Brewing Literature

Here's my to read or in some cases have read, some advance, some beginner:
Brewing Classic Styles
Radical Brewing
Water
Yeast
Hops
Mastering Home Brew (not released yet)
Homebrew Beyond the Basics
CloneBrews, 2nd Edition
The Complete Joy of Homebrewing Fourth Edition
New Brewing Lager Beer
An Analysis of Brewing Techniques
Tasting Beer
Principles of Brewing Science
Brew Like a Monk
Brewing Better Beer
IPA: Brewing Technique

 

For a Novice...
"How to Brew"
"Brewing Classic Styles"

Once you get a little beyond novice, roughly in this order..
"Yeast"
"Water"
"Hops" (if you are into hop focused beers)

Beyond that, I think it depends on where your interests take you.

 

I agree with VikeMan's novice suggestions, but would add Radical Brewing as well. Those 3 books are enough for your first year of brewing.

 

You probably should brew with literature - it'll add a weird, papery taste to your beer

 

For me, How to Brew and Brewing Classic Styles should be required reading. I still go back to them often and I wouldn't attempt to brew a new style without at least seeing what BCS has to say and checking out their recipe.

Yeast was good to cement in that focusing on pitching rates and fermentation temps is the most important thing you can do to make better beer.

 

anybody read it? worth a darn?

 

I think How to Brew and Brewing Classic Styles can get you by for a good long time by getting you through the basics of process (HTB) and providing examples of recipes that will help you understand the basic beer styles you are going to want to brew (BCS).

Beyond that, follow your interests. Geek out about yeast and/or water if you are really in love with the science. Get the hops book if you are a hop head. Get Belgian books like Farmhouse Ales or Brew Like a Monk if that's your fancy. Wild Brews or the new book on American sours if you are a puckerpuss. Radical Brewing if you want to use oddball ingredients.

 

Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels is another good one. Also, if you plan on brewing Saison and Biere de Garde styles, Farmhouse Ales by Phil Markowski is excellent.

A fun read that gets a little into the brewing process, but mostly just creative recipe ideas is Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher.

 

Unfortunately that is one of the ones I’ve yet to read. I enjoy the technical, therefore this one perked my interest.

 

Heavy on the chemistry , so yeah it was worth it.

 

Well then I'll have to get it.

 

The Brewing Elements series is great if you only read Malt, Yeast, and Water. Hops by Stan Heironimous was useless as a reference for a brewer looking for real practical advice and technique. There are many better essays, forums, blogs, books, etc. on hops.

 

Malt has not been published yet, you may not like that one either.

 

While I didn't finds "Hops" as useful to me as "Yeast," and probably "Water," I did think it was the best compilation of information about hops that I have seen. Please let us know which books are better for hops information.

 

In my opinion the Hops book by Stan Hieronymus is an excellent book!

That book is a twofer in that it was a joy to read plus there is lots of good technical information in it.

In the context of homebrewing I found the following very useful:

· Chapter 6: The Hop Store has lots of information on hops available for homebrewing, The descriptions on pages 139-173 are helpful.

· Chapter 7: Hops in the Brewhouse. Lots of good technical information in that chapter!!

· Chapter 8: Dry Hopping. I learned a lot from that chapter! Those 19 pages have the best and most concise information of dry hopping than anything else I have read on the topic. BA @Peter_Wolfe is quoted/mentioned a number of times in this Chapter.

· Chapter 9: The Good, the Bad and the Skunky. A short chapter but full of technical details.

· Chapter 10: What Works. A wonderful chapter detailing how numerous commercial breweries utilize hops in their breweries. Something that we homebrewers can look at as an inspiration and/or model for our homebrewing.

Cheers to Stan Hieronymus!.

 

I've heard very good things about the book/author and have read some of his previous technical work as well as followed other things he has done (Bell's Brewery, Siebel Institute). Should be a nice capstone to the series. Hops was just such a love letter to one ingredient without enough of the technical expertise.

 

I think Mitch Steele's IPA book is a better manual of how to use hops due to his discussion of how to actually construct a beer with hops in mind. Using Hops by Garetz is kind of outdated, but still a good reference.

 

Your viewpoint may be that there were not enough brewing tidbits? Stan Hieronymus is a homebrewer, not a pro brewer, but he is a writer and known for his research into the subject. The book was a joy for me to read, and did get into more than a few details on hops. As for brewing, since the IPA book came out at about the same time, those bases were covered for IPAs. Those were fine back to back reads.

John Mallett has given talks on malt and malting at the last 2 NHCs. Those were informative and entertaining. I expect there will be history, farming, malting, and barley breeding and varieties discussed in his book. There might even be a little brewing in there.