Rating: 
Summary: Great book. Best I've seen for mini-mash & all-grain clones
Review: This book is a good reference resource and a good recipe book. This book contains recipes for many beers that are widely available in the US. It is well organized, contains appropriate reference charts and a good index. It does have a few typographical errors. These errors are not difficult to figure out if the reader has a little knowledge of brewing. The author correctly, according to many other authors, does not have the brewer change the hop schedule for the longer boils of the all-grain recipes. He appropriatley instructs the all-grain brewer to use the same schedule as the extract brewer and boil the bittering hops for only 60 minutes. The brewer, rather than trying to reduce the hop amounts by some percentage that is not normally achievable by the homebrewer, follows the simpler hop schedule. The author also uses different sacharification rest temperatures for different beer styles. These changes are a must for desirable outcomes in mini-mashes and all-grain recipes. This book is an excellent resource, particularly for all-grain and mini-mash brewers.
Rating:
Summary: Decent book, unfairly reviewed
Review: While there are mistakes in this book (as there are in Clone Brews and Beer Captured), overall this is a worthwhile book-all the recipes I have made from this book have turned out well. Much of the criticism of this book seems overdone. Beerman11, for instance, says that the extract version of the Immortales recipe asks you to continue the recipe with mini-mash recipe, and that this would require boiling 7.5 gallons. In my copy, the extract recipe asks you to use the mini-mash recipe after the boil--which would result in a boil of 3 gallons. Admittedly, some of the criticism is fair. The book does not suggest lowering the amount of hops for the all-grain recipes, which is odd. I could not find the barleywine error mentioned elsewhere (although I'm not a big barleywine fan); it is possible mistakes in the first edition were corrected. On the other hand, Russell did actually include lagering in his recipes, which the Szamatulski's did not in Clone Brews (and included only in the Helpful Hints section in Beer Captured, their latest book). Frankly, I suspect many of the problems with this book are a result of the publishing format, which applies to both of the Szamatulski's books as well. The short, one-page recipe format doesn't leave enough room to discuss technique and other issues involved with making the beer, and I think a lot of useful information is left out. However, I can get this information elsewhere. Overall, I liked this book better than the original Clone Brews and almost as much as Beer Captured.
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