Recipe Books

I wouldn't say that Brewing Classic Styles is mostly extract focused. Every recipe in it has an all grain version (i.e. the original recipe).

As for newer books, there's Gordon Strong's book "Modern Homebrew Recipes," but unless you're willing to adopt his method of adding dark grains only for the vorlauf, it's IMO of limited value as a recipe book (though there's lots of great general brewing stuff in his "Brewing Better Beer" book).

If you like to brew sour beers, or want to start, "American Sour Beers" by Michael Tonsmeire is the standard.

 

Whenever I'm building a new recipe, BCS and Designing Great Beers are my typical jump off points. Then reference BYO, Zymurgy, HBT to get more ideas.

 

The internet is the best recipe book and its free I have bought a few recipe books and never really used them...they are chocked full of very traditional and relatively boring recipes that just don't interest me. Homebrewing is often about current trends, so this forum and others like it are some of the best places to pick up ideas, techniques and even the occasional recipe. I formulate most of my own recipes, but when I brew a style new to me I just search for a classic clone recipe on the web, brew it and then make my own adjustments for future batches of that style. And any extract recipe can be converted to all grain, just like most all grain recipes can be converted to extract....its usually just a matter of changing the base grain and keeping the specialty grains the same.

 

One idea - check out the Brewdog DIY recipe collection available on-line. Helpful for thinking through recipe structure and creation.

 

http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator/
This, or something similar, is a good place to modify or create your own recipes...if you don't have a favorite calculator already.

 

There are a lot of dubious recipes online. One needs to have experience to separate the good from the chaff.

 

I usually just look at prior NHC winning recipes online when I'm looking for inspiration

 

Brewing Classic Styles still holds up. It's much more than a recipe book, though. It describes in depth makes a style a style. I don't stick to the recipes in there but they certainly give me a good starting point when brewing a style that I haven't brewed before. And sure, you could find starting points and ideas for recipes on the internet as well but I trust Jamil's and Palmer's basic recipes more than most that I find on forums. Seeing the basic recipe and reading what I read the pages before about a style will help me formulate my own recipe.

I'll also second NHC winning recipes and ones found in zymurgy and other magazines.

 

I like have a very specific purpose for my brewing, so I brew clone recipes for great beers that I cannot get in quantity. The most hyped beers are usually available in some clone recipe somewhere. Sometimes I use the book Clone Brews which gives recipes for for existing commercial beers in extract, mini-mash and all-grain formats. http://www.amazon.com/CloneBrews-2nd-Recipes-Commercial-Beers/dp/160342539X

 

Brewing Classic Styles is very good recipe book but no to exciting, recipe are very easy to come by, better investment is Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation book it's more likely to improve your results no matter where you brew.

I have both books, Yeast book is by far my number one Brewing bible.

 

OP: Just FYI, "Yeast" is a very good book, but it doesn't have any recipes in it.

 

I usually reference Brewing classic styles wen trying out a new style, but that's more of a loose guideline... For me a lot of the fun in homebrewing comes from making the recipes, rather than duplicating others.

 

And there are a lot of dubious recipes in books as well...

 

I think Brewing Classic Styles is the best recipe book out there. I have brewed a small number of recipes pretty much verbatim from the book and they have been great, but mostly I use it as a jumping off point for other things I want to incorporate into my beer. See a new ingredient at the retailer? Think about which style it would fit best in, think about what ingredients would get subbed out of the recipe, etc. If you thumb through it casually it looks like an extract book when in fact it includes extract and all grain versions of each recipe.

 

I'm all for Brewing Classic Styles as a first recipe book. It has a proven recipe for every 2008 BJCP style. Even if you don't brew it as is, it's a great starting point.

 

I use all the following, as well as the recipes in "Brew Your Own" magazine, the recipes in BeerSmith 2, and the recipes n this forum:

1. Extreme Brewing (Sam Caglione);
2) Clone Brews (Tess and Mark Szamatulski);
3) Brewing Classic Styles (Jamil Zainasheff and John J. Palmer);
4) Modern Homebrew Recipes (Gordon Strong);
5) American Sour Beers (Michael Tonsmeire);
6) Brew Like a Monk (Stan Hieronymus).

 

Number 2 in Ols Socks list. The others are pretty good.

 

Who need recipes book when all major beer style it's out there at the public domain. Allow me to save newbie time and resources enjoy what they do