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Designing Great Beers: The Ultimate Guide to Brewing Classic Beer Styles | 
 enlarge | Author: Ray Daniels
Publisher: Brewers Publications
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $15.24
You Save: $9.71 (39%)
New (34) from $15.24
Avg. Customer Rating:  56 reviews
Sales Rank: 8009
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 404
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9.8 x 7 x 1
ISBN: 0937381500
Dewey Decimal Number: 663.42
EAN: 9780937381502
ASIN: 0937381500
Publication Date: January 25, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20080725212931T
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
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
Product Description
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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| Customer Reviews: Read 51 more reviews...
 Good for reference July 13, 2008
It is a very technical book with lots of graphs and charts. If I ever have any technical homebrew questions, I will pull out this book. I might need to go back to college and get a masters degree to understand it, but I do now own it. Until I need it, it will just collect dust as part of my homebrew book collection.
 Missing a few key things May 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a really great book overall that gets down and dirty into tons of info on specific styles. The beginning goes over the basic ingredients and techniques, but it's the style chapters that really shine. Daniels has done a ton of research and complied a ton of data to break down exactly what goes into different styles of beer and gives a fantastic building block for designing your own version of the style.
I dock one star for what is missing. There are no mentions at all of the fantastic beers of Belgium, or the American "hybrid" styles like cream ale or amber ale. I love his methodical style of breaking down the beers, and I would really like to see this applied to these styles, especially the Belgians! Also there are a lot of simple grammar errors that any copy editor should have caught that get a bit distracting. I'd say time for a second edition with more beer styles!
Excellent Reference Book May 8, 2008
When I first got this book I didn't like it much. Why would I need all of this "data" when my BeerSmith program does all of the calculations for me? But as you perfect your style and technique--you find that you want to know "why" as much as "how". This book is GREAT for that. It is almost compulsively detailed and falls somewhere between a casual brewers how-to book and a full blown textbook of beer. Especially cool are the comparisons of the evolution of different styles; the grain bill comparisons for contest winning examples of styles; and the various graphs and charts which illustrate many of the intricacies of bringing beer within your BJCP guidelines.
I would say that this book is nearly indispensible for the intermediate homebrewer. Once you have figured out how to keep your equipment clean and the basics of brewing, this book is the next logical step. It does not replace a good brewing software program (like ProMash or BeerSmith) but it does let you know what is going on "behind the scenes" in those programs (how is it calculating my lovibond? how is it getting an ABV? why is that a style paramater?).
Get. This. Book.
 All these... numbers April 22, 2008
Admittedly, I've not finished reading this yet. The book is broken out into two sections: The first gives a rather thorough and dense description of each ingredient and its effect on the final product: beer. The second is a recipe section of sorts, that outlines many popular beer styles and how to make a representative of the style.
I got into homebrewing to be creative, and make some "great beers". Then I found out about all of these... numbers. If you're looking for a book to read in bed, the first half will certainly assist in slumber. All