Brooklyn Brew Shop's Beer Making Book: 52 Seasonal Recipes for Small Batches

This book has inspired me to take up home brewing again. For a short while I was an extract brewer. It was fun, but not the same as being able to say you produced a full mash home brew. Having had most of the equipment, a 5 gallon fermentor, a 6 quart dutch oven, etc, I only needed the scale and the thermometer. I purchased the ingredients and away I went. I've made three beers from the book so far and love everyone of them (the "Well Made Triple" is my favorite so far-- I'm quit partial to belgian beers). I'm working on making three more within the next few weeks.I like how the authors keep it simple. Follow these six basic steps and you get beer. Mmmmm beer. It keeps the reader from panicking about various things that can go wrong during the process. On the other hand being as curious as I am about the beer making process I find myself looking for more detailed information elsewhere. For example, during one batch it took a while for the fermentation process to begin and searched through forums as well as the yeast producers website to determine what was going on. I later found out it can take up to 36 hours to see the yeast in action.One more critique: some recipes seem inconsistent. They say in the beginning that they will suggest a dry yeast and liquid yeast for all recipes, which they don't. Being how there are so many great yeast to choose from and each offering a slight to huge change in hoe the beer comes out, it would be nice to have at least two options.The authors small batch or one gallon approach to making beer at home is a paradigm shift. I don't have to invest in a expensive brew pots or mash tuns. I don't have to spend all day brewing beer (I can do a batch in about 5 hours). I don't have to spend all day bottling beer and with the continuous purchasing of one gallon apple juice cider bottles I'll be able to ferment a plethora of beers at once. (I live in a small condo with limited space, those in a house, especially those with a basement, obviously have plenty of space for 5 gallon fermentors.) Then again the idea of this book was bringing beer making to the kitchen.Overall I find this book to be an easy straightforward recipe book, getting me off the couch and into the kitchen to make beer.La' Heim!

I've been  Brewing The Classic Styles  for a couple of years now. I think the JZ & JP book is essential for any home brewer, full of sound advice and solid recipes. But this book, the Beer Making Book, is inspiring me with more interesting, creative, and fun recipes.The creative and radical recipes are what make this book so great. There are a few standards, but mostly not. For example, there is a gluten free beer made (unbelievably) from carrots. A bourbon Dubbel made with Bourbon soaked oak chips, a cherry beer make with cherries and cherry wood smoked malt. A Gose with instructions for a 3 day sour mash. There are four gluten free beer recipes in this book, and for one of them, you malt your own buckwheat. They have easy to follow instructions for germinating then drying and crushing it. I know these recipes have been tested and so I feel safe trying them out even if it sounds outrageous. For me, this is like Randy Moser's Radical Brewing, but with well described recipes. Many of the recipes use seasonal ingredients.The book contains all-grain recipes for making both one and five gallon batches. Five gallons is a traditional home brew batch size, and one gallon is really small, since you will only yield about 8 bottles. The benefit of the one gallon batch size is that you do not have to buy a large pot, you may already own one. When I first started brewing I purchased a one gallon kit from the Brooklyn Brewshop (authors of the book) and brewed my first really good beer using it and their very clear instructions. It was the one gallon "Well Made Tripel" kit. Since then I've I stopped using kits and only make larger batches, but there are so many fun recipes in here that I might just pick up a mini fermentor and try them as one gallon batches. It seems like it would be easy to make a small batch on a weeknight after work and a way to try many recipes with less time commitment.There is quite a bit of easy to read instructions for the beginner. Their writing is good, clear, and entertaining. I think this book is fun for the novice or experienced brewer.

Ok. Let me say right off from the start that if you're a really serious homebrewer, who knows everything about yeast, hops, malt etc. then this book is probably not for you.However, if, like me, you love all the different styles of beer there is, and want to have a crack at making your own gallon of beer, then this book is for you. This is brewing made simple and fun. On your cooker!For a comparatively small initial outlay, you will be making some VERY drinkable beer! I'm currently on my 4th batch and people have said some nice things about the beer I've made. The recipes are very easy to follow and you are walked through each stage of the process. If there's stuff you're not sure about, the authors are more than willing to help if contacted.You'll end up with 9 or 10 330ml bottles of some great beer. Porters, IPA, Stouts, Lager, Dubbels, Trippels. Be warned though, it's very addictive. No sooner have you bottled a batch, then you're itching to brew another recipe!Give it a go, you'll not be disappointed.One thing you need to be aware of is that the liquid measurements given are U.S. ones, not imperial. but there are plenty of converters online. I tend to convert to metric.

Brooklyn BrewShop's Beer Making Book is a superb step-by-step guide for the brewing novice, and is full of references and ideas for the more experienced home brewer. The recipes are all designed for 1 gallon batches, so they're brilliant for anyone with restricted kitchen and storage space, or anyone who would find a 40 pint brew wasteful. But each recipe has additional instructions and quantities for scaling up to a 5 gallon brew.The range of recipes is very good, including everything from Pilsners and IPAs to Porters and Stouts, divided into brews appropriate for each season - so you can always have something on the go.Using the clearly described and well written methods in the book that lay out each step of the brewing process, a few bits and pieces you're likely to already have in your kitchen, minimal specialist equipment, and a few ingredients from a brew shop (or even right here on Amazon!), you can get some really superb and tasty results that will beat most of the mass-produced stuff you'll find on supermarket shelves.

More please! My team of brewers (my wife, the cat and I) set off on an adventure to make a gallon of Choc Maple Porter, but as we have a small kitchen and no back garden to brew in this type of brewing appealed to us. (well not the cat, she just looked on nonchalantly as we cracked on)Ordering the hops, grains and gear we needed, within 2 hours the wort had been chilled and sitting in the fermenter (demijohn) for where it would stay for 2 weeks.....During this time we have read, and re-read the book cover to cover, planning the next brew. I hope more follow from this team as we are sure to pick up a copy.

Brilliant book with great and very unusual recipes. Not just beer recipes but a recipe for dog biscuits using up the "spent" beer grain!! This book looks the part as well it is a good buy.

The book looks really nice, I went through it briefly. It would be 5* if measurements were not in imperial units. Even on their site they use metrics together with imperial. They could have done the same in the book, or print some different issue for rest of the world.