Books on Brewing

[NickN]

What are some of your personal favorites?

 

[rexbanner]

Brewing Classic Styles, How to Brew, and Radical Brewing are all nice ones. If I could only own one, it would be Brewing Classic Styles. The rest vary from moderately useful (Wild Brews, Brew Like A Monk) to pretty much useless (Brewing Better Beer).

The problem with many books is that authors usually devote the first chapters to explaining how to brew, despite the fact that the books are marketed towards advanced homebrewers. Or that they are generally light on practical info...I enjoy learning about the history of beer, but I want something I can use when I buy a brewing book, too. A lot of times you are much better off reading a good brewing blog or just using this forum. I feel like a lot of homebrewers could write much better books on brewing beer than the ones out there.

 

[Matt3989]

the joy of homebrewing is a good one that walks you through beginner brewing up to advanced brewing.

I also just read, Tasting Beer by randy Mosher, it was pretty good, an easy to read history/style guideline/flavor guideline on beer and other foods and fermentables.

I'm sure palmer's how to brew will come up on this list.

My next beer read will probably be "yeast"

 

[kombat]

Ray Daniels' "Designing Great Beers" contains a wealth of information. I'm finding it extremely useful in terms of knowing how all the various aspects of brewing affect the final outcome. As far as practical information on the mechanics of actually brewing beer, I really like "Home Brewing with BeerSmith," by Bradley J. Smith. It's not really specific to the software (BeerSmith) at all - it's a great general text on how to make beer, and where appropriate, it points how BeerSmith can be used to perform a calculation the book just finished explaining how to do manually.

 

[NickN]

Thank you very much. This forum is so helpful. I hope one day I can be on the helping side and not the "needing help" side.

 

[Herky21]

Brewing Classic Styles, How to Brew and the Oxford Dictionary of BEER.

 

[ACbrewer]

Yeast by White and Zainasheff. granted White (of White labs) has avested interest in promoting how important yeast is to brewing, but it is a facinating book. It is a bit rough in places since it was written for craft and homebrewer alike, but very informative. There was at the time some question I had which the book didn't answer, and makes me think it wasn't important.

I also came away with the thought that there were several phd level thesis in chem or bio that could be persued based off things that were in the book.

 

[BirdmanBrewingCo]

THIS ONE is probably one that I go to most often. Lots of award winners in this.

 

[metanoia]

How to Brew was my go-to when I started last year and it's still my best reference as I embark on all-grain brewing tomorrow. Still, I'm constantly checking this forum and searching Google (which often returns this forum as the first result) for the most current methods, prior mistakes and triumphs, and general consensus.

 

[Matt3989]

Thank you very much. This forum is so helpful. I hope one day I can be on the helping side and not the "needing help" side.

I think most of us fall into both categories... That's why it's a great forum. The basics will come faster than you think (especially if you read one or two of these books), then a little critical thinking partied with google can go a long way to putting you on the helpful side.

 

[volktc]

Joy of homebrewing by charlie p

 

[TNGabe]

Yeast by White and Zainasheff. granted White (of White labs) has avested interest in promoting how important yeast is to brewing, but it is a facinating book. It is a bit rough in places since it was written for craft and homebrewer alike, but very informative. There was at the time some question I had which the book didn't answer, and makes me think it wasn't important.

I also came away with the thought that there were several phd level thesis in chem or bio that could be persued based off things that were in the book.

Yeast has some good info in it, but I can't believe it was published as is. The editing is absolutely terrible and it's a train wreck organizationally.

I'm a huge fan of Farmhouse Ales, Brew Like a Monk, Brewing with Wheat, and Wild Brews, but those are the styles I brew.

How to Brew is the go to for basic info and it's free online.

John Palmer has a new book on brewing water coming out this Spring.