Customer Reviews

Brewing

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
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2 star:		(1)
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Finally, a book geared toward the craft-brewer! The information in this book is presented in a very straight forward, easy to understand manner. There is no overly technical language or formulas to confuse the reader, nor are there any costly or impractical techniques that are out of reach for most craft-brewers. This book is a must have for anyone working in the craft-brewing industry, or the home-brewer looking to reach the next level.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was a student of Dr. Lewis at UC Davis so I might be partial to his take on brewing. Nonetheless, this is an excellent distillation of the authors decades of research and practical experience in all levels of brewing from craft brewing to regional breweries to large national breweries. The authors effectively screen out much of the minutiae that could clog an introductory text. Likewise, the authors are cognizant that many of the readers of the book will lack extensive science backgrounds and make it very accessible to audiences with some minor science training.

If you are interested in understanding the underlying science of brewing this is the book for you. Skip the George Fix book on brewing, it's full of errors and lacks an overall unifying narrative. Lewis and Young are both biochemistry Ph.D.s and have conducted massive amounts of research into all the areas that this book covers, yet they couple this research with a practical framework that makes it suitable for practicing brewers not just academics.

This book gets deep into the science of brewing. If you are a brewer that wants to know more "why" than "how", you will get your money's worth. The drawings for illustrations are well placed, but some may be better with pictures. While most of the science goes over your head unless you have a chemistry background, it is written in a way that you can still grasp the concepts presented. I may read this a second time just to reinforce these. The other thing that I like is it not only the chemistry and science part, but brewing equipment (for BREWERIES, not homebrew equipment!) is covered in great detail in its function and purpose as well. I recently took a tour of New Glarus Brewing and noticed this book on the shelf of the QA/Lab guy's office. A well-written advanced brewer's book.

If you are a brand new homebrewer, do NOT buy this book. Unless you have a science background or you are going into the brewing industry, you will not benefit from this book.

Okay, so the people left are those that do have a science background. This book speaks of many great brewing topics like malting biochemistry, yeast genetics, fluid dynamics, thermodynamics and more. If you're a science and brewing nerd like me, buy this book. You will not regret it!

I picked this book up to help with homebrewing. The chemical processes it describes are a great introduction into the biochemistry of what happens during the brewing process. It is more detailed than Papazian and some of the others. The book is black and white, and also discusses a lot of the processes micro and macro breweries use during brewing. If want to improve your level of brewing knowledge, pick up this book. If you want to get your feet wet, look else where.

Worth the price, no regrets.

Great resource! Technical background in chemistry a must!

This book deals with the highly skilled, advanced, scientific mind of a Brew Master or scientist who needs an answer in skilled scientific jargon, this is not a Homebrewing book by any means. I have been brewing for 16+ years, and have 80+ books on the subject of the Brewing Art and this book I doubt, I'll ever open!