Customer Reviews

Beer Captured

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

By the authors of "Clone Brews" Beer Captured is also a book of copies of 150 commercially produced beers from around the world. I found this book to be an improvment over the Szmatulski's first effort in that with the book's new look you get a helpful hints section on each recipe along with serving suggestions. Divided into four sections pages 1-14 tell a lot about brewing (probably not quite enough for a complete novice), followed by pages 15-164, beer recipes, section three (165-174)has recipes for foods involving beer in them someplace (some sound very tasty. Part 4, pages 175-195,contains lists of mash guidelines, water mineral and modification charts, several other charts not given in most books that should really help in brewing something drinkable.

I can't say enough good things about this book. The title is perfect. Every Szamatulski recipe I have tried has been great (I own both of their books and have brewed a bunch of their recipes). The descriptions of each beer and the suggestions of food to go with it make my mouth water. Every recipe has instructions for all-grain, extract w/ grain, and partial mash methods of brewing. Find a recipe in the book that appeals to you, taste a store bought beer to see if you like it a lot, brew it, taste your version and the brewery's version and see how much better your's is than the "real thing". I have 16 homebrewing boks on my shelf and most of them are at least half full of recipes. "Beer Captured" is my all-time favorite. 5 stars is not enough.

I have been brewing beer from this book for a couple of years and, to date, the recipes have earned me five home brewing ribbons - including (2) First Places. My most recent, and proudest, is a first place I earned for my version of Stovepipe Porter. This beer placed first in the Northeast Regional's of the 2004 National Homebrewing Competition.
Tess and Mark have incroporated a wealth of information into this book. The recipes are easy to follow and with some care will produce very nice beer. This book (as well as their earlier "Clonebrews") makes one thing difficult - which beer to make first??
This is a MUST HAVE for anyone interested in brewing their own beer. I can not thank Tess and Mark enough for their tireless efforts and dedication to making brewing beer so easy and rewarding!! Keep up the great work!

PROSIT !!

The brewing technique books are great for getting to the bottom of brewing, but they can become boring. This book (and Clone Brews) is pure fun. First; you review what is arguably the collection of famous and not so famous international brews. Secondly; using a process of elimination you decide which to try and emulate. Thirdly, you brew it and compare the result (with friends) and the original brew - if your lucky enough that it's imported. The combination is home brewer's bliss. Two home brews never taste the same, so I don't complain if they taste a wee bit off target. It's great fun and variety is the spice of life, as you know or you wouldn't be home brewing!

Beer Captured is much more than a just a book of homebrew recipes.

While the recipes are the centerpiece, Tess and Mark have provided useful information for hombrewers of all skill levels and some interesting reading. The recipes themselves go beyond the basics. Alternative brewing methods are described (mini-mash & all grain) for each recipe and helpful hints are provided. Brief descriptions of the beers and interesting histories of the breweries appear at the top of each recipe.

Beer Captured also includes handy reference material - useful to any brewer - including hints and instructions on mashing techniques, water modification, grain, hop, and yeast choices.

There's even a section on food and beer which contains recipes to make delicious beer infused dishes and desserts!

As homebrew store owners (Maltose Express, Monroe, CT) and experienced brewers themselves, Tess and Mark have learned a lot. In Beer Captured, you and I get the benefit of their experience in a smart and easy to read reference book.

I can't believe it is finally here. The sequel to Clonebrews. This book is a MUST HAVE for every brewer. Whether you brew Extract, mini-mash, or all grain, this book is full of great information. The book is so complete that it comes with water tables in the back of the book that tell you how much water to mash and sparge with for both mini-mash and all grain brewing. It will help you adjust your water so it is the same as some of the greatest breweries in the world as well as help you adjust your tap water for each particular style you are brewing. Each beer recipe comes with food suggestions, the appropriate glass to drink the beer from, and helpful hints. The helpful hints will help you with determining fermentation time for each beer as well as when the beer peeks and how long it will stay drinkable. There are also hop charts, yeast charts, and grain, malt, and sugar charts. I almost forgot, there are 150 new recipes for commercial beers that were not in Clonebrews: Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale, Fuller's London Porter, Otter Creek Stovepipe Porter, and Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout to name a few. This book also has an added bonus. There are food recipes as well. The pepper encrusted filet mignon and the chocolate stout cake are AWESOME. Get this book into your brewing library as soon as you can and start brewing award-winning beers. Thanks to Tess and Mark Szamatulski, the homebrewing world is alive and well.

This is one of the best homebrewing books on the market. It is a true inspiration. Some clones are just on the spot like the Tommyknocker maple and the Bridgeport IPA. Many "clones" are way off, though, and they make me suspect that sometimes the authors wildly guessed as opposed to test all their recipes. I maintain 5 stars because, any recipe I extrapolated out of this book was excellent. Clone at your own risk :-)

I found this to be slightly better than North American Clone Brews. It's aimed at extract brewers, although it's still useful for all-grain brewers. They chose a nice variety of beers for this book, and I don't see too many clunkers. The disadvantage of this is that many of the beers are difficult to find. I've had good luck with all the recipes I've tried.

While the first section of the book contains a brief description of the process, I strongly reading a beginner's brewing book (such as Papazian's Joy of Homebrewing, Dave Miller's Homebrewing Guide, or Marty Nachel's Homebrewing for Dummies) if you haven't brewed before.

As with all brewing recipe books, you should take it with a grain of salt. I strongly recommend double-checking recipe ingredients with ProMash or the equivalent prior to beginning to make sure you'll hit the target gravity and bitterness. This is especially true if you're making the all grain or partial mash versions of the recipes.

One of the major problems I have with this book is that for a lot of beers vital information is included in the Helpful Hints section, where you might miss it. For instance, lagering is only mentioned in the Helpful Hints section. This should be part of the main recipe. This seems to be a flaw in the format.

I found the serving suggestions included with each recipe somewhat silly. There are a number of recipes at the end of the book which I haven't tried, although a number look decent.

We are the authors of Beer Captured, now updated in it's fourth printing.
We are responding to Mr. Steven Silverberg's review as well as michaelg's
review. We have written two books, CLONEBREWS and BEER CAPTURED. If you look at the author of NORTH AMERICAN CLONEBREWS you can see that the author is Scott Russell, not associated with us, who has "cloned" our book, CLONEBREWS in a North American venue. So there may be similar recipes but CLONEBREWS and BEER CAPTURED are created by Mark and Tess Szamatulski.
As for the review by Mr. Herman Holtrop about unmalted wheat being used in our version of Vlaskop..... we customize recipes for the homebrewers brewing a 5 gallon batch of beer. While major breweries may use different ingredients we use the ingredients that we find after brewing the beers achieve the most authentic clonebrews. All of our beers have been brewed by us or customers of our homebrew shop. We have tested all of the homebrew recipes against the commercial beers and many had to be brewed several times for us to get in the ball park. That is why it takes us so much time in between books to publish them. We would like to thank everyone who has purchased our books.

Want a clone recipe for Chimay Grande Réserve, Dead Guy Ale, or a plethora of other craft beers? If yes, this is the book for you. And while you're at it, buy Tess's other book "Clonebrews" and you'll never need another recipe book.