Hey guys,
I worked on the online companion piece to this that featured recipes, many from HBT regulars. There's a thread on the recipe piece here:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f19/check-out-hbt-recipes-published-popular-mechanics-210577/
And the recipes are featured on the popular mechanics site here:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/how-to-plans/beer-recipes-how-to-home-brew
The print piece was put together by my editor, but I did get a chance to check it out before it went to press. The idea was that they wanted brewing eye candy that also visually showed the basics of the brewing process. The top tier was ideal since it's clearly eye candy and because it's also is easier to understand the flow of liquids from HLT to MLT to boil kettle in a gravity fed system. I don't have the final version in front of me at the moment, but I believe that the text makes it clear that you can make do with a couple pots on a stovetop (like I do for every batch).
We showed a conical for the same reason - it's readily recognizable for anyone that ever walked into a brewery and it looks cool. As knotquite mentioned above, we also had a carboy and a plastic bucket sitting there to demonstrate that brewing doesn't necessarily require all the blingy stuff.
For just two pages and a couple paragraphs I think it's a pretty good homebrew primer. There's no way we could have squeezed in the full Papazian and Palmer treatment. I know there's no guarantee that some people aren't going to take one quick look at it and say "no way would I ever buy all that stuff" but hopefully there will be a bigger group that get their interest piqued and decide to do more research. We could always use a few more brewers.
Anyway, hope you guys get a kick out of it - we had fun putting it together and I get a ton of inspiration here and at thebrewingnetwork.com - would be great to see the two get a bump in interest as a result of the article.
(knotquite - thanks for not scanning it - they give a way a lot on the website, but I think they'd like people to actually buy the magazine for the print pieces)