The brewer's companion: A source-book for the small-scale brewer

This is a really great book regardless of your level of expertise. It covers everything from the history of beer, roasting malt, mashing, fermentation, tasting and more. It is also a very practical book, and is not complicated to work your way through making it handy to have on hand. The diagrams in the book are very well thought out, it must have taken tremendous thought to put together such straight forward diagrams that cover vast amounts of information on one page. The section on brewing worksheets has helped me to take my brewing to the next level, as it has forced me to take a much more scientific, methodical and well organized approach to my brewing. If you are a brewing geek, or want to get to that level, this book will definitely be a must have. This book does not have any recipes in it, so it is not a good book for that reason, but if you want to start formulating your own recipes it is very good. All in all if I could keep one of my many brewing books, this would be the one I would choose.

At the price this sells for these days, it would be worth the cost solely for the recipe worksheets and temperature charts included. There are also ample references tables for water treatments, beer styles and ingredients that make it an oft-used reference when brewing. This is an invaluable reference for the beginning-intermediate brewer even after reading through it, which is a pleasure, because the wealth of information it contains is presented in an easily absorbable, entertaining way. Two pints up.

This was my stock "technical details" book for quite a few years. However I recently received a copy of Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels and I don't think I'll be picking this up as much anymore. If you're looking for a copy of this book and having trouble finding it, I would strongly recommend the other one. Having said that there are a lot of diagrams and little details that make this book a joy and a pleasure to own.

I didn't expect as much detailed information from this book, just a lot of charts and summaries. However, there is a lot of intermediate and advanced brewing material included. It is very useful and logically organized. A good reference for your collection.

Randy Mosher got it right with this book. This book is written in laymans terms and gets right to the basics, continuing on through moderate to advanced information. Very well laid out and full of usefull charts and worksheets. Hands down the best resource book for beginning brewers I've seen.