Is there a good book on reading for advanced brewers?

[BostonianBrewer]

Brew Like a Monk is amazing

 

[tgmartin000]

Lately Ive been moving into the books about specific styles, I find they go very in depth, which is what I need to understand what makes a good beer in a style. Almost done with IPA by Mitch Steele, which is great. And Brew LIke a Monk is also great, as has been Farmhouse Ales. I'd like to check out the lager book, as well as the pale ale book.

ALso the brewing network podcasts are a treasure trove of info. Podcasts going back to about 2007 on about every style and technique you could ever dream up....and much more.

Plus, cheap porn. Asians, chunky, coeds, you name it...

 

[LabRatBrewer]

the Siebel Institute is selling the A Textbook of Brewing By Jean De Clerck for $75.00 http://www.siebelinstitute.com/products-a-books/brewing-textbooks. Its about $400 on amazon used.

 

[orangehero]

I disagree about Brewing Better Beer. The book is redundant and has absolutely nothing new (except the tip of adding roast grains at the end of the mash) besides Gordon Strong going on about his philosophy of brewing. Only brewing book I regret spending money on.

I like Briggs' textbooks and reference them pretty often.

 

[gbx]

I disagree about Brewing Better Beer. The book is redundant and has absolutely nothing new (except the tip of adding roast grains at the end of the mash) besides Gordon Strong going on about his philosophy of brewing. Only brewing book I regret spending money on.

What's great about the book is his philosophy. What to worry about, what not to, the chapter about precision vs accuracy. The water chapter has actual advice vs the ridiculous table of classic city profiles and useless RA tables that you see in every other homebrewing book. Blending and competition brewing. What other book has this? Let me know as I will buy it.

 

[cavalrymsh]

What's great about the book is his philosophy. What to worry about, what not to, the chapter about precision vs accuracy. The water chapter has actual advice vs the ridiculous table of classic city profiles and useless RA tables that you see in every other homebrewing book. Blending and competition brewing. What other book has this? Let me know as I will buy it.

My third time reading thru Strong 's book was with a highlighter. Overlook his new age views and he some great process control tips to help make your good beer better. Yes, it has some dated material like Daniels, but easy to read and use if applicable to your process. Fix was good. Haven't been able to get past ch 3 of the yeast book (thanks chris) and I was let down by Charlie bamforths book 'beer'.

 

[AdamWiz]

I was just like you - I wanted something a little more advanced, something that starts out assuming you at least know a little bit about brewing. I sure didn't want to read another book that started out by explaining what the words "liquor" and "wort" mean. I found Brewing Better Beer to be a great read. Not a lot of specifics, but a lot of things to get you thinking about various parts of your process and equipment, and different tweaks you could make. I have incorporated some things I learned in there. like cold steeping dark roasted grains for less harshness. And the warning about sanitizing a freshly dumped liquor barrel by burning a sulphur disc in there - always good to hear cautionary tales. I also own "designing great beers", but find it to be almost unreadable. If there is such a thing as being too in-depth in a homebrewing book, that one does it. I can only look at tables and percentages for so long before I have to put it down. I've had it probably 2 years and still haven't read it all. As for beginner info on professional brewing, the book "Brewery Operations Manual" by Tom Hennessy of Colorado Boy brewpub is very informative on the A-to-Z of opening and running a small brewery. Everything from licensing and equipment to specific checklists for day-to-day operations and hiring. Even if you don't plan on opening a brewery, it is still a very interesting read. You can only order it online:

http://breweryoperationsmanual.com/

 

[mcangeli]

https://play.google.com/store/search?q=brewing better beer&c=books&hl=en

 

[MaxStout]

the Siebel Institute is selling the A Textbook of Brewing By Jean De Clerck for $75.00 http://www.siebelinstitute.com/products-a-books/brewing-textbooks. Its about $400 on amazon used.

At that price...very tempting. So far, the best price I found used on Ebay is around $150.

$75 is less than what most college students today pay for their books.

 

[isleofman]

Yeast by Jamil and Chris White is a good book, I haven't read Hops....

Skip Hops, unless you want a bunch of super dry history and stories about hops. There is about a chapter's worth of actual science and applicable brewing techniques woven throughout a whole book of hop history. It is well written but don't expect to gain much practical hop knowledge from it.

I think I just expected a lot out of it because of how amazing Yeast was.

 

[highgravitybacon]

his book were issued in the 80's and 90's, right? Which one did you find useful?

Science doesn't change. It remains relevant.

 

[highgravitybacon]

Skip Hops, unless you want a bunch of super dry history and stories about hops. There is about a chapter's worth of actual science and applicable brewing techniques woven throughout a whole book of hop history. It is well written but don't expect to gain much practical hop knowledge from it.

I think I just expected a lot out of it because of how amazing Yeast was.

Very true. It's literally a story book about hops. It is not a reference book. They have tried to disguise it as a reference book, but it is a book you read once and that's it.

 

[ajdelange]

Science doesn't change.

Oh yes, it does. New discoveries are made and new perspectives on old science emerge every day. In home brewing it is going to be more of the latter than the former but that is why these newer books have value. At the same time much of the old science

...remains relevant.

but some of it is presented incorrectly and some of the older practices have been replaced by modern ones which result in a better product, easier brew day etc.

 

[highgravitybacon]

Oh yes, it does. New discoveries are made and new perspectives on old science emerge every day. In home brewing it is going to be more of the latter than the former but that is why these newer books have value. At the same time much of the old science
but some of it is presented incorrectly and some of the older practices have been replaced by modern ones which result in a better product, easier brew day etc.

