The Library

Return to previous page

Return to my homepage

Here's my library of books I use when brewing.  They range through the various types of brew, from beer to mead to wine to cider.  As mentioned before, if one of them strikes your fancy, and you want to support my brewing habit, please click from here to buy it from Amazon.com.  Thanks!

Brewing Classic Styles:  ZOMG!  If you have a notion as to what you're doing, and really want to refine your brewing, this book is full of some of the best recipes to use in the process I've ever come across.  I've made a handful of these (or slight modifications thereto), and they're incredible!  Two of the giants of the homebrewing world, together in one great book.  Outstanding.  (I like this one, if you haven't gathered by now...)

The Complete Joy of Homebrewing 3rd Edition:  The first book I got, in its latest edition.  This is a great book for the beginner, in my opinion.  Some of Papazian's advice should be taken with a grain of salt, but it's all good to start with.  Many people swear by the recipes, too--I haven't (yet) tried any, myself, but they look solid.

The Homebrewer's Companion:  A companion volume to the above.  This takes the information given in The Complete Joy and builds upon it, going into more detail of water chemistry, mash chemistry, yeast biology, and more advanced brewing.  Also contains a number of recipes and helpful tables.  My copy serves as a handy reference, and is well-used as such, although it has become somewhat overshadowed by a few other books below...

The Beer Style Series:  I've got most of the series now; I'm saving my pennies for the rest.  They're invaluable resources on each individual type of beer.  Written by experts on the various styles, they cover the history, ingredients, and methods, as well as talking about commercial examples of the styles.  And, of course, they give several recipes in varying sizes (5-gallon, 15-gallon, and 1-barrel, typically).

Clonebrews:  If you have a commercial favorite brew, and want to reproduce it, this book is the place to start.  It's got 150 "clone" recipes for various beers from around the world, including at least a few of my favorites!  Reports indicate that the overall accuracy of the recipes vary, but this is at least a good jumping-off point.  I've got a minor issue with the way the recipes are formulated, but it's not a show-stopper.  Extract-with-grains recipes are given, as well as how to modify for mini-mash and full-grain; all of the brews use the same technique, however, so you'll probably want to "tweak" from there.  Overall, a useful book.

Favorites and More Favorites:  Good books for spurring ideas, mostly.  Somewhat older, so the recipes seem to be mainly for extract or partial-mash.  Not bad, but I honestly haven't referred to them in a while.

Noonan's New Brewing Lager Beer.  This is a must-read for the beer-science geek.  It goes into excruciating detail about many of the chemical processes involved in brewing.  As the name implies, the discussion focuses on lagers, but most of the principles can be applied to ales as well.  A word of warning, though--there's a fair amount of very technical stuff inside!

Schramm's Compleat Meadmaker.  The "bible" for maziers.  I don't know of another place to find so much good mead information in one place.  Not as many recipes as one might like, perhaps, but the information within is complete enough to allow you to easily extrapolate from the recipes given.  A definite "must-read" for anyone interested in making mead!