Brewing Quality Beers: The Home Brewer's Essential Guidebook

by Byron Burch

This short book is the finest how-to manual for home brewers. First, it provides a succinctly readable introduction to get novices safely through their first few batches. Then, it goes on to present the best available introductions to intermediate and advanced brewing. BQB does not attempt to be an encyclopedia. Rather, it presents a clear procedural guideline for someone to follow in order to succeed. The book includes recipes to help newcomers avoid potential problems, but the intent is to teach the reader about the various brewing ingredients, and how they work together, so brewers will be inspired and enabled to create successful recipes on their own. No other home brewing textbook is written by an author with Byron Burch's extraordinary set of First, as a national champion home brewer (1986) and meadmaker (1992 and 1994) his expertise is obvious. Second, since 1972, he has worked in the brewing and winemaking supply trade, creating a highly successful business, despite its being located in a town of only modest size. Along the way, he has taught countless new brewers, which gives him an exceptional grasp of what they want and need to know, what questions they have, and how much information they can absorb at one time. Third, having a master's degree in English, he is able to pass along his brewing expertise in a disciplined, clear, and effective manner that benefits would-be home brewers. Brewing Quality Beers is the book you should study if you want your home brewing venture to become an engrossing hobby.

Genres: Beer, Brewing

118 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1993

Reviews

[Jason Koivu]

You don't have to be chubby, bearded and balding to brew beer, but it helps!



I lost some weight and my brewing skillz just weren't the same afterwards...

Brewing Quality Beers came with a kit I bought at a homebrew shop when beginning my journey to better beer! It looks a little like this...



It's quite a handy little book for the beginner! Brewing Quality Beers will give you the necessary basics to get your first batch done.

My first attempt was a "British Pub Ale," which basically was meant to be a Bass: I was a noob and I got nervous, not giving the fermenting process the time it needed to kick in and give it that bubbly liveliness needed to keep a beer from tasting flat. The friend or two I allowed taste it were kind to me in their criticism, but I knew it tasted like ass or maybe chode...yes, it was quite "tainted".

I tried other ale styles with varying degrees of success. I remember really liking my attempt at a dark wheat beer. But then I got a little above myself and tried to get into alchemy and shit and killed a perfectly nice stout with a chemically hazelnut extract.

Word to the wise, if you're just looking to turn grain, sugar and yeast into a basic ale without poisoning* anyone who drinks it, Byron Burch's book helps you take your first baby-beer-step. It'll give you the tools to brew to your heart's content, but if you want to move beyond that and get into some advanced techniques, you'll need to do some further reading.


* You won't literally poison someone (unless you add poison) because the alcohol content kills off germs, but you might severely gross them out with flat beer and off-flavors.

[Jeffrey Caston]

A good, compact, beginner's guide to brewing beer. It's got the basic steps, concisely and plainly set out and some decent-looking recipes progressing from extract, to extract with steeping grains and then some all-grain recipes. Anyone interested in starting this amazing hobby, this would be a decent place to start reading/learning about it.

[Sean]

I read it twice.

[Megan]

Was a short read and informative enough to get me going on my first brew~