Homebrewing - Volume I

by Al Korzonas

This book teaches the reader how to brew beer at home, assuming no prior knowledge of brewing. It goes on to teach more advanced techniques, troubleshoot problems, answer frequently asked questions and includes a chapter on formulating original recipes for a multitude of styles. Appendices provide information on every modern beer style, hundreds of yeast strains and how to select between them, and detailed information on over 100 hop varieties. * The most detailed homebrewing book ever written
* 547 pages covering everything from your very first batch to recipe formulation
* 34 original recipes
* 57 pages on troubleshooting
* 37 pages answering frequently asked questions
* Fully referenced
* Individual chapters describing each ingredient
* Tables for imitating famous water sources, calculating bitterness, dissolved oxygen, priming rates, and more
* Information gathered from dozens of professional texts and brewing research papers
* Appendices 99 beer styles, 119 hop varieties (aroma, flavor, substitutions), 245 dry and liquid yeasts (attenuation, flocculation, preferred temperature, aroma, flavor, and more)
* Award-winning recipe formulation techniques
* Teaches beer tasting and palate training

547 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1997

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is really helpful and jam-packed full of information. The author tried to get the reader to really focus on the first two chapters, but I found Chapters 7 and beyond to be a very beneficial resource. Possibly because the world of homebrewing has progressed much very far since 1995-1997 when the book was written, the first few chapters were full of basic, necessary, but somewhat outdated information.

The real treasure of this book, in my opinion, was towards the back where Al Korzonas began comparing and explaining the differences in grains, hops, yeasts and other additives. He includes more than just flavor profiles that one can find while trolling through internet forums. The substitution charts, style and flavor guidelines are all very helpful. If you could combine this with Charlie Papazian's Joy of Homebrewing, one might have the best beginner book out there.

The only drawback to this book is that some of the info on sanitizers, etc. is outdated by 15 years and that there are a lot of editing mistakes similar to those made on early 90s word processor programs where entire lines of text are repeated or words are "misspelled" into other words (thought, though.)

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the best homebrew books I've read so far. The author's style is great and very easy to follow, especially for a novice homebrewer! The content and detail are amazing without going too in depth into the science of the homebrew process.