Designing Great Beers: The Ultimate Guide to Brewing Classic Beer Styles

First, let me say what this book is not. It is not a recipe book, or a book which describes the techniques for brewing beer. In other words, it is not for beginners. After following recipes for a number of batches of beer, it was time to learn how to create my own recipes. The purpose of this book is to do just that; come up with your own recipes. The first part of the book tells the reader how to compute the grain bill, the hop bill and how to hit original gravity. It also contains information on beer color, yeast and water. I used this section to make the computations for my first original recipe. This, in turn, gave me the incentive to buy a brewing software package which I now use in conjunction with the second part of the book. The second part describes beer styles and what ingredients go into each style described. There is a chart for each style which gives information on ingredients used in beers which made it to the second round of the NHC. I found some of the charts in this part somewhat confusing and there are a few references in the text to wrong charts. However, as a result of this book, I have started to formulate my own recipes with a lot of success.

The title of this book is the truth. It IS a book about Designing Great Beer: The Ultimate Guide to Brewing Classic Beer Styles. If I were allowed only one book about brewing beer, this would be it. With this book and a little work on my brewing system to figure out certain variables (efficiency, how much water is lost etc...), I was able to create an Excel Spreadsheet that walks me through the process of designing my own beer and it works. I plug in the size of the batch I want, original gravity, bittering, and a few other things and it tells me how much mash water and sparge water I need to start. Then when things don't come out perfect, an additional spread sheet helps me calculate how much malt extract, sugar, honey or even water to add to get the gravity to where I want it. This is all from what I learned from part one of this book. If you are an all grain brewer and you don't have this book, you are not brewing to the best of your ability. If you like to enter contests, you know that the judges don't care if the beer is good. They want beer that is good and true to style. The second part of this book is such a comprehensive guide to style I can almost guarantee it will help you improve your scores.

For anyone who has brewed at least one batch, this is a must-have book. You will learn more from reading this book, than from brewing a hundred more batches. Read Papazin, then graduate to this. You will learn to hit target gravities, target IBU's, and how to balance them against each other. Styles are broken down into easily (for the most part) reproducible processes and techniques, allowing you to formulate your own recipe within the style, not copy someone else's. I never brew a batch without reading up on the particular style in this book first. Best book out there on beer. Bar none.

This book is excellent in concept, format and layout. This is a great book for anyone who has brewed a beer or two and wants to venture out. It has been extremely valuable in my efforts to clone commercial beers. This is because it clearly explains the differences in the different beer styles and brewing techniques including great chapters on grain, water, color and fermentation. The book is complete and easy to understand. I would say this is THE book to get after you've finished any basic book such as "The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing". The author gives all the formulas (and tables for those who don't like math) that assist the brewer in designing his/her next best beer ever. This book is a must. The only thing I would like to have seen would have been an accompanying disk with an MS Excel workbook with all the formulas laid on it. That way I wouldn't have had to do it myself.

The first section of Ray's book covers the fundamentals of all grain brewing. I seldom refer to it. However, the second section not only profiles many of the classic beer styles, it analyzes the recipes and techniques used in producing competition winning entries for the styles. While one can argue that strict style guidelines and competitions based on style guidelines are counterproductive in the craft beer industry, it is very interesting to see how accomplished brewers are formulating their recipes. Many of the formulation compilations are surprising. If anything, they show that you CAN deviate from strict recipe guidelines and produce a quality beer. I have two shelves full of brewing books. This is the one I would hang onto if I was allowed only one brewing reference.