North American Clone Brews: Homebrew Recipes for Your Favorite American and Canadian Beers (Paperback)

by Scott R. Russell (Author)
Key Phrases: pale dry malt extract, amber dry malt extract, wort volume, Northern Brewer, Belgian Special, Omit Pilsner (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Well over 100 extract, mini-mash, and all-grain recipes that will allow homebrewers to duplicate their favorite award-winning American and Canadian microbrewery beers.

From the Back Cover
You Can Brew the Best 150 Beers in North America!

Clone these brews and more without leaving your kitchen.

Each recipe comes complete with partial mash, all-extract, and all-grain instructions, making this book a must-have for brewers of all abilities.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC (July 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580172466
• ISBN-13: 978-1580172462
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #169,817 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not Related!!, November 2, 2000

By A Customer

For all you people out there that are reading this review, and think this is the sequel to Clonebrews that was written by Tess and Mark Szamatulski, it is Not. After reading this book and some of the recipes you are able to easily pinpoint many errors in the recipes. ... There is no way to mash 18 pounds of grain in 2.5 gallons of water. Other mistakes include not decreasing your bittering hops when brewing all grain recipes. The list of errors/lack of knowledge of brewing goes on....

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Decent book, unfairly reviewed, March 23, 2003

By	michaelg (Middleton, WI USA) - See all my reviews

While there are mistakes in this book (as there are in Clone Brews and Beer Captured), overall this is a worthwhile book-all the recipes I have made from this book have turned out well.

Much of the criticism of this book seems overdone. Beerman11, for instance, says that the extract version of the Immortales recipe asks you to continue the recipe with mini-mash recipe, and that this would require boiling 7.5 gallons. In my copy, the extract recipe asks you to use the mini-mash recipe after the boil--which would result in a boil of 3 gallons.

Admittedly, some of the criticism is fair. The book does not suggest lowering the amount of hops for the all-grain recipes, which is odd. I could not find the barleywine error mentioned elsewhere (although I'm not a big barleywine fan); it is possible mistakes in the first edition were corrected. On the other hand, Russell did actually include lagering in his recipes, which the Szamatulski's did not in Clone Brews (and included only in the Helpful Hints section in Beer Captured, their latest book).

Frankly, I suspect many of the problems with this book are a result of the publishing format, which applies to both of the Szamatulski's books as well. The short, one-page recipe format doesn't leave enough room to discuss technique and other issues involved with making the beer, and I think a lot of useful information is left out. However, I can get this information elsewhere.

Overall, I liked this book better than the original Clone Brews and almost as much as Beer Captured.

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Give the brewer a break, December 1, 2000

By	"beerman11" (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

I bought this book and I am having a hard time with it. I have been an extract brewer for 15 years. I'm responding to "sioux181" when he says "Give a guy a break!", give the brewer a break. I bought the ingredients for two of the recipes in this book and when I started making them, I realized that the conversions he made from mini-mash to extract were incorrect and I had to guess at what to do. How can I give the author a break? I will admit that mistakes happen, but you sound like you must be the author because any homebrewer would be very upset with incorrect information on brewing a beer. Both the errors that were pointed out previously are pretty obvious. However, I don't think the author spent the time to correctly convert to extract. For the Immortale recipe I start with 3 gallons of water for the specialty grains, he tells us to omit some ingredients, then follow the mini-mash recipe. It wasn't until I started that I looked at the mini-mash recipe and it said to sparge with 4 1/2 gallons of water. I have never brewed an extract beer using a 7 1/2 gallon boil (for a 5 gallon batch). The other recipe I made was Whale Tale Brown Ale, with his recipe I would end up with a 5 gallon boil. If I wanted to do a 5 gallon boil, I would switch to all-grain. It is obvious that the conversions are incorrect. Every recipe is like this. I have to guess at how much water to use for the specialty grains and sparging. Also, among various other small but important pieces that are essential to brewing, he has completely forgotten about adding Irish Moss.