I was looking at getting a copy of How to Brew but Amazon's edition is 10 years old. Is there a new one? Is this definitely the book to get or should I pick up a more recent title?
The 2006 edition is the new one, IIRC. It's also the one I'd recommend getting. I don't agree 100% with everything in it, but I still think it's the best book for new brewers.
On a recent BeerSmith podcast Palmer said he is currently working on the new version. I believe he said the tentative release date is spring 2017.
If all you are planning on is extract brewing vs. all-grain brewing, then "Brewing Classic Styles" has a pretty good brewing intro as well as lots of recipes. The brewing part was written by Palmer. If you really want to understand what is going on when you brew beer, then it is hard to argue with "How to Brew"
John Palmer gave a presentation at the recent NHC (Homebrew Con) entitled: “What’s New in How To Brew: 4th Edition ETA: June 2017…ish” Cheers!
After you read How to Brew, I think the 4 ingredient books (Water, Malt, (For the love of) Hops and Yeast) are great to read and have around for reference. I tend to thumb through one of them every now and then to get more insight for a recipe I'm planning or just to learn something new about a technique or the science behind it all. After that, about the only other homebrewing book I use is American Sour Beer. Throw in a recipe book, Brewing Classic Styles was already mentioned, to get some ideas of how most styles are built and tips on building your own recipes and you got a pretty good reference library for any type of homebrewer!
I'm probably going to stick to extract w/ steep for a while. I don't see myself having the extra time to mash for an hour not to mention sparging. Although the suggestion of doing the mash in the oven on the HtB website was intriguing. That being said I am interested in the how and the why.
You should at least try BIAB/Brew In A Bag...it's IMO the next step from extract and really only requires you to have a few more pieces of inexpensive equipment and it only takes 30 minutes or so extra for your brew day. You can even do partial mash BIAB where you do half the grain bill with extract and half with grains...it's basically what you're currently doing, but you steep more grains, in a bigger bag, at a specific temp for 60 minutes instead of your usual 20-30 minute steep. This kit has everything you'll need besides what you use for your usual extract batches... http://www.northernbrewer.com/biab-brew-in-a-bag-all-grain-starter-kit Almost all of my batches are BIAB and I couldn't be happier! Cuts down on the process of traditional all grain and I still hit a conversion rate around 80%, which is better than my traditional all grain rate, and I can bang out an excellent brew in 3-4 hours.
I like the idea of BIAB but I am limited to a 2G kettle and 1.4G fermenter for the foreseeable future. That rules out all the NB kits but if I can make my own recipe certainly doable.
Its easy to make/do a SMaSH IPA that small...here's an easy 1.25 gallon Citra IPA: 3 lbs 2 Row mashed at 152 (mash in around 159 with such small batch) for 60 minutes in around 2 gallons of water, rinse grains in the wort several times, squeeze bag until its drained (I like to put the strainer over a Pyrex dish to keep catching any runnings to add to the kettle) and hit your boil. At that point its just like an extract batch...add 1/4 oz Citra @ 60, 1/2 oz Citra @ 10 and 1/2 oz Citra @ dry hop. You should end around 1.25 gallons final volume, if not, adjust. Use your preferred yeast, but Safale 05/wyeast 1056 is one of my favorite IPA yeasts. Your stats would be OG 1.067 FG 1.015 ABV 6.82% IBU 65.39 SRM 4.07 You can switch out the grain and get around the same gravity and you can switch out the hops (this was calculated using 11 AA% Citra, so you need to adjust amount of other hops based on its AA%), to make other SMaSH IPAs. I used Brewer's Friend to build the recipe...play around with it to start making your own recipes and have the freedom from relying on premade kits http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator/ I brew a similar beer often and the keg doesn't last long!
