high level beer books

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Donthoseme

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I'm looking to get further into this horrible little hobby i call brewing. I love it so much i want to learn everything i possibly can. I've exausted most beginner books and actually get annoyed when i read overly simple beer books. I'm looking to actually write my own book if i can get all this stuff togeather. I was wondering what high level text book like books you've read or what web sites you've seen that publish scholarly papers, beer thesis's, that sort of thing. Thank you for the help i feel like i'm hitting a bit of a wall and i know there is a LOT more to be learned than what i've already gathered. Thanks again.

Matt
 
What are you interested in? There are many books that go a bit further into brewing- some (like Brew like a Monk) are more into Belgian beers, or Noonan's "Brewing Lager Beers" is geared to lagers (duh). I like Ray Daniels, 'Designing Great Beers" for ingredients, and I like "How to Brew" by John Palmer for geeky water chemistry stuff.
 
I will buy all of these. Although i have read most of How to Brew. I do need to understand water chemistry more. I'm thinking about taking biology classes just for better beer understand. Is that wierd?
 
What are you interested in? There are many books that go a bit further into brewing- some (like Brew like a Monk) are more into Belgian beers, or Noonan's "Brewing Lager Beers" is geared to lagers (duh). I like Ray Daniels, 'Designing Great Beers" for ingredients, and I like "How to Brew" by John Palmer for geeky water chemistry stuff.

The Brew Like a Monk book also has two companions that go into wild beers and all that. I am reading Wild Brews right now. Really great book, and I am going to be making a spontaneously fermented pale pretty soon.
 
Designing great beers is the book I have been looking for for a long time. Got it for Christmas, and it goes into detail very nicely.
 
I will buy all of these. Although i have read most of How to Brew. I do need to understand water chemistry more. I'm thinking about taking biology classes just for better beer understand. Is that wierd?

I think you'd be better of starting with a general chemistry course. Most gen chem courses cover hydrology in detail. Biology courses are useful, but most will give you much more info than needed for beer. Hope this helps.
 
Designing great beers is the book I have been looking for for a long time. Got it for Christmas, and it goes into detail very nicely.

That reminds me, I need to check it out of the library (yet again).

Actually, I need to break down and BUY it.
 
I have read good things about De Clerck's "A Textbook of Brewing" (which you can get here), but I haven't read it. Anybody here have experience with that one?
 
I've always found tons of information on specific topics by doing a
general google search or a google books search.

Granted, this might not work so well for beer, but I usually find at
least a handful of papers, abstracts or books that have interesting
information on a variety of subjects.

Check the bibliography in the books you've ready already for even
more points to branch out.
 
I found "The Homebrewer's Companion" by Papazian to go further into detail from the "beginner" books that most people cite for reading (How to Brew, Complete Joy of Homebrewing) I am also a big fan of "Designing Great Beers". If you've read "Brewing Classic Styles" already and liked it, "Designing Great Beers" is a much better example of the same book if you want more information.
 
I would start with Principles of Brewing Science and another book by George (and this time Laurie as well) Fix called An Analysis of Brewing Techniques.

The latter is out of print an there are a few copies (I suspect it is really one) on Amazon for like $160. Don't pay that, it was a $20 paperback when in print. As a last resort, enough libraries have it that you can probably get it through inter library loan.

Anything by Charles Bamforth will be good.

If you want to learn about water a chemistry class would be good but I would suggest that you would be better off learning about yeast than water and a microbiology class may be the most useful.

As for scholarly papers, you will have to get your hands on the journals, and very few libraries will have those. If you happen to live in Davis you are set. I'm not sure how public the library at Siebel is.
 
If you have a friend (or make one) at a University they will both be able
to inter-library loan from other schools and download PDF journals that
you can use too.
 
Honestly, I have found a lot of high level reading on the internet. Search through the BYO archives. You will find in depth articles on a number of topics. Other higher level papers get posted here once and a while. I also get a lot of knowledge by listening to The Jamil Show and Brew Strong podcasts from The Brewing Network.

Also, if you are ever interested in brewing a sour beer, "Wild Brews" by Jeff Sparrow is a high level must read.
 
As others have said, my three picks would be Designing Great Beers, New Brewing Lager Beer, and Principles of Brewing Science (2nd Ed.).

DGB is more about styles but has some great technical info in the first few chapters. IIRC, it's more about calculations/procedures than science, but it has some science info as well.

NBLB, although originally written specifically for lagers, the "New" version is more rounded to apply to beer in general. It's scientific, but not so much at the molecular level. If I had to pick one out of these 3, I'd pick this one. Most of the scientific stuff applies to all beer, not just lagers.

PoBS is VERY scientific and down to the molecular level. You'll need a pretty decent understanding of general science to get much from this book. I think it's a great reference to have, but I thought it could have expounded on some of the details. It's a surprisingly short book. Fix wrote it like a thesis, with references to other literature right in the text (which I found off-putting from a reading continuity standpoint), some of which refer to other books he's written. So, it can be frustrating, resulting in more questions without having some of the other texts to which he refers. Overall though it's a great resource.
 
I have read so many books regarding it but none of my actually impressed me. They were all so complex and difficult to understand.
So a tip from me ,if you write your own book make it very simple and clear.
 
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