Best recipe books?

[MrBJones]

The only one I have is Brewing Classic Styles; pretty good, but there must be others. Whether broad-ranging, or specific to one style or area, what are your favorites?

 

[doomy86]

I have had a look at Brewing Classic Styles, but most recipes were for extract brewing. All-Grain is only in small print.

I really like Designing Great Beers from Ray Daniels. It leaves room for your own ideas but gives you a good idea when trying out a new style.

 

[applescrap]

Funny you should ask, because I feel like I found nirvana. With easy looking you can find the recipes from every winning beer at nhc style by style. Even if you don't use them, its a hell of a good jumping off point, imo.

 

[STMF]

I have had a look at Brewing Classic Styles, but most recipes were for extract brewing. All-Grain is only in small print.

Every recipe in BCS is both extract and all-grain.

 

[Gravity]

Radical Brewing - by Randy Mosher

 

[kman6234]

Gordon strongs books have good recipes in them as well

 

[beernutz]

Brewing Classic Styles is my favorite recipe book and as STMF notes, all recipes have both extract and all-grain versions. I've made all grain brews of the robust porter, Irish red ale, American pale ale, and just brewed the Scottish 80/- ale yesterday. Janet's brown ale was recommended to me by several on HBT so I'll likely brew it this year as well. All of those that I've tasted turned out great. The BJCP style guide for Irish red has changed since BCS was published so you might want to modify that recipe to 2015 specs if you intend to enter that beer in competition.

I've made several beers using recipes from the Clonebrews book. I wrote an article review of it for HBT and have yet to make one I didn't like but you might want to dig up the article as there are a few minor problems with some of them.

I agree with kman6234, the Gordon Strong recipes from Brewing Better Beer that I've made were all good. I am still drinking his Holiday Prowler spiced ale which is about 6 months old and still getting better.

 

[DromJohn]

Clone Brews and Beer Captured by Tess and Mark Szamatulski

 

[MrBJones]

I have had a look at Brewing Classic Styles, but most recipes were for extract brewing. All-Grain is only in small print.

The small print tells you which base grain(s) to use in place of the extract; all other ingredients stay the same (steeping grains just go in with the base), as do boil time and fermentation temp. Software (I use BeerSmith) will fill in the few missing pieces (volumes of water, strike temp, mash temp, etc)

 

[MrBJones]

...The BJCP style guide for Irish red has changed since BCS was published so you might want to modify that recipe to 2015 specs if you intend to enter that beer in competition...

Wish this was a week ago...I have five gallons of the BCS Irish red in the fermenter right now! How did the style guide change?

 

[beernutz]

Wish this was a week ago...I have five gallons of the BCS Irish red in the fermenter right now! How did the style guide change?

The book and 2004 BJCP guide call for an OG range of 1.044 to 1.060 whereas the 2015 BJCP guide calls for OGs of between 1.036 to 1.046. The SRM and IBU ranges also changed but less dramatically than the OG.

A beer made with the recipe may not even be noticeably different from the current style guide to judges but I thought I'd mention it.

 

[Elduder]

I am a big fan of Gordon Strong's Modern Homebrew Recipes. Good insight into formulation and possible variations. If you like brewing better beer, I would highly recommend you check it out.