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Product Description
Formulas, ingredients, historical and modern day brewing practices, all these details and more are covered in Designing Great Beers: The Ultimate Guide to Brewing Classic Beer Styles. Drawing on information from old brewing records, books, contemporary beer analyses, and hundreds of award-winning recipes, author Ray Daniels provides a wealth of data on the current and historical brewing techniques and ingredients for fourteen of the world's most popular ale and lager styles. Ray also includes brewing calculations for planning and adjusting brews as well a thorough examination of primary brewing ingredients.
About the Author
Ray Daniels
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
First off, it should be pointed out that this book is concerned with creating recipes. It is not an introduction to home brewing and doesn't have any information on technique. If you're looking for an introduction to brewing, or an introduction to full mash brewing then John Palmer's book, How to Brew: Everything You Need to Know to Brew Beer Right for the First Time, is excellent, and also free on the web.
This book is split in to two parts. The first part, which accounts for about a third of the book deals with brewing calculations. Things like how to estimate your mash efficiency, hitting your target OG, and calculations for minerals additions to your water.
This section is quite good. Some of the material is covered in other sources, for example John Palmer's book, but not all of it.
In part two, each chapter covers a beer style, and there are 14 chapters in total. (Some chapters sneak a couple of related styles in.) The styles covered are mostly British and German. Within each chapter there is a historical overview of the style, some discussion of where the style is now, and lots of statistics. The stats are things like how much of a given grain or hop is used on average in commercial examples of a style, and in beers which have made it to the second round in NHC beer competitions.
Part two is useful if you want to brew closely to style or for competitions, but I don't often use it. I'll try to explain why with an example. On the page 165 there is a table of the incidence and proportion of specialty Malts used in NHC second-round pale ales. In the table we see (among other things) that almost all of them use crystal malt, at up to about 20% of the grain bill but at an average of 8%. A few used Munich malt, but most didn't. Well, that's great to know, but what are we going to do with that information? Probably we'll use around 8% crystal in our pale ales, and leave Munich malt out. This is my problem, despite the book's title there is not really a lot here about designing recipes, it really just guides you towards the style average. I'm sure "average pale ale" is perfectly nice and will do very well in competition, but it's just not what I usually want to brew!
In summary, if you want a book which will help you brew some major styles closely, then this is the book for you, but when you want to go a little off-piste there isn't much here to help you. That said, there is an impressive amount of information in there, and even though I only consult it once in a while I'm glad it's there on my shelf.
This book is split in to two parts. The first part, which accounts for about a third of the book deals with brewing calculations. Things like how to estimate your mash efficiency, hitting your target OG, and calculations for minerals additions to your water.
This section is quite good. Some of the material is covered in other sources, for example John Palmer's book, but not all of it.
In part two, each chapter covers a beer style, and there are 14 chapters in total. (Some chapters sneak a couple of related styles in.) The styles covered are mostly British and German. Within each chapter there is a historical overview of the style, some discussion of where the style is now, and lots of statistics. The stats are things like how much of a given grain or hop is used on average in commercial examples of a style, and in beers which have made it to the second round in NHC beer competitions.
Part two is useful if you want to brew closely to style or for competitions, but I don't often use it. I'll try to explain why with an example. On the page 165 there is a table of the incidence and proportion of specialty Malts used in NHC second-round pale ales. In the table we see (among other things) that almost all of them use crystal malt, at up to about 20% of the grain bill but at an average of 8%. A few used Munich malt, but most didn't. Well, that's great to know, but what are we going to do with that information? Probably we'll use around 8% crystal in our pale ales, and leave Munich malt out. This is my problem, despite the book's title there is not really a lot here about designing recipes, it really just guides you towards the style average. I'm sure "average pale ale" is perfectly nice and will do very well in competition, but it's just not what I usually want to brew!
In summary, if you want a book which will help you brew some major styles closely, then this is the book for you, but when you want to go a little off-piste there isn't much here to help you. That said, there is an impressive amount of information in there, and even though I only consult it once in a while I'm glad it's there on my shelf.
65 of 67 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Good but incomplete
A valuable reference for any intermediate to advanced home brewer's library though the work is not without it's limitations, some relatively trivial, others more serious. Read more
Published 22 days ago by stever
I love this book, even if it wasn't what I expected
This book is wonderful, firstly it deals with successfully making beer such as the principals behind water chemistry and all of that which is useful but nothing new, the second... Read more
Published 11 months ago by D. Watson
A good read
The book is very interesting and written in a very clear way - even the water chemistry part is made simple. The histories are excellent. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Mr. M. Stenhouse
AN OUTSTANDING BOOK!
If you are into your mathematical/scientific side of your brewing, then this is the book that you definitely have to get. Read more
Published 19 months ago by L. De Rose
Excellent reference for home brewers
I am a home brewer and bought this to help me craft my own brews. Its a well thought out and informative book. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Thurstan Johnston
Great ... but complicated.
Upon opening the book and first glance the book is scarey. But then again it is not made to be a book of recipes for you to follow, this is for you to set your creative juices... Read more
Published on 6 May 2009 by Mrs Kerry Dunn
Too much use of American homebrewer statistics
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... Read more
Published on 8 Nov 2008 by L. G. Howarth
Very Comprehensive Guide
This is a great in depth book. It is not really for the occaisional home brewer though. Only for those with serious nerdity. Read more
Published on 24 May 2005 by mr d j bowes
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