Comments on: Brewing Classic Styles: 80 Winning Recipes Anyone Can Brew

By: Michael Johnson

Michael Johnson — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:26:14 +0000

I pre-ordered this book when I saw the quality of the two authors involved. Jamil and John Palmer are among the best in the world of homebrewing. John Palmer's "How to Brew" is a classic text on the subject. This book does not rise to such a height. The bulk of the book is recipes and not much on the whys and technical background.

The recipes may be of high quality and tested by Jamil for all his homebrewing medals. However, some of these recipes could be found through his free podcast. In addition, I've found many of the malt extracts called for in the recipes are very hard to find. Where can I get Rauch Liquid Malt Extract? It is made but I was unable to find a source for it online. This is one example of hard to find ingredients among others.

With the two authors I was hoping for more techniques and background. It is more like buying a cookbook than a food science book. It is mildly disappointing because I haven't had a difficult time finding recipes in magazines, online, and in podcasts. However, knowledge and experience are harder to come by. Rating: 4 / 5

By: Larry Gellert

Larry Gellert — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:24:24 +0000

Browsing through the 80 recipes in this book was a great source of inspiration for my next batch of home brew. If you can’t decide what to do next, pick up this book. There is bound to be something you haven’t tried.

The title is misleading, the sub-title would be more accurate. It is primarily recipes. The book contains short introductory chapters on ingredients and brewing that other books have covered in more detail. If you don’t know what terms like lovibond, OG, FG, and IBU are I would read an introductory how to brew book first.

The recipes are primarily setup for all grain brewers. For extract based brewers the recipes are modified to `fit’ the style. I get the sense the authors are all grain brewers who wanted to broaden the market for their book by adding the extract formulations.

This is a great book to browse and see what a style has in common in terms of grains, hops and yeast.

larry ‘at’ brewersfriend ‘dot’ com

http://www.brewersfriend.com
Rating: 3 / 5

By: HudsonValleyBrewer

HudsonValleyBrewer — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 23:48:34 +0000

Every homebrewer is search of creating a better homebrew including intermediate homebrewers.
This is a helpful book but...

...if you purchase this book, review the recipes with your local brew shop (if possible). These recipes are for 7 gallon batches of beer (which I found odd). Most homebrewers brew 5 gallon batches. If you wish to use this book, 5 gallon-version recipes will have to be converted for the amount of wort you need to boil. The opening of the book discusses converting your wort to a 2 or 3 gallon boil but it is lacking details. Most newer brewers would find this confusing (I think).

Homebrewers that are still in the learning process but want to move away from beginner recipes should not purchase Brewing Classic Styles just yet.

I would recommend BEER CAPTURED by Tess and Mark Scamatulski. The recipes in BEER CAPTURED are very detailed and offer a great book for the intermediate homebrewer. Best of all, they are for 5 gallons of beer! (You will be boiling 1.5 or 2 gallons of wort )They do not need to be altered either. Everything is laid out in detail.
Rating: 2 / 5

By: Dunk

Dunk — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:53:30 +0000

I was disappointed in this book. There is so much more to brewing than a recipe and I was hoping for more on input and different points of view on other aspects of brewing. This is basically another recipe book with a brief blurb on the particular recipe/style – not much real new earth shattering info presented.

John’s a great guy, makes good beer, yada yada and he has a lot of knowledge – don’t know much about the other guy but whatever knowledge is there didn’t come through at much more than a simple level. Once you get to the place where you are doing your own combinations of ingredients to create specific flavors and other characteristics in a finished beer you’re well beyond needing a recipe. I’d hoped for something that was much more insightful. Maybe a good book for novice/beginning all-grain brewers looking for tested recipes.
Rating: 3 / 5

By: xray

xray — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:31:09 +0000

I just got this book and have begun to flip through it. I hate to disrupt the stream of positive reviews, but at least one thing about it really annoys me. I’m fairly new to brewing and was looking forward to having good recipes for the classic beer styles, and especially ones that can be done with extract as well as all-grain. I could be wrong, but it seems that the numbers for extract brewing are just a mathematical conversion from an originally all-grain recipe. The quantities listed for malt extract are almost all listed in odd amounts and tenths of a pound, i.e. 6.7 lbs. of pale malt or 1.3 lbs. of dark malt. Most extracts are packed in even amounts like Northern Brewer’s 6lb. and 3lb. sizes. Where do you get .7 lbs. or .3 lbs. of extract!? Even if you’re willing to buy more than you need to make up the difference, it would be very difficult/tedious to measure accurately.
Rating: 3 / 5