Customer Reviews

Extreme Brewing: An Enthusiast's Guide to Brewing Craft Beer at Home

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I just received this book yesterday and was disappointed by the content. Sam recruited some of the biggest and hottest names in craft brewing to contribute. Garrett Oliver, Michael Jackson, Vinnie from Russian River, and many more either contirbute a recipe or essay. However, most of these contributions are minimal and not as in depth as their personal publications. Issues such as brewing with spices and wood aging are discussed but in too little detail to really learn much.

The beginning of the book covers brewing for the very beginner. Other books cover this much better. I think a beginning non-technical brewer would do better with the Joy of Homebrewing while more studious brewers should get John Palmer's book. Food and beer pairing is covered but Garrett Oliver's book is better.

As for the extreme brewing aspects I would rather spend my money on Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher. It allows for your independent experiments and is much more educational.

The book is also set up to sell homebrew kits designed to parallel the book. Look elsewhere for your brewing education. I was left with the thought of "Where's the Beef?" with this one.

Firstly, let me say that I respect Sam's achievements in brewing and applaud his creativity. I'm looking forward to more "extreme" offerings from Dogfish Head in the future. Unfortunately, my regard for this book does not match that of the author. It's really a bit of a mess. In trying to appeal to beginner and experienced brewer alike, I think it fails to satisfy either. The title would lead the consumer to believe that this is a guide for brewers (enthusiasts) to kick their brewing knowledge and techniques up a notch. However, the first sections of the book are an uninspired description of the extract brewing process, barely detailed enough for a beginning brewer. The book then describes how and when to use extreme brewing ingredients (non-traditional sugars, spices, herbs, etc). This is by far the most interesting part of the book, but is more applicable to an experienced brewer. The book then concludes with an extract/partial mash recipe section leaving us all-grain brewers hanging out in the breeze. Next time Sam, pick an audience and stick to it throughout the book.

Let me start by saying I like Sam's beers and he seemed like a good guy when I met him a while back.

When I heard about the book I was quite interested as I had recently read Radical Brewing (which is a fairly in depth examination of ingredients and techniques).

Extreme Brewing is a great book for a novice brewer who want some basic extract / partial mash recipes for what are currently viewed as some "extreme" craft brewes from Dogfish Head, Avery, Russian River, etc. The brewers and beers in the book are some of the best but there is no real depth of information for anyone who has been brewing for any length of time. I'm not an expert, but this book really had nothing new to offer in terms of brewing ingredients / techniques.

If you want some recipes for extract versions of some big beers, go for it. If you want to really explore brewing on a creative level - pass.

First off I will qualify myself as a librarian and avid home brewer. Though I love brewing at home, I have not as yet made the jump to "all grain" brewing. What I was looking for was a book that had some more advanced recipes aimed at the "weekend warrior" home brewing types that still use malt extract in their beers. This book fit the bill perfectly! With contributions from some of the biggest and most respected names in the craft brewing world, this book is both instructional as well as inspirational. Not everyone pops out of the womb as a superstar brewer, and I think Mr. Calagione should be commended for writing a book aimed at the beginner and intermediate home brewers. I found this a well written, attractive, and informative read. Highly recommended!

This book has great recipes for the experienced brewer, but I found the beginning of the book to be somewhat unnecessary. It had a lot of advice for brewers just learning how to brew. I do not feel people buying a book of "Extreme Brewing" recipes are going to need advice about getting started in brewing. All in all, the book is worth the price for it's easy reading and great recipes.

While this book has been put down pretty heavily by some of the other reviews, I have to say that, while this book isn't exactly for the super-experienced brewer (Radical Brewing is more for that.), this book does a good job of introducing brewing concepts up front, then pushing the reader to push the envelope and make something interesting.

This is a severely quick read with quite a few worthwhile recipes. For those out there who already know what they're doing, this book is pretty okay for the recipes in it. Particularly if you are a fan of Dogfish Head beer. For the beginner, it makes beginning homebrewing more interesting by offering more complex and interesting recipes up front, rather than pushing overly simplistic recipes other books tend to afford.

While this book isn't exceptionally deep and complex, it is entertaining and puts forth a bit of useful information here and there. Certainly not a reference manual, like The Brewmaster's Bible or Radical Brewing, but it is a worthwhile first brewing book in my opinion.

So far I've made two recipes out of this book, the Blood Orange Hefeweizen, and most recently the Hopfather Double IPA. I made the hefeweizen exactly as instructed with the exception that I used more elegant techniques for processing the oranges than the (apparently non-cook) recipe author described. It turned out well, but really needed 2 additional weeks of bottle conditioning time to smooth out the flavor profiles.
The IPA is currently fermenting, so I can't comment on its success at this point. I did use recipe calculators to modify this to all-grain, and the initial readings weren't far off from the recipe specs. But - and this is a big but - there is errata in the recipe. The weight of hops given during the dry hopping stage as listed in the ingredients differs from weights for those same hops additions as specified in the process. There doesn't seem to be any errata page on the publisher's web site, the contact email on their site bounced back as a bad address.
Certainly a good editor and proofreader would have noticed the mistake, so I place the full blame for this on the publisher. As do I fault them for not having an errata page, or having a valid way to contact them.
I will look upon all the recipes in this book with a great amount of suspicion, and think twice before buying any more books published by Quarry Books.

This book has some really fun/great recipes. Although probably not for the beginning brewer. Finally bought this book after getting tired of checking it out of the library. Great addition to any brewers collection.

Santa brought me Sam Calagione's "Extreme Brewing" for Christmas. As a veteran homebrewer and beer enthusiast, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I do not believe it will replace cornerstone texts like "The Joy of Homebrewing", "How to Brew", or "Designing Great Beer" as a reference or instructional guide. It is, nonetheless, an extremely interesting and informative book, a tasty sidedish to the other books' meat and potatoes. "Extreme Brewing" provides a useful, if somewhat abbreviated, "how to" description of the homebrewing process. The rest of the book focuses on ingredients, recipes, and brewing techniques. As other reviewers have mentioned, the recipes presented in the book are written for extract brewing. Unlike other reviewers, however, I do not believe this relegates the book to the "novice brewer" category. Each recipe includes a description of the techniques used to produce the beer, and the "extreme ingredients" used to give the beer its special qualities. I found several of the techniques (e.g., continual hopping, multiple primary fermentations, etc.) very interesting. I also appreciated the discussion of "extreme ingredients" (what they are, how to use them, how much to use, etc.). The use of these techniques and ingredients is far from basic. I count several of the Dogfish Head Brewery offerings among my favorite beers (even though I have to drive to the next state to get them). Now I have new insights into how they achieve some of their results. I do not think I could have simply figured it out on my own. Finally, the book is well made and looks good, with glossy pages and high quality photos. It is a beer book you would not be embarrassed to have out on your coffee table. I recommend it.

This book is one of those flashy glossy books with very little content. This is not for the all grain brewer, maybe for the extract people it could be of interest. Recipes are very basic and common. Dry writing style but lots of cozy pictures of people drinking beer.