How to Brew: Ingredients, Methods, Recipes, and Equipment for Brewing Beer at Home

Rating:
Summary: Is this price for real?
Review: A few years ago, John Palmer wrote an online guide to making a very simple beer in an effort to whet people's appetites (and taste buds!) for brewing beer at home. Greatly expanded after that first edition, this book contains information on brewing techniques, brewing chemistry, and the biology of the plants that end up in a brew.

In addition to giving a very thorough overview of brewing beer, Palmer includes recipes and information on how to create your own, unique beer.

Rating:
Summary: Everything you need to know to make a quality homebrew
Review: A few years ago, John Palmer wrote an online guide to making a very simple beer in an effort to whet people's appetites (and taste buds!) for brewing beer at home. Greatly expanded after that first edition, this book contains information on brewing techniques, brewing chemistry, and the biology of the plants that end up in a brew.

In addition to giving a very thorough overview of brewing beer, Palmer includes recipes and information on how to create your own, unique beer.

Rating:
Summary: How To Brew is Not out of print.
Review: Hello, my name is John Palmer, and I am the author of How To Brew. Unfortunately, Amazon lists my book as being out-of-print because the national distributers do not carry it, and Amazon states that they have no input to their own webpages that take their availability status from the distributer's databases. I have written the distributers and Amazon to decry this misrepresentation of my book, but they just shrug.

If you are interested in purchasing a copy of my book, please visit your local homebrewing supply shop, as it is widely available. I have a partial listing of shops that carry it around the world at my website: www.howtobrew.com.
Thank you!

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book for those new to home brewing
Review: I came across this book from visiting John Palmer's web site. He is nice enough to let you see the entire first edition online. I admire his willingness to share, and I purchased a copy of the second edition. Although it is very similar to the online text, it has been updated, and having a hard copy of this excellent reference is a must.

For those wanting to brew and brew right out of the gate, Mr. Palmer starts off explaining every step of the process clearly and in a very straight forward manner. I found this book to be one of the best organized and clearly laid out brewing guides I've come across.

If you want more information other than just the mechanics of how to brew, it is in here too. Yeast, malts, hops, water, the boil, fermentation, equipment, all grain, and building your own equipment (and more) are thoroughly covered.

If you can't find this book on Amazon, go to your local homebrew store and pick up a copy.

Rating:
Summary: Is this price for real?
Review: Is the price of $186 dollars for this paperback for real?

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Summary: Currently the best place to start, and NOT out of print!
Review: Like most homebrewers, I started out with Charlie Papazian's book "The New Joy of Homebrewing". I had the second edition. It was a good book, but comparing it to this text, it seems hopelessly dated.

With the explosion of microbreweries across the country, lots of people got turned on to GOOD beer - and many of those looked into homebrewing. With so many people trying different methods and equipment, over time, brewing became simpler and much of what was deemed necessary in the earlier days was discarded. Many of the techniques and equipment listed here are the results of years of trial-and-error streamlining by other homebrewers. In addition, there's never been so many resources available via mail order and on the net. Homebrewing really is easy at this point.

This is the best basic brewing text I've found. You can start with it by making extract only beers, graduating to specialty grains in addition to extract, then to all grain brewing and making your own recipes and beer styles. The book is linear, presents the information as you need it and the information ranges from the most basic (like sanitation) to as technical as you could possibly want (water chemistry).

For years I've been an extract and specialty grain brewer. I never completely understood the process of all-grain brewing until I bought this text. It gave me the courage to build my own lautering tun and brew my first batch of beer made completely from scratch. It was a pale ale, nothing exotic, but man was it good beer. Check out the author's website and read the first edition online. The second edition is improved, so if you like the online text buy the hard copy book.

There are other good texts out there (the author lists many of them in the back of the book) but if you only want one homebrewing text, buy this one. It's a shame that Amazon doesn't carry it anymore. Track it down.