Simple Homebrewing: Great Beer, Less Work, More Fun

by Denny Conn, Drew Beechum

Have you ever found yourself doing less and less homebrewing, or being too intimidated to take up the brewing to begin with? Let Drew Beechum and Denny Conn help you brew the best possible beer with less work and more fun! Simple Homebrewing simplifies the complicated steps for making beer and returns brewing to its fundamentals. Explore easy techniques for harnessing water, malted barley, hops, and yeast (along with a few odd co-stars) to create beer. Pick up tips and tricks for a range of brewing challenges like adjusting your brewing liquor, working with adjunct ingredients, controlling fermentation, and brewing wild beers. The authors guide you from extract brewing to all-grain batches and explain the simple philosophy of recipe design and small-batch brewing. Learn how to evaluate different types of malt and hops by tasting, crushing, and steeping them, and use this to build your flavor vocabulary. Denny and Drew also share ideas on how to make technology work for you by taking a look at brewing gadgets, from fancy fermentation jackets and expensive (but convenient) all-in-one “robot” brewing systems, to bucket heaters, swamp coolers and do-it-yourself PID controllers made from inexpensive and commonly available microprocessors.
Drew and Denny’s mantra is “Brew the best beer possible, with the least effort possible, while having the most fun possible.” Throughout, the focus is on helping you develop a simple, thoughtful process to make homebrewing more accessible and enjoyable. Wisdom is imparted in tones both reassuring and amusing, and the basics are broken down into easily remembered chunks. The authors also feature interviews with an eclectic group of brewers from the Americas, who add their own take on the brewing process and how they have made it work for them. Get a feel for recipe design by looking at a few handy templates for Pilsner, pale ale, IPA, double IPA, stout, tripel, and saison; or try your own bottom-up or top-down approach after reading Denny and Drew’s advice. Along the way you will find over 40 recipes, ranging from the simplest of pale ales, American lagers, tried and tested altbier recipes, and delicious rye IPAs, to Old and New World barleywine, quick tripels, Scotch ale mashed overnight, king cake ale, purple corn beer, and Catherina sour. Marvel at how mushrooms can be used in beer and tremble at the thought of a bourbon barrel–aged barleywine made with ghost pepper. Even experienced homebrewers can learn from this dynamic duo, as Simple Homebrewing features expert advice for brewers of all levels.

Genres: Brewing, Nonfiction, Beer

250 pages, Paperback

Published June 7, 2019

Reviews

[Susan Atherly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know one of the authors, Drew Beechum, and I am not surprised he and his co-author wrote such a useable guide to brewing. Easy to follow and tasty end products. They keep the equipment list simple and provide resources if you can't find something in your area of the world.

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know quite how to describe this book, and (frankly) that's a good thing. It isn't a book for homebrewing beginners, but it definitely features a "beginner mindset" in that it questions "but why?" on every bit of conventional wisdom out there. Not because they're contrarians (though maybe they kind of are?) and not because they think the conventional wisdom is wrong (though sometimes it is) but because they're seeking to help you find the simplest way to brew the beer you love while having fun with it.

And this is very much the attitude that I'm here for. As someone trying to come back to homebrewing after a couple-years-long hiatus, it's refreshing to read something like this where they're basically saying: "Look, turn the volume down on your anxiety about this! Brew a three-gallon batch! Do it as BIAB on your stove top! Pitch dry yeast! Just have some fun!"

So who is this for? It's not for the beginner, though I guess I would say that beginners are welcome, too. Who I *really* think it's for:

(1) homebrewers who have "lapsed" for a couple years and want to get back into it but are feeling overwhelmed

(2) homebrewers that are still "new-ish" and have been at it for a bit and are stepping up their game but either (a) find that part intimidating or else (b) have found that their brew quality got WORSE somehow

(3) homebrewers that are maybe a little full of themselves (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE)

Highly recommended.

[Jürgen Defurne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book appealed to me because I am of the same thought as these guys: keep things simple. That is not to say that one should not do his best to follow a good process, but these guys show how to become a good brewer with the minimum of material. Being an engineer myself, my goal is always to try to simplify things.

