Rating: 
Summary: Best beer recipe book around
Review: I own about a dozen recipe books and have used this book more than all the others combined! Recipes are broken down for extract, partial-mash and all-grain brewers. You can't go wrong with this book.Phil (President, New York City Homebrewers Guild)
Rating:
Summary: Best beer recipe book around
Review: I own about a dozen recipe books and have used this book more than all the others combined! Recipes are broken down for extract, partial-mash and all-grain brewers. You can't go wrong with this book. Phil (President, New York City Homebrewers Guild)
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Summary: Home Brewing At Its Best !
Review: I've been home-brewing for three years now and have accumulated an extensive library of brewing literature. I have books on the history of brewing, brew recipes, label lore, etc. etc. etc. Clonebrews is by far the most read piece of all. I enjoy Clonebrews recipes from around the world and have many well traveled friends and family whom have tried these beers in their native countries. When they visit my home they can revisit these vacation spots and enjoy them once again. Several of Clonebrews recipes have passed through my mini-brewhouse and each one has always been a crowd pleaser. Thanks to Mark and Tess the brew world is a better place!
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Summary: Recipes for extract, partial mash and all-grain...
Review: If there's one thing you get out of reading the reviews for this book it should be that all recipes include an extract, partial mash, and all-grain version. I'm brewing strictly extract beers now, but I plan on advancing my skills, and this book will not be outdated. Lot's of notable domestic beers(US), british, and big section of belgian, along with some obscure (to me) beer from around the world. Great book!
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Summary: Brew a clone; learn more about beer styles.
Review: In the preface to Clone Brews, the Szamatulskis (try pronouncing that name twice after a few homebrews) state that their object in this collection of recipes is not to introduce homebrewers to the joyless pursuit of reproducing commercial beers but to provide them with one way of discovering beer styles and developing a more discerning palate. The authors even encourage users of the book to tweak recipes to accommodate their own taste preferences. The recipes are organized by geographic origin. The result is (and this may be the books biggest weakness) that there are a relatively large number of recipes for contemporary light lagers (e.g. Tiger, Singha, Foster, Molson Ice, Maccabee, Tsing Tao, etc.). Although more homebrewers are becoming interested in brewing CAPs, I'm not sure how many out there want to brew up a batch of Molson Ice. . . .maybe I'm out of the loop, after all, the Szamatulskis own a homebrew supply shop; I don't even own all of my car. I suspect the authors were simply attempting to be judicious in their representation of beers from around the world. Unfortunately, there aren't many places where one can drink a beer that diverges from the adjuncty, pasteurized, pale lager style that has swept the world after WWII. There are plenty of German, British, Belgian, Dutch and American craft brewery clones, however, to keep classic style purists happy. The book came at just the right time as I'd gotten some yeast ready to brew this weekend and have been lackadaisical about working on a recipe. In looking for something within my yeast's profile, I also noticed another of the book's limitations: quite a few of the beers listed are not readily available to me. I thought about brewing the Shepherd Neame IPA recipe, but I have never tasted that beer nor can I get my hands on it even in the swanky liquor store that stocks lots of swell beers. Now, if your purpose is solely to brew some good beer, who cares if you can't pony up a bottle of the namesake to compare. But then, the book seems to anticipate a bit of competition--you against the defining standard clone--but a potentially educational kind of competition, as I've already mentioned. If you have access to lots of different kinds of beers and/or have tasted many of them near their places of origin, this limitation won't exist. The graphics on the page are modern and user friendly, a bit like frames on a web page or like contemporary magazine graphics. Each recipe is presented with a little blurb describing the flavor profiles of the beer at the top of the page. A partial mash recipe dominates most of the rest of the page with easy to read instructions on mash schedule, hop additions. In two right margin side bars appear "mini-mash" (base malt substituted for some of the extract) and all grain mash recipes. Access to a wide range of ingredients is implicit in all of the recipes. Perhaps the best part of each recipe is a prioritized list of yeast selections. Each recipe has at least two yeast suggestions, all liquid or bottle cultures. The book also contains a short introduction with some crucial technical data--an explanation of their use of HBU figures instead of IBUs and how to calculate HBU, extraction rate (70%) at which all grain recipes are calculated, etc. Several handy flavor profile tables and calculation tables appear in the back of the book. I think this information makes the book attractive to homebrewers with a wide range of technological savvy. All in all a cool book, worth the money. I find myself gravitating more and more to single brewer recipe books. I have several collections of award winning beer recipes, but I've grown a bit tired of calculating each brewer's extraction rate then reinterpreting the recipe into my system's capacities. That's just pure laziness on my part, though. More legitimately, however, I'm always a bit stumped by bizarre and missing information in some of these collections--recipes with strange or no hydrometer readings, no mash or hop schedules, etc. For homebrewers with even an intermediate knowledge of brewing techniques, the absence of this information makes the recipe unappealing. The Szamatulski's book, on the other hand, gives homebrewers a solid base from which to brew their clone beers, a potentially educational premise for any homebrewer.
Rating:
Summary: A great resource
Review: Mine is so tattered from use I'll have to buy another soon. Fortuneately Maltose Express is 5 minutes from my office and 20 from home. The book is as excellent as the shop. All the recipes I have done have been so close to the original that noone can tell the difference. Of course some of the recipes are for brews that are hard to come by (they don't even make Sami Claus anymore) but for the ones I have done and tested side by side are dead on. All of the beers I have made from this book (about 20 so far) have turned out excellent. If you are ever in Connecticut, stop by, it is worth it. The book isn't so much a how to (which is wasn't supposed to be and doesn't pretend to be) a just a great resource for beer recipes from around the world. Can't wait for the next one.
Rating: 
Summary: Ok but I have beter home brew books
Review: The biggest problem is that I have only heard of about 6 of the beers that were in there. There are no recipes for any of the big breweries. The good news is that the book gives very good tips on how to clone beer. Some of the beers I made were pretty good. Some that I have not tried yet looked like they would be very good. Exstensive brewing knowlege is needed to understand what they are talking about. Not a beginer book.
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Summary: My door to the rewarding world of homebrewing
Review: The book and its creators are an inspiratoin to me. I was floundering in the frindge world of homebrewing when I met the authors in their store in CT. They honed my skills prior to the books' release, and now with book in hand, there are no limits. The book describes every quality of a great cross section of the beers of the world, allowing the brewer to zero in on the exact type of brew he or she desires. Recipies and brewing techniques are easily understantable and complete. The book, the desire, and the dedication are all one needs to excell in the realm of the Homebrewer. Brew on!! no one can do it better than you can.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: The book has great recipies to reproduce some of the best beers in the world. Tess and Mark's recipies and advise are excellent. I can't wait to brew more of these greats.
Rating:
Summary: What great recipes for the homebrewer in this book.
Review: The recipe instructions in this book are clearly written. The finished products (that I've tried so far) are as good as the beers (or better than) the beers that they imitate.
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