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Summary: Summary of contents, web page address.
Review:
Brewers Publications has just published my book entitled Designing Great Beers: The Ultimate Guide to Brewing Classic Beer Styles. The depth and breadth with which it covers the subject of recipe formulation ensures that virtually everyone associated with craft brewing will find interesting and useful information between its covers.
For intermediate to advanced homebrewers and commercial craft brewers, the first ten chapters of the book cover the mechanics of recipe formulation, including theory, resources and calculations.
The remaining fourteen chapters examine the brewing of classic styles from bock to barley wine and old ale to oktoberfest. These chapters present analyses of more than 700 successful commercial and homebrewed recipes. The recipe analyses are presented in graphic form and each style chapter concludes with "Key Success Factors" so that brewers can quickly grasp and apply this knowledge in their own recipes.
The style chapters also cover the history of brewing in considerable detail. This proves useful to a wide range of readers. Based upon extensive research in old brewing texts, these chapters give descriptions of historical recipes and brewing techniques. Armed with this data, brewers will find many new approaches to brewing and formulating the classic styles.
Everyone who has been bitten with the brewing bug seems to have a constant thirst for knowledge as well as beer. Designing Great Beers delivers a wealth of information that will quench those thirsts while putting new pages in every brewer's recipe journal.
For a full table of contents and excerpts see the web page at: http://www.mcs.net/~rdan/DGBindex.html
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Summary: 2nd best brew book ever!
Review: After NEW BREWING LAGER BEER, this has been the most helpful book to get my beer styles just right. It contains hordes of information usually available only in professional works, and doesn't over complicate it. I love this book and always refer to it before I start a new brew. It is the only accurate book that discusses the amount of water retained in your grain, and allows you to calculate the pre brew water quantity more accurately. A must for you home brew library.
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Summary: 2nd best brew book ever!
Review: After NEW BREWING LAGER BEER, this has been the most helpful book to get my beer styles just right. It contains hordes of information usually available only in professional works, and doesn't over complicate it. I love this book and always refer to it before I start a new brew. It is the only accurate book that discusses the amount of water retained in your grain, and allows you to calculate the pre brew water quantity more accurately. A must for you home brew library.
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Summary: just what you need
Review: After reading these reviews, and getting this book, I would have to agree that it is one of the few beer books I refer to often. If you spend time before each recipe researching the style and tweaking the composition, this is just the book for you. I love the graphs of NHC 2nd round grist compositions that show min max and mean % of each grain. The mini style sections of the book give a good history and discuss ingredients and brewing processes. I was unaware of many techniques covered in the book, and can't wait to try them all out.
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Summary: One Book the Serious Homebrewer must have
Review: Any serious homebrewer, or anyone aspiring to become one, should read this book, and then use it as a reference tool. It provides an introductory section, which is really a thorough course, in brewing technique, covering malts, water, color, hops and yeast. It is heavy in formulas and theory, but presented in an understandable manner (if you have already brewed). Then it moves on to a section for each of the classical beer styles, with detailed information on each, and I was pleased with the coverage given to the traditional German ales, my favorite subject. But it is similarly thorough with respect to British ales and pilsners. Unlike other recent books, it does not put emphasis on the Belgian fad. Since I brew mainly to please myself and not to win competitions, I am not convinced that the statistics on how the NHC runners-up brewed is significant (and there is a lot of it). It may indicate if these brewers hit a style right - but only as tasted and interpreted by the judges. Although it may be useful to take some inspiration and knowledge from these recipes, one should not be a slave to the taste (or lack of) of others or strict interpretations of style. My only other gripe is that some tables use different methods of measurements for the same thing, making it hard to compare values. The many tables and formulas are mindboggling. Luckily you can buy software that will translate and calculate it all for you (ProMash comes to mind) - but the book is extrememly useful for your understanding of how values are calculated - in short how the beer might turn out.
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Summary: The best recipe formulation book I have seen
Review: First, let me say what this book is not. It is not a recipe book, or a book which describes the techniques for brewing beer. In other words, it is not for beginners.
After following recipes for a number of batches of beer, it was time to learn how to create my own recipes. The purpose of this book is to do just that; come up with your own recipes. The first part of the book tells the reader how to compute the grain bill, the hop bill and how to hit original gravity. It also contains information on beer color, yeast and water. I used this section to make the computations for my first original recipe. This, in turn, gave me the incentive to buy a brewing software package which I now use in conjunction with the second part of the book.
The second part describes beer styles and what ingredients go into each style described. There is a chart for each style which gives information on ingredients used in beers which made it to the second round of the NHC. I found some of the charts in this part somewhat confusing and there are a few references in the text to wrong charts. However, as a result of this book, I have started to formulate my own recipes with a lot of success.
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Summary: An essential resource
Review: For anyone who has brewed at least one batch, this is a must-have book. You will learn more from reading this book, than from brewing a hundred more batches. Read Papazin, then graduate to this. You will learn to hit target gravities, target IBU's, and how to balance them against each other. Styles are broken down into easily (for the most part) reproducible processes and techniques, allowing you to formulate your own recipe within the style, not copy someone else's. I never brew a batch without reading up on the particular style in this book first. Best book out there on beer. Bar none.
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Summary: A True Bible of Beer
Review: I have a shelve full of brewing books, some in Russian, some in English, some in German. This book is absolutely excellent in concept, format and layout. Ray Daniels not only knows a great deal about beer, he knows how to compose and design a great book. The first section of Ray's book covers the fundamentals of all grain brewing in recipe design and formulation. The second part reviews the most popular beer styles, and throws in a good chunk of history and excerpts from old books and texts, which adds some flavor to this great hobby. Best book out there on beer, a true bible. Highly recommended.
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Summary: Designing Great Beers
Review: I have thoroughly enjoyed this book since I purchased it a few months ago. The first half of the book has plently information regarding IBU's, Gravity Points and other aspects of brewing. Also, I found the style chapters quite informative as well. Consequently, I don't brew any ales without consulting this book first.I just started brewing partial mash beers, and its utility was not diminished by the fact I was brewing extract. As I move into all grain, I am sure I will keep this book close for reference. Finally, I would suggest this book to any of my friends who are thinking of brewing thier own.
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Summary: A must have for the daring hombrewer
Review: I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to get away from the beaten path. Even those who want to stick to published recipes will learn a lot in terms of what is worth pursuing and what is not.
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