Author Ray Daniels provides the brewing formulas, tables, and information to take your brewing to the next level in this detailed technical manual.
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Book Description
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Part 1 of Designing Great Beers is a complete book in itself, focused solely on home-brewing ingredients and techniques (including three superb chapters on hops alone). Ray Daniels proves himself the "techie" type, infusing his introductory chapters with as much brewing math as brewing lore. Yet, Daniels never hops off the deep end of beer geekdom. Instead, he complements this emphasis on data with the creative use of graphics; where one could get bogged down in the stats, there is usually a clear visual depiction to instantly summarize their meaning.
This focus on facts continues into part 2 of Daniels's guide, where it backs an admirably pragmatic take on beer styles and their importance in home-brewing. Daniels devotes a chapter to each of 14 major style categories, detailing historical origins and modern brewing techniques. He lays a contemporary groundwork by compiling and analyzing the recipes of the National Homebrew Competition's most successful beers. The assumption is that beers deemed representative of particular beer styles in modern competitions serve as ideal models for recipe creation. Among the information provided for each style is a chart showing the percentage of brewers using each type of grain and in what proportions the grains were added. Similar data are supplied for hop varieties, yeast strains, and water treatment. This reverse engineering of award-winning beers naturally benefits experienced brewers seeking to wow judges at the next competition. Yet, even brewers taking their first shy steps into creating their own recipes have much to gain from this kind of practical analysis. Daniels provides the basic tools a brewer of any level can use to formulate recipes with confidence and creativity. --Todd Gehman
Review
Designing Great Beers: The Ultimate Guide To Brewing Classic Beer Styles is more than just a recipe book or merely another "how-to" manual, it is an indispensable guide intended for brewers interested in formulating their own beers based on classic styles, modern techniques, and their own vision of the perfect beer. With more than 200 tables, Designing Great Beers offers brewers knowledge on the essence of various styles, giving them the needed insight to create their own beers including "Six Steps to Successful Beer", "Hitting Target Gravity", "Pilsener and Other Pale Lagers", "Yellow-Red Proportions of Beers, Malts and Caramels", and "Common Hop Varieties and Their Typical Alpha Acid Levels". Designing Great Beers is must reading for every home brewer, microbrewer, and fun armchair reading for armchair reader contemplating the perfect brew. -- Midwest Book Review
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
112 of 113 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
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.
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.
66 of 68 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
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.
55 of 58 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
By R. Danley
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
The print version of the book is excellent. Unfortunately, when preparing the ebook, the publishers apparently used optical character recognition software, and didn't proofread the final copy.
Many of the equations needed to determine the amounts needed in the recipes make no sense. This makes the strongest points of the book worthless. Until the equation errors are corrected, I would recommend saving your money for the print copy
Many of the equations needed to determine the amounts needed in the recipes make no sense. This makes the strongest points of the book worthless. Until the equation errors are corrected, I would recommend saving your money for the print copy
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
By Greg Moore
Format:Paperback
I'm fairly new to home brewing having only finished 5 batches but I'm an avid reader and have read more books then I've done batches (about 8 books). I thought I'd be ready to start thinking about creating my own recipe so I got this book. I would consider this a college level text book when compared with Charlie Papazian's Companion or John Palmer's How to Brew and some of the other brewing books I have. While there is a lot of good information in this book its quite advanced and seems more aimed at the competitive All Grain brewer or someone who aims to take it to a professional level. It gets very detailed with serious chemistry, methods and math formulas. It is, imho, a study book, not something you can sit down and just read because the mid term test will be next thursday. I have other technical brewing books that are much more readable then this rather dry text. Maybe in time I will be ready for this book but if you buy this book be prepared with a highlighter, calculator, water quality reports and significant brewing experience. Oh, just as an fyi, I primarily do extract with grains mainly because of space limitations.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Lots of good data, lots of it
There's a lot of text in this book, a LOT of it. I'm slowly consuming it, but I know that it was a good purchase, and I look forward to making my way through all of it!
Published 6 days ago by Travis Himes
5.0 out of 5 stars
Perfect for advance brewers or biginner with a scientific background
When I bought this book I was expecting to learn how to home brew. This book focuses on the description and the role of ingredients more then on the brewing technics. Read more
Published 26 days ago by Etienne Levert
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great reference
To try and read this book straight through is a bit much. It is extremely technical and dry but it is the perfect reference for creating a recipe and getting the style you're... Read more
Published 1 month ago by anonymous
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent book!
Excellent book! Necessary read to start! Good to start the homebrewing and know abouy what is inside the beer world.
Published 1 month ago by Guilherme Gontijo de Pádu
4.0 out of 5 stars
What I really need
This book contains a good sort of informations that helps to develop some beer recipes. Very useful for home brewers!
Published 1 month ago by Flavio de Oliveira Ferraz
4.0 out of 5 stars
Loads of Technical Content
This book is a great buy for a begginner or intermediate brewer looking to get to the next level. The technical cotnent for brewing an award winning beer is all in this book. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Jacob Anderson
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beer Encyclopedia
This book is packed full of knowledge! Contains a lot of useful tables and guidelines for each style of beer.
Published 1 month ago by Michael Udelhoven
5.0 out of 5 stars
The totally complete guide!
This was one of my best purchases from all times here in Amazon. Daniels put beer and all its topics to the top of explanations, I'm a homebrewer since early 2012 and all that I've... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Marco Antonio
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great guide
Go to guide for creating your own recipes. Would have given 5 stars, but I think it is time for a new edition because there are so many newer sub styles and varieties of hops not... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Steve
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mandatory reading
If you are starting to tire of the many beer kits available and wanting to start creating your own recipes, this book is a good starting point.
Published 1 month ago by R. HANSEN Jr.
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