is more like a text book on brewing
 
I also own this book, but was not "unimpressed". Yes, there were some things that were repeated from "How to Brew" but this is a brewing book. I now have about 10-12 books on brewing and I can honestly say that most of them cover the same stuff for the most part. However, each book does have SOMETHING new and that's worth it for me. Then again, all of the knowledge in those books does not compare with the knowledge available right here on HBT.
 
I suppose, but what I was getting at is the following. If I want to design a brand new recipe, I look at the most popular recipes on hbt of that style, then decide which grains and hops and yeast etc. I like/dislike. Then, maybe add some flair if I want. Then figure out acceptable ratios of grains to stay within style guidelines for color, flavor, gravity, blah blah. Then figure out how much hop flavor and bitterness I want within the guidelines. If the beer doesn't turn out the way I want, I modify the ingredients on the next batch of it until it tastes awesome.

That does sound like the basic idea. And I think you and Daniels are using the same basic principles. But, for the purpose of writing a book, his way is the only way I can see that it would work.

From your description above, your "yardstick" for when you decide that a recipe is "finished" and needs no further tweaking is your palate.

In Daniels' book, he's using the combined opinions of the judges of the competitions as his yardstick.

If he wrote a book and just said "hey these are my recipes, this is how I figured them out, and they taste awesome", even if he had some good sound reasoning, it would be very difficult to know how accurate the recipes themselves are, because he'd have based it on his palate alone. That would make it harder for people to make a judgment call on whether it's a good book for learning the procedure of designing the recipe.

By making the winners of the competitions his "yardstick", he's got more statistical evidence to back up his reasoning. This makes it easier to trust his method (if not his recipes), because it's not based on the perceptions of just one person.
 
Why i regard the book worthwhile, at the bare minimum, is the statistical portions of the recipes alludes to the composition of contest winning beers, as hexmonkey described. When i ultimately design a recipe, i'll either start here at HBT and then turn to DGB, or vice versa. Usually what i've first developed follows very closely with the second reference. Because i hold HBT to a higher regard (due to the voice of MANY experienced brewers), to me this shows that DGB does what it was intended to do - develop a "standard" recipe composition for a given style based on 1) experience and 2) a large data set.

What i DON'T like about the book is the very limited styles it touches on. For example, i found nothing mentioning Belgian beers.
 
I read the book cover to cover when I got it new in 97, when I got it at the AHA conference and had Ray sign it.

The examples are rather dated, because well the book is dated. However, with that said, I can't tell you how many times over the years I've went back and reread chapters when I was getting ready to brew a beer that I was new to.

I'll just reiterate what other posters have, there's a huge amount of information on particular styles. Next time you brew a new type of beer that you know little about, flip through and read that chapter. He covers pretty much all the bases.

Cheers

~r~
 
Or Irish Reds.

DGB is limited in a bunch of ways. I'm also not entirely sure his history is always perfect (though he does talk about stronger milds in the mild/brown category). Its main downside is that it's pretty dated by now ('there were two styles of porter but they've been merged back into one by the BJCP,' and that's ignoring Baltic). But it's good for 'lots of people do this, some do this, most of the time it's this with this but not alone,' etc. I sat on the floor with DGB and BCS last night trying to hammer out a recipe for my porter/mild partigyle this weekend.

I think it's much more useful than BCS, though, which I only have because I got it for free for joining AHA.
 
If I want to design a brand new recipe, I look at the most popular recipes on hbt of that style, then decide which grains and hops and yeast etc. I like/dislike. Then, maybe add some flair if I want. Then figure out acceptable ratios of grains to stay within style guidelines for color, flavor, gravity, blah blah. Then figure out how much hop flavor and bitterness I want within the guidelines. If the beer doesn't turn out the way I want, I modify the ingredients on the next batch of it until it tastes awesome.

I think this is pretty much common sense to anyone, but the book seems to basically restate the above paragraph except by expanding it to multiple chapters, and in place of the gadjillion recipes here to draw from, it just has an overly condensed table in that style's chapter (when it exists).

And that's the point. Rather than read through a gajillion recipes, he's condensed the gajillion recipes into a convenient, handy chart. Not only that, but he's told you things like award-winning bitters are brewed with, say, 80% pale malt, 10% mid-range L Crystal malt, and 10% sugar.

Wow. I don't have to sift through gajillions of possibly crappy recipes to arrive at a conclusion.

I'll take it.

Frankly, I can't fathom why you'd want to waste your time wading through a gajillion recipes, generating data, collating that data, and doing all that work yourself. Unless you enjoy sifting through gajillions of recipes, of course. In that case, knock yourself out.

"Overly condensed" is relative. He's restricted his dataset to award-winning recipes. I don't call that "overly condensed"; I call that separating the wheat from the chaff.

Moreover, he gives you more room in which to design, in that he lists the traditional ingredients for a particular style, then gives you the ingredients used by successful homebrewers. Sometimes they coincide, sometimes not. He gives you a range of possibilities.

A bunch of you have mentioned the history of the styles that gets highlighted in the book. You are right, and I think he does a fairly good job with that. I'm just not quite sure it belongs in a book entitled "Designing...".

I don't understand this, either. In order to design something, you have to have some idea of what you're designing, you need a frame of reference within which to design. You can't design a church if you don't know what a church is supposed to look like. You stand just as good a chance of ending up with Grand Central Station instead of a cathedral.

Same thing goes for beer: You can't design a particular style without regard to the drinker's expectations for the style. Bitter is Bitter because of what goes into it, what has gone into it historically. Without that historical reference, you lose a point of reference; you're flying blind. That's not only a way to waste precious brewing time and resources, it's also a way to brew some mediocre (or downright bad) beer.

I think you need to read the book more fully. It really is a shortening of the way.

Regards,

Bob
 
I fail to see how you did a "quick read" of this book.

turn to Index in back, find style, turn to relevant pages, and skim it.

you get to see the 'concepts' for formulating that kind of recipe.

I too found it less useful to 'read like a book' and more useful as a 'reference source for styles'.

I also agree its not complete.
 
Im glad some other people out there arent enamored with this book either. Seems to me a lot of just reciting statistics - in the second round we found this many samples..
 
And that's the point. Rather than read through a gajillion recipes, he's condensed the gajillion recipes into a convenient, handy chart. Not only that, but he's told you things like award-winning bitters are brewed with, say, 80% pale malt, 10% mid-range L Crystal malt, and 10% sugar.

That's what the book is good for. It's a little bit dated and could use a 2nd edition, but it's still great.

It gives you the basic parameters of the most successful examples of the style. You may then take those commonalities and use them to DESIGN your own version of the recipe.

I am pretty sure Jamil formulated all his recipes off the Daniels book. Today, I would brew Jamil's recipe and if I didn't like it, go back to Daniels and see how I might be able to tweak it.

I really don't see how anyone could not like the book.
 
I really liked it, but I also really like having numbers at my disposal. I am pretty terrible at following any recipe, so things like 40-60% of people in the second round used X grain is really nice. Then also knowing how much they used, etc.

I don't think of it as a be all, end all, book. But its a nice resource to have around.
 
I was mainly disappointed by the lack of many styles that I want to brew. It is very nice for the styles it covers, though, again, not complete by today's expectations. I also feel that the section on porters is woefully disappointing.
 
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