Customer Reviews

Brewing Classic Styles: 80 Winning Recipes Anyone Can Brew

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When I first heard about the publication of "Brewing Classic Styles" last year, I was anxious to get the book so that I could try my hand at recipes that have a proven track record. Previously, I had been getting recipes off the Internet in a haphazard way, with no way of judging the quality of the recipe except by brewing it. I was also excited to read "Brewing Classic Styles" because of the impressive brewing reputations of its authors, John Palmer and Jamil Zainasheff.

John Palmer is the author of "How to Brew," now in its third edition. This is my favorite homebrewing book. My brew kettle will be struck by lightning for saying this: How to Brew is better even than Charlie Papazian's The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing. John has a knack for writing clear explanations of advanced brewing topics. John is a frequent speaker at the National Homebrewing Conference and he writes the "Advanced Brewing" column for "Brew Your Own" magazine.

Jamil Zainasheff has not previously written any homebrewing books, but I think that's only because he was too busy brewing. He has won a multitude of awards in major homebrewing competitions including two Ninkasi Awards for the highest overall score at the National Homebrew Competition. Jamil is heavily involved with the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) and he writes the "Style Profile" column for "Brew Your Own" magazine.

"Brewing Classic Styles" capitalizes on the fact that Jamil has an award-winning recipe for every beer style in the BJCP style guidelines. He has fine-tuned these recipes by brewing batch after batch for competitions over many years. Interestingly, he had already shared most of these recipes on the Internet before "Brewing Classic Styles" was written.

"Brewing Classic Styles" is organized into two main sections: one covering ingredients and process and the other containing Jamil's recipes. John Palmer wrote the ingredients/process portion, which is contained in Chapters 1 - 4 and the four appendices. John provides useful information about style selection, ingredients selection, and brewing techniques--especially techniques for making better beer from malt extract. It is helpful to have this information in the same book with Jamil's recipes. For example, the sections on hop substitution, making yeast starters, and water treatment are ones that I frequently refer to. However, the "how to brew" material in "Brewing Classic Styles" is not sufficient to eliminate the need for a comprehensive homebrewing book.

The remainder of the book, Chapters 5 - 27, is devoted to Jamil's recipes. To help the reader select recipes appropriate for his or her expertise, each recipe is classified with a "level of effort" necessary to brew it. Of the 81 recipes in the book, 24 are classified as beginner, 28 as intermediate, and 29 as advanced. The beginner category contains all of the pale ales, brown ales, porters, and stouts. Strong ales and ales that use unusual ingredients fall in the intermediate category. All of the recipes for lager styles are classified as advanced because they require active temperature control for fermentation.

"Brewing Classic Styles" covers all of the styles defined in the BJCP Style Guidelines. Related styles are presented in one chapter; for example, the Pilsener chapter contains sections for German Pilsener, Bohemian Pilsener, and Classic American Pilsener. Within a chapter, the section for each style is presented in a consistent format. First, the BJCP style description and brewing parameters are stated. Next comes my favorite part of the book: "Keys to Brewing." This is where Jamil reveals secrets of his success for the style. In many cases, these "keys" are the result of brewing many batches over many years. This is the information that you probably won't find with recipes posted on the Internet.

After "Keys to Brewing" comes the recipe proper, which deserves closer attention. Each recipe in "Brewing Classic Styles" begins with the target values for original gravity, final gravity, attenuation, bitterness, color, and alcohol content. Next is a table of malt extract ingredients with columns for the type of extract, the weight in pounds and metric units, and the percent of the total weight. The recipes are based on a post-boil volume of six gallons. The extract percentage values are handy if you are scaling the recipe for a different batch size. After malt extract, the recipe continues with a table of specialty (steeping) grains, a list of hops, a recommended yeast strain, fermentation requirements, and recommended carbonation level.

The final portion of each recipe is the "All-Grain Option," which is the only serious fault of the book. Let me explain. Jamil's recipes were originally designed to be brewed with all grain ingredients, but for "Brewing Classic Styles" these recipes were converted to use liquid malt extracts as substitutes for the base grains. From a marketing standpoint, this is understandable, since the majority of homebrewers brew with extract rather than with base grains. What is odd is that the malt extract version of the recipe is presented as the main recipe and the all-grain version is given as an "option" at the end of the recipe--almost as an afterthought.

Furthermore, it is annoying that the malt bill for the all-grain version of each recipe is not listed in an easy to read table format as the extract ingredients are. Instead, the base grain types and amounts are buried in the "All-Grain Option" paragraph. To make matters worse, the base grain percentages are not given--you must either calculate the percentage of each grain yourself or refer back to the extract section. As an example, here is the "All-Grain Option" portion of the American Pale Ale recipe:

"Replace the light extract with 11.3 lbs. (5.1 kg) American two-row malt. Replace the Munich extract with 0.75 lb. (340g) Munich malt. Replace the wheat extract with 0.5 lb. (227g) wheat malt. Mash at 152 F (67 C)."

Clearly, this is not as easy to use as a simple table listing each grain with its type, weight, and percentage.

