27 replies to this topic

[japh]

Every homebrewer needs books. What books do you all think are the most useful, or even essential? What books are basic, or intermediate, or advanced?For example:How To Brew by John Palmer - Basic, essential, every homebrewer should own as their first book.Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels - Intermediate, but near essential.Etc. (feel free to disagree with me or anyone else, let's get some conversation going on this).

[stellarbrew]

You've hit on the two I am very familiar with (Palmer and Daniels), and which I would recommend. I'm getting to the point I would like to read a book that takes it to the next level, as far as the technical aspects of brewing. I'm interested to see which book others would recommend as the next step. I've heard that Noonan's New Brewing Lager Beer is a good one, and I've been considering getting it.

[xd_haze]

Randy Mosher, Radical Brewing

[MtnBrewer]

[*]The Complete Guide to Homebrewing by Dave Miller - This was How To Brew before there was How To Brew.[*]Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher - A lot of outside the box thinking here. Unconventional approaches to unconventional beers.[*]Brewing Classic Styles by Zainasheff and Palmer - A recipe book that contains a recipe for each of the BJCP styles. These recipes are great on their own and also make excellent points of departure for your own styles.[*]Pale Ale (second edition) by Terry Foster - Best book available on the most common style among homebrewers. Some of the other books in this series are also worth reading.[*]The Belgian series: Wild Brews, Brew Like a Monk and Farmhouse Ales - These books cover everything that Daniels didn't.[/list]

[Humperdink]

For the technical stuff, new lager brewing is a nice lead up to principles of brewing science.How to brew is priceless in my opinion as well as designing great beers. I've read both many times.

[ncbeerbrewer]

I agree with all the posts above. They are all great resources and reads too. Papazian's book is good it got me going 11 years ago too. I know there is an updated version though too.

[dondewey]

I thought the belgian series and radical brewing were great. I thought designing great beers really suffered from old competition data - do that many guys at nationals use the wrong yeasts/hops or use extract nowadays? Brewing lager beers could also use an update, but I understand it'd be a lot of work.

[Deerslyr]

I have Designing Great BeersBrewing Quality Beers - Byron BurchJoy of HomebrewingHomebrewers Bibleand a book about gardening for brewing (for my hops)Oh, and I'm building my library of "periodicals" with BYO.But my go to book to understand what I am doing and why I am doing it with any particular style is Designing Great Beers. I don't think I could do without it.

[drewseslu]

My favorites are...Fix's Principles of Brewing ScienceNoonan's New Lager BrewingMosher's Radical BrewingPalmer's How to Brew

[ThroatwobblerMangrove]

All I've ever read is How to Brew and beer forums. How to Brew was a good start but the forums are worth at least as much if not more than a book.

[nitroglycerin11]

+1000000 zymo. This Board > All Books.

[BrianBrewerKS]

I gotta have Designing Great Beers by my side on brewday. Great book.

[3rd party JKor]

I regularly use Designing Great Beers, How To Brew and Brewing Classic Styles. I did own both of Fix's books, but I've misplaced them over the years and they're tough to come by now, which sucks. I really like Jamil's recipes in BCS, because I know they're stylistically correct and if I've never had, or brewed, a beer of a particular style it gives me a recipe to put a stake in the ground for that particular style. I've only recently started paying more attention to styles so I've been using that book much more often lately.

[Winkydowbrewing]

Designing great Beers is one I need to get. Can someone fill me in as to whether that book gives a good layout of ingredients and their effects, ie. I know the effects of the malts/hops that i regularly use, but it would be great to have a really complete list with a good detailed description of their end result (whether something aids head retention, body but no flavor....) Seems designing great beers should include that, but Ive never flipped through it, so let me know.

[Deerslyr]

All I've ever read is How to Brew and beer forums. How to Brew was a good start but the forums are worth at least as much if not more than a book.

Zym... you will not be dissapointed in Designing Great Beers. It is NOT a recipe book. Recipe books do not educate you on what makes a particular style... they just... well... give you recipes. When I want to brew, the first thing I do when I narrow down to a couple of styles, is consult this book and try to understand the style better. Don't get me wrong, I love the Blue Board just as much, but this book ROCKS! If you asked me if I could have one book, which would it be... that would be it. If I was faced with a choice between a forum and the book... sorry, gotta go with the book.

[Deerslyr]

Designing great Beers is one I need to get. Can someone fill me in as to whether that book gives a good layout of ingredients and their effects, ie. I know the effects of the malts/hops that i regularly use, but it would be great to have a really complete list with a good detailed description of their end result (whether something aids head retention, body but no flavor....) Seems designing great beers should include that, but Ive never flipped through it, so let me know.

Trust me when I say you won't be dissapointed in this book.

[MtnBrewer]

Designing great Beers is one I need to get. Can someone fill me in as to whether that book gives a good layout of ingredients and their effects, ie. I know the effects of the malts/hops that i regularly use, but it would be great to have a really complete list with a good detailed description of their end result (whether something aids head retention, body but no flavor....) Seems designing great beers should include that, but Ive never flipped through it, so let me know.

There's some of that in the first section of the book. But the bulk of it consists of detailed descriptions of most styles. These descriptions include some history, analyses of commercial examples and then a breakdown of recent NHC winners in that style. For example, there are charts that will list percentages of malts used for a particular style and also how often each malt was used.I really liked DGB when I first read it but I've been going back through it again recently and now it feels a little dated. Still a good book but perhaps not as useful as it once was. Also, there are no Belgians.

[japh]

My favorites are...Fix's Principles of Brewing ScienceNoonan's New Lager Brewing

Would New Lager Brewing be a good book for someone who isn't really interested in brewing lagers? Someone else mentioned it as a good intro before reading Principles of Brewing Science, which I'm interested in, just wondering if Noonan's would be worth it too.

[3rd party JKor]

I haven't read New Lager Brewing, but the feedback I've heard is that it really isn't that focused on lagers. Someone who has it can probably speak to it better.

[Humperdink]

Would New Lager Brewing be a good book for someone who isn't really interested in brewing lagers? Someone else mentioned it as a good intro before reading Principles of Brewing Science, which I'm interested in, just wondering if Noonan's would be worth it too.

though there are some things that are focused on lagers specifically, many of the chapters are on the ingredients, chemistry, malting, mashing etc. I think you can still apply what it teaches about lagers to ales. I really enjoyed that book. Another decent book for those less knowledgable about chemistry is brew chew 101. I got principles, had a rough go with some of the content, picked up brew chem 101 and that made more sense. Once I had some principles down that were hazy, I got a surplus chemistry and physics book from my school district to brush up on the rest.