Too much use of American homebrewer statistics
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This is an excellent book with much useful content and advice. However, it is let down in my opinion by the significant use of statistics from the American Homebrewers Association competitions. I am sure that AHA members brew some fantastic beers but are the ingredients they use in brews aimed at winning competitions really a reliable indication of what defines any given beer style? For example, in the discussion of ingredients used in English Pale Ales Table 16.10 shows that commercial brewers almost always use English hops with Goldings, Fuggles and Challenger dominating as might be expected. However, the statistics shown in Table 16.11 show that AHA members tended to use Goldings, Cascade or Fuggles in that order. The distinctive American Cascade doesn't get a mention in table 16.10 while Challenger isn't used at all in Table 16.11! This tendency to refer to AHA statistics renders a large part of this book irrelevent to me which is a great shame because the rest of the book is very good indeed.
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Great comprehensive book!
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A phenomenal book for designing your own all grain recipes. Very easy to read as you can read just the chapter you need for brewing a specific type of beer and get some useful hints. Also it is highly recommended for European readers as the metric system is consequently used thorough the book.
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Very Comprehensive Guide
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This is a great in depth book. It is not really for the occaisional home brewer though. Only for those with serious nerdity.
I would suggest it is for those who have progressed to all grain brewing or as a text book for the micro brewer.
It is full of top quality information.
A complete brewing formulation spreadsheet design is probably missing, though there are plenty of these on the web.
Watch out for the 'american gallon' linked weights an measures though.
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THE reference work for brewing from scratch.
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Some people are content to brew with other people's recipes. For those that are not, this book represents a breakthrough, not only in brewing how-to manuals, but in the whole spectrum of manuals on creating things to ingest. This is not a beer cookbook, id est: pick one of these that looks good, buy these ingredients, mix like so, cook like so... This book takes the process one step farther: what do you want to brew? this is typically how that style is brewed. this is what is typically in that style of beer....and the general instructions necessary to create the recipe for the beer you want, with all sorts of reference information to help the brewer achieve that goal... A reasonable understanding of brewing is a pre-requisite. This book is for creating beers with particular characteristics with regard to the brewer's particular process. If there are any shortcomings, it would be that certain common styles, such as German Dark Lagers, Belgian Trappist Ales, are not addressed. But the design process laid out allows a brewer, even without the benefit of anything more that basic parameters, to make a beer that will approach those parameters. I own or have read several texts on homebrewing, this is the only book to which I refer when I set out to brew a batch of beer.
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