BEER CAPTURED - me five ribbons.
Rating:
5 / 5
I have been brewing beer from this book for a couple of years and, to date, the recipes have earned me five home brewing ribbons - including (2) First Places. My most recent, and proudest, is a first place I earned for my version of Stovepipe Porter. This beer placed first in the Northeast Regional's of the 2004 National Homebrewing Competition.
Tess and Mark have incroporated a wealth of information into this book. The recipes are easy to follow and with some care will produce very nice beer. This book (as well as their earlier "Clonebrews") makes one thing difficult - which beer to make first??
This is a MUST HAVE for anyone interested in brewing their own beer. I can not thank Tess and Mark enough for their tireless efforts and dedication to making brewing beer so easy and rewarding!! Keep up the great work!PROSIT !!
nice book for the collection
Rating:
4 / 5
I really enjoyed this book as there is a wide range of recipes in varing styles. There is also a good description of hop and yeast varieties. My only complaint would be that there is sketchy recipe detail for the all grain brewer. Clearly this book was written with the extract brewer in mind. If you are an extract brewer and have your sights set on moving up to a partial mash then this book is a must have.
Decent book, good recipes
Rating:
4 / 5
I found this to be slightly better than North American Clone Brews. It's aimed at extract brewers, although it's still useful for all-grain brewers. They chose a nice variety of beers for this book, and I don't see too many clunkers. The disadvantage of this is that many of the beers are difficult to find. I've had good luck with all the recipes I've tried. While the first section of the book contains a brief description of the process, I strongly reading a beginner's brewing book (such as Papazian's Joy of Homebrewing, Dave Miller's Homebrewing Guide, or Marty Nachel's Homebrewing for Dummies) if you haven't brewed before. As with all brewing recipe books, you should take it with a grain of salt. I strongly recommend double-checking recipe ingredients with ProMash or the equivalent prior to beginning to make sure you'll hit the target gravity and bitterness. This is especially true if you're making the all grain or partial mash versions of the recipes. One of the major problems I have with this book is that for a lot of beers vital information is included in the Helpful Hints section, where you might miss it. For instance, lagering is only mentioned in the Helpful Hints section. This should be part of the main recipe. This seems to be a flaw in the format. I found the serving suggestions included with each recipe somewhat silly. There are a number of recipes at the end of the book which I haven't tried, although a number look decent.
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