Self-Sufficiency: Home Brewing (IMM Lifestyle Books) Learn How to Brew Beer at Home - Equipment, Techniques, Ingredients, Malt and Hop Varieties, Insider Secrets, and Recipes for Stout, IPA, and Ale

by John Parkes

What could be better than enjoying a glass of delicious home-brewed organic beer? This book includes everything you'll need to know to brew a variety of beers at home, from the equipment and techniques needed to a few inside secrets from a professional brewer. In this timely book, John Parkes demystifies the brewing process and explains in easy-to-follow terms how anyone can produce delicious beer with the help of just some basic equipment and a few key skills. Those new to home brewing will love the easy-to-follow instructions and the detailed explanations of the brewing process and anyone already adept at home brewing will be delighted by the original recipes. Made without unnecessary chemicals and additives, the beers featured here will appeal to anyone seeking a more self-sufficient lifestyle.

Genres: Beer, Reference, Nonfiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 10, 2009

Reviews

[Sandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up to get some basic beer recipes. I found the recipes to be inconsistent and without sufficient detail. The hops flavor profile guide is handy but didn't match the selection at my l9cal homebrew store.

[Kyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent introduction.

[Cailin Deery · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good, digestible overview of the basics behind home brewing including the considerations that may or may not have occurred to you (for example: if 94 – 96% of beer is actually water, how important is your water source? What are the benefits and drawbacks of using tap water versus sterilized water versus a natural source, and what effects is this going to have on your brew?). It also covers (at least touches on) advice that labels, more basic instructions and recipes don’t touch on. I was recommended How to Brew: Everything You Need to Know to Brew Beer Right the First Time by John Palmer, which is also supposed to be a great intro to, and although it’s freely available online, I needed something I could read away from the screen.

The book first introduces beer styles, ingredients, equipment and alternatives to all of these. Then goes into the basic principles behind making your own beer, which further breaks down into three chunks: brewing from kits; brewing with malt extract, hops and other adjuncts; and then ‘brewing the traditional way,’ for more serious and/or experienced brewers with more knowledge and time on their hands (and the willingness to at least initially invest a bit more in their brewing).

I’ve only brewed once, using a kit (the contents of which are essentially concentrated malt extract and hop extract), and though I followed instructions carefully and had a nice beer to enjoy for months after, a lot of what I needed to do was a bit unclear, and this book answered a fair few of those ambiguities. So, for example:

• Although my kit didn’t ask me to add brewing sugar, the proprietor of my local homebrew shop (a teetotal, interestingly) encouraged me to. The consequence, which I didn’t realize at the time, is that adding sugar does make the beer stronger, but it also produces more of a ‘thin’ beer.
• When pitching the yeast, you have to wait for the wort to fall to a specific temperature range, and this is because pitching the yeast when the wort is too cold means the yeast won’t ferment and pitching when it’s too hot will kill the yeast. I wasn’t instructed to stir at this stage, but the yeast needs oxygen, so I need to invest in a better, longer stirring rod.
• Oxygen is very important at the start of the brewing process, but towards the end the brew will produce acetic acid or vinegar when oxidation takes place.
• A kit beer’s shelf life for beer under 4% is about 6 months. Higher percentages may last for more like a year, or slightly longer (chime in, brewing friends!)
• Next time I brew, I need to make sure to both skim the yeast off the top of the barrel before racking/barrelling/bottling and additionally, after moving the bin to a higher position (so I can siphon the brew into bottles), I need to give it a few hours to allow any solids to settle, reducing sediment.
• Siphoning was a huge mess last time I tried, so next time I can either a. fit a tap to the end of the siphon, giving me better control b. find a new siphon with a ‘U-tube arrangement’ at the end that’s going into the brew or c. invest in an auto-siphon.
• Sugar (no more than .5 teaspoons) is not necessary during bottling, but if I add it (which I did the last time), this will result in a secondary fermentation with any remaining yeast.
• I wanted to move beyond kit beers, because I’m more interested in adjuncts and mashes, but I need more experience first, as well as quite a bit of equipment (a large pan that can hold 10 litres; a stainless steel sieve; a scale that can handle 2 kg but measures grams, and all the many ingredients).
• Interesting thang: Traditional lagering process is beyond the reach of most homebrewers because lager is fermented at a much lower temperature and uses a different kind of yeast. The period of time for fermenting is also about twice as long as it is for ales.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not like it was a *bad* book, per se. Just useless.

This is the bare-minimum basics, and there are a ton of other books out there that cover those basics with a whole hack of a lot more interest and panache.

Plus, it looks like it was typeset by a 1990s housewife (I had originally written "fourth grader", but then I realized most fourth graders are probably more tech-savvy than this these days). Since when does a professionally-printed book title recipes like this?:

~ Old fashioned mild ale ~

And in the same font as the rest of the book. And they centered the descriptions but just tabbed over the titles, so the "centered" titles are not in line with the centered descriptions.

Capitalize your recipe titles, yo. This book wasn't printed in England. And tildes? For chrissakes. You know there's a "bold" button, right?

[Philip John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative although it does have a couple of negative points; 1, it uses terminology before explaining that terminology leaving the reader to backtrack once the expansion is given and 2, detailed processes are explained in prose where supplementary diagrams would significantly aid understanding.

[Sagely · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you want to brew bad beer, follow the directions given in this book. Seriously.

Parkes offers, to be generous, an interesting view into the practice of small UK brewpubs. Perhaps his methods somehow work for him. I can't imagine them working anywhere else.

[Stuart Elliott]

Informative but brief, it takes you through the need to know of home brewing as well as some historical background and interesting facts. Worth while read.

[Mike02929 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Info