True. But it's still a good book that hasn't been replaced by any other book of it's caliber.

 

[skullface1818]

I cast my vote for brewing better beer and yeast. both of those books are great resources and really did make an impact on my brewing process.

Id also recommend looking up "brewing" into any nearby science/collage library. youd be surprised what comes up. At FSU we had a surprising amount of very technical/scientific brewing guides that I found particularly useful.

 

[Nightshade]

Very true. It's literally a story book about hops. It is not a reference book. They have tried to disguise it as a reference book, but it is a book you read once and that's it.

I found the discussion of technique to be interesting as well as the discussion on grading hops and hop production to be interesting. I wouldn't say it is a waste of time to read it, but it also is not the bible of hops that it wanted to be.

 

[ajdelange]

True. But it's still a good book that hasn't been replaced by any other book of it's caliber.

Yes, it is (and yes, I've read it and the one that followed too) but there is a heck of a lot more to brewing science and RA = alk - (Ca _ Mg/2)/3.5 (not alk + as it states) and the TCA cycle (there's a whole chapter devoted to it) isn't really relevant as yeast don't use it under ordinary brewing conditions. As I said in an earlier post it is the book that probably had the most influence on my decision to learn something about the subject.

OTOH I guess the bottom line is that I haven't taken any of George's books off the shelf in years whereas some of my other texts are well thumbed.

 

[gbx]

Science doesn't change. It remains relevant.

Just because something was the state of the art at the time it was written doesn't mean its worth anything today. My 4 year old has a book written for toddlers about the universe that is better than any astronomy text book written 100 years ago (Andromeda is galaxy in the modern kids book).

Pretty much everything in brewing has changed since that rise of the internet. Ingredients have changed (yeasts, hops, malts), equipment has changed (does any one use a zapap mash tun these days?), the recipe's and beer styles have changed, even beer history has changed (rather than simply recycling the myths about the origin of IPA, Mitch Steele did some actual research).

 

[greatschmaltez]

gbx, I agree with your general idea, but in the specific case of Fix's literature, he is primarily discussing fundamental chemical and biochemical reactions, not techniques. I think that's the point that bacon is making. It's kind of like saying: there are breakthroughs everyday in the medical field... But your old organic chemistry text book from college is still pretty darn accurate.

 

[Nightshade]

gbx, I agree with your general idea, but in the specific case of Fix's literature, he is primarily discussing fundamental chemical and biochemical reactions, not techniques. I think that's the point that bacon is making. It's kind of like saying: there are breakthroughs everyday in the medical field... But your old organic chemistry text book from college is still pretty darn accurate.

This

The chemistry will always remain the same, how one extracts, produces or processes will change.

In reality if a process made great beer for the last 100 years the only real thing you could affect is the efficiency of the process.

 

[bern1]

Er....uh....what's a"zapap" mash tun?

 

[LabRatBrewer]

Er....uh....what's a"zapap" mash tun?

Papazian's Lauter system from 1984. Here's a description from Palmer's "How to Brew"

The original (at least the most popularized) home lautering system was probably the bucket-in-a-bucket false bottom championed by Charlie Papazian in The Complete Joy of Homebrewing (1984). This setup is fairly effective and very cheap to assemble. Using two food-grade 5-gallon buckets, the inner bucket is drilled with lots of small holes to form a false bottom that holds the grain and allows the liquid to run off; the sweet wort passes into the outer bucket and is drawn off through a hole in the side. False bottom systems usually rinse the grainbed uniformly, but there are two drawbacks that need to be considered. The first is that the placement of the outlet hole in the outer bucket influences the way the tun drains. More rinsing will occur on the side of the grainbed where the hole is. For best results, the outlet tube needs to be extended to the center of the tun so that it will drain evenly. Secondly, false bottoms have the potential to flow too fast because of the very large drainage area available and can compact the grainbed as a result. Stuck sparges from draining too fast are a common problem for homebrewers using false bottoms for the first time.

 

[grathan]

I would mash in that. Brewing books of today don't even come within a fraction of a percent of being as informative as 1980's books. (plagiarism aside).

 

[highgravitybacon]

I would mash in that. Brewing books of today don't even come within a fraction of a percent of being as informative as 1980's books. (plagiarism aside).

I think it has to do with what you can buy now vs could buy then. I was a kid in the 80s, not a homebrewer. So unless I am mistaken, there were no sabco systems, no 10 gal conicals, no commercial false bottoms.

Now there's no need to be creative when you can just buy a commercial setup.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

"Is there a good book on reading for advanced brewers?"

Check Barnes and Nobles in the "My First Book" section. Lots of great books with pictures and simple words (like one, two, red, blue...) to teach advanced brewers how to read.

 

[Randy_Bugger]

the Siebel Institute is selling the A Textbook of Brewing By Jean De Clerck for $75.00 http://www.siebelinstitute.com/products-a-books/brewing-textbooks. Its about $400 on amazon used.

There was a time in the 1950s when the Monks at Chimay brewed crappy beer.

Then, De Clerck trained them how to brew and the rest is history.

 

[DirtyOldDuck]

"Is there a good book on reading for advanced brewers?"

Check Barnes and Nobles in the "My First Book" section. Lots of great books with pictures and simple words (like one, two, red, blue...) to teach advanced brewers how to read.

I wanted to be "that guy" but decided to behave today. I am old so I was thinking more along the lines of a Dick and Jane primer.

 

[motleybrews]

"Technology Malting and Brewing" by wolfgang kunze. That'll be way more than you've ever wanted to know about beer. It weighs about 4 pounds.