Another problem that arises from converting all-grain recipes to liquid malt extract is that the amount of each extract does not jibe with the amount of liquid extract in a can. This results in leftover liquid extract that is not readily stored. It would have been better if the authors had used dry malt extract because it can be purchased in a variety of sizes and it is easy to store any leftovers.

In spite of the well intentioned, but flawed, attempt to present all-grain recipes as malt extract recipes, "Brewing Classic Styles" is an excellent recipe book. It covers the breadth of the BJCP styles with enough depth to sink your teeth into. The "Keys to Brewing" for each style alone are well worth the price. I have brewed six different recipes from "Brewing Classic Styles" so far and I have been very pleased with the result in all cases. In fact, my rendition of the Ordinary Bitter recipe was an award-winner at the 2008 Maryland Microbrewery Festival. If I had to pare my homebrewing library down to one book, I would be left with "How to Brew." But if I were allowed just one more homebrewing book on my shelf, it would definitely be "Brewing Classic Styles."

Jamil and John's excellent recipe book adds a missing element to the world of home brewing. This is a list of proven recipes in every style with notes about what is key in brewing that style. It is also a nice touch that an extract recipe is listed for each style as well.

Although, there are other recipe books available and recipes are all over the web, there is really no uniformly trusted source for spot on recipes for so many styles. Too many times I have grabbed a recipe even from a decent source and only later with more experience been able to isolate its flaws.

This book should help people start brewing their favorite styles or venture into unfamiliar styles with a real home brew pro as their guide. I have already brewed a couple of the recipes and can't wait to try more. Super resource.

Reading my fourth book on brewing, I didn't think I would learn much here.
Anyway, I was really wrong! An issue I always have is finding good recipes.
This text has over 80 recipes, and better yet, it has extract and all-grain!

Perhaps my favorite part is that these recipes are all tried and true.
All the awards that Jamil has won over the years (including the Ninkasi) is
Direct proof of that!

Anyone who has read Zymurgy or Brew Your Own magazine will recognize the expertise and talent of authors Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer. This book differs from other homebrewing recipe books in that all the recipes listed have been brewed, entered into homebrew competitions and have won medals. Also, the recipes are from Jamil himself, a two time winner of the Ninkasi award which is given to the most award winning homebrewer of the year during the National Homebrewers Conference. The only other homebrewing books you will ever need besides this one are "How to Brew" and "Designing Great Beers"

Brewing Classic Styles gives a concise introduction to each BJCP defined beer style, and proven example recipes for how to brew them. The recipes are all based on extracts (with specialty grains), with an all-grain option, and although they are centred around the ingredients, there's enough information about process as well to help you produce very good beer -- but if you're a total beginner, I'd recommend getting John Palmer's How to Brew as well.

There are also plenty of hints for how to tweak and modify the recipes for different outcomes, so the book should be a good companion to Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels for intermediate and experienced brewers as well, and doesn't confine you to one specific way of brewing or to a particular end result. As such, it encourages further creativity, even though the recipes should be (and are, at least to the extent I have tried them) excellent as they are.

Brewing Classic Styles isn't an essential book for the home brewer. You can easily get by without it. Some of the ingredients can be hard to find, especially outside the U.S. It is, however, a very good introduction to the styles, and provides you with clear examples of how to brew each. Of its kind, it's probably the best there is.

While the paperback is just fine, and I like the recipes, the kindle edition has problems with the font. It's more like a converted pdf instead of using the builtin fonts on the kindle. I'm not describing this correctly but make sure you down load the sample before getting the kindle edition.

I love this book and it is my favorite home brewing book for recipes. This review is going to sound critical soon, but I need to say now, this is the most helpful book for an intermediate brewer, and I have read it cover to cover. Its main strength is that every recipe is a proven winner. When you are first learning to brew, this is quite comforting.

I was a long time off and on extract brewer. I am now a recent convert to all grain brewing thanks to this book. I realized that I really could not make many recipes unless I went A.G. More on this below.

There are some pearls in technique, such as how and when to pitch yeast for a lager, but mainly this is a recipe book. It is helpful to learn what ingredients and techniques contribute to the the taste of each style, so beside recipes, you are learning about the many styles.

I have some suggestions for the 2nd edition however:

1. Change the volumes of the recipes. Each recipe is for a pre-boil volume of 7 gallons, planning on 6 gallons after the boil, then 1/2 gallon of trub loss, so 5.5 gallons going into the primary fermenter. Somehow, they think you will then be transferring 5 gallons to the secondary. In reality, my brewing system is much more efficient than this, and I reduced the volumes to get to the target of just over 5 gallons into the primary. Most brewers have 5 gallon fermenters, and if they keg those are 5 gallons as well. I never have 1/2 gallon or more trub loss. The result was that my IPA had an alcohol concentration of 8% by volume (too high). I have learned now to reduce the grain and bittering hops a bit, to hit my target IBUs and O.G.