I started homebrewing in 2015 after I found a kit for only 3 litres of beer. I had already a desire before to learn to brew, but I was daunted by the figures, because most homebrewing is based upon volumes of 19/20 litres. But that makes 60 (Belgian) beers, and I didn't want to drink the same beer the whole time. It was actually through discovering Emma Christensen that I also learned that all-grain brewing could be done in small batches.

I only discovered this book recently, and it is only from 2019, but they confirm more or less what I already had discovered myself: brewing small(er) batches takes less work, gives more opportunities to brew, makes it possible to brew and explore more, and is physically less demanding.

They show their brewing lessons across the whole brewing chain, starting with extract, talking about brewing small batches, going to the simplest all-grain brewing, flavor, malt and hops, a look at automated systems (to make things simple), adjuncts, yeast and fermentation and finally also a chapter about spontaneous fermentation.

In between the chapters they also interview known home brewers and craft brewers to look at the things these people simplify.

All in all, one of the better brew books. If I should recommend a book to someone who wants to start homebrewing, it would really be this book.

[Max Wolffe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not for brand new brewers, but maybe a beginner++ book. Some great ideas on how to simplify brewing. Some obvious - clean as you go, get everything ready ahead of time. Some more innovative - get your starter wort made in a big batch once and use it throughout the year.

Some ideas I’m going to try:
- Smaller batches - 2-3 gallon batches with an over night oven mash sound excellent.
- Ditching the stir plate (will try it at least ;)) and use a “shake the starter” method.
- Wild starter cultivation
- Wort testing techniques
- basic water chemistry (they present this quite well)
- Some good ideas around getting to know ingredients and using them to think about recipe design.

The writing is light and informal and fun (I especially like how they managed two authors with little Denny or Drew speech bubbles).

While it’s got a lot of good little ideas, it’s more a “jack of all trades, master of none” book. Buy it from Amazon? No. Buy it from your LHBS while you’re picking up ingredients? Yes.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an excellent resource for brewers who understand the basics and have a fair amount of experience. I think the point of the book is to keep people who are ready to go all-in from going down the wrong paths, or at least paths that are unnecessarily complicated, expensive, etc. In my opinion, this book provides a relatively concise and organized synopsis of all the advice and opinions that Denny and Drew give in their podcast, “Experimental Homebrewing”. If you’ve listened to all the episodes of the podcast, you may not find everything in the book to be new information, but I certainly enjoy the ability to look up topics in the index of the book rather than trying to guess which episode I heard a particular tidbit. Overall, it’s worth a read!

[Ramon van Dam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Denny and Drew are two of the most interesting figures in the world of homebrewing. I love their podcast and this is the third book by them that I've read, each one ending up with four stars from me.

As the title suggests, this time the focus is on simplifying the process without compromising on quality. There are quite a lot of interesting tips and tricks in here, I recommend it to all homebrewers.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is definitely not a beginner's book for brewing, but it does provide many insights into ways to simplify your brewing process. I'm most interested in trying the shorter boil and to get back to batch sparging.

[Barry Forrest · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked up some useful tips, learned what obsessions to ignore and simplify my brew days 😁

[Mike Humphries · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! I have read a lot of brewing books. This one expects that you understand brewing and then helps you shorten that brew day process. Thanks!

[Aaron Munger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining writing and has some good information for a pragmatic understanding of brewing. It will be nice to use some of the time saving techniques to shorten my brew day.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helpful for home brewers of all levels.

[Paul Klammer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book for newer and very experienced homebrewers who read books as part of their learning process and for reference. Packed with good practical info w/o technical excess that will speed up your learning curve, shorten your brew day, and let you brew confidently and consistently. The editors wisely let the friendly and humorous rapport between Denny Conn and Drew Beechum shine through. A fund read and as far from a slog as one can get. Some nice recipes that illustrated principles they share that I plan to be making too. I've been home brewing for 8 years and I learned quite a few things that I'd never encountered (vitality starters just for one). Worth way more than the price. Earns it's place on my reference shelf among my other well worn reference including Palmer, Fix, and Daniels.