2. This is not really a recipe book for extract brewers. What the authors did was take all grain recipes, then convert them to extract recipes. So, you have instructions for either type of recipe in this book. This is not really true to reality however. For instance the Munich Helles recipe uses Munich malt extract, with an all grain option of mashing Munich malt grain. Where can anyone buy Munich malt extract? It is either extremely rare or does not exist. My local mega-store Midwest Brewing does not have it. I became an all grain brewer so I could brew the Helles (excellent BTW).

If you are reading this, you may be a beginner brewer. I want to give a few tips that I learned that has drastically changed my beer from OK to great. The basis tenet is DON'T CUT CORNERS. When I used to cut corners my beer was just ok, drinkable. In order of improvements:

1. Pitch a big starter. Don't just throw the smack pack in, make a quart starter minimum, starting 5 days before brew day. Insufficient yeast is a big source of off-flavors.
2. Get a big wort chiller. My beer used to be too bitter and lack aroma because I didn't use a wort chiller. The aroma hops was staying hot too long. I wish I had purchased one a long time ago.
3. Go all grain. With batch infusion technique and a cooler mash lauter tun, it is super easy. I used to resist all grain, as it seemed like too much work. Wrong. You have so many more options of different malts with all grain that adds to the fun of brewing your own personal beer!

I have already brewed several of the beers from this book and have had outstanding results. You will need a primary book for the beginner, but if have brewed before and want to get away from kits this is definitely the way to go. You can get most of the recipes free via podcast, but there is other information included in the book that the podcasts miss. I would definitely recommend adding this book to your brewing repertoire.

I'm disappointed in this book because I had such high expectations. I'm trying not to let my disappointment obscure the fact that it really is a pretty good book. It's just not what I had hoped for from these two authors.

This is not a book for snobs. The recipes are written to use malt extract and steeping grains with "all-grain" as an option. The authors recognize that you can make very good beer either way. I love all types of brewing myself, from "all-grain" to "extract-only" and everything in between. I appreciate a book that doesn't look down on brewing with extracts. The authors also recognize that there are many great beer styles and they include, for example, American lagers. Zainasheff clearly thinks every beer style is worth drinking. There isn't the slightest hint of sarcasm when Zainasheff refers to the Standard American Lagers as being "crisp, dry and refreshing." I find his attitude refreshing. He's enthusiastic about brewing beer of all sorts and his enthusiasm shows, mostly in a really pleasing, fun sort of way.

Occasionally, however, he gets a bit carried away. For example, in his introduction, Zainasheff makes the comment: "Too many brewers focus on just a handful of their favorite styles and miss out on some really wonderful beer styles. Don't let that happen to you. Please make an effort to brew every style in this book well." Sorry, Jamil. I'll try to make an effort to drink all 80 styles (so I don't "miss out") but I might be a little short of time (in this life) to learn to brew them all.

He really lets his enthusiasm get the best of him when he discusses Scottish ale brewing. He writes that even though some people "detect peat smoke notes in this beer style . . . the use of peat smoked malts is not correct." Then he goes on to say that even some beer judges encourage "brewers to add peat-smoked malt, which is completely wrong." He adds, "Don't do it. Do not add peat malt to any of the beers in this category." Then, just in case we didn't get it, he concludes the section (4 paragraphs later) with the important reminder, "Do not add any type of smoked malt to Scottish ale." Wow. I can't wait to brew a Scottish ale with some peat-smoked malt to see what all the fuss is about.

I wonder about the authors' decision to use the same extraction efficiency (70%) for either mashing or for steeping of malted grain. In How to Brew, Palmer tells us to expect about 48% efficiency for steeping dark crystal malts, for example, and only 40% for steeping light crystal. He says those numbers are based on his own steeping experiments. I usually get even less than that. Also, he implies in more than one place in How to Brew that kilned malts such as brown, aromatic, melanoidin, or victory malt must be mashed, not steeped. In this book, however, Palmer writes that these kilned malts "need to be mashed, but may be steeped." Zainasheff includes each one of these kilned malts as "steeping grains" in his recipes, yet still assumes a 70% extraction efficiency. No change in the quantity of any steeping grain is prescribed if you choose to mash instead of steep. Something doesn't add up somewhere. It makes you wonder if they didn't really have their heart into converting the recipes from all-grain to extract versions. What's needed is a thorough explanation of the whole "mashing versus steeping" issue and I can't think of anyone who could explain it better than Palmer. But, alas, the explanation is not there.

Despite these criticisms, I still would say the book is pretty good. The recipes are proven in competition and the writing is never boring or "textbookish." I think it's the only recipe book I'll ever buy. Chapter two (on choosing ingredients) contains a lot of information that was very useful and that I've never found anywhere else, especially the section on choosing hops. I just wish it went further. This is a good book that should have been a bit better.

If you are a fan of homebrewing you are probably familiar with the name Jamil Z. He has a bimonthly show on the brewing network. This podcast takes a style of beer and offers an hour discussion on the history, classic examples, and keys to brewing and an award winning recipe of the given style. This podcasts is sent out for free by the brewing network. It is available for download for free. The podcast is partly sustained by the sale of books similar to this in the brewing network store. Although not as inexpensive as Amazon's price the additional dollars go to a good cause. I bought my copy of the book there and I would recommend you do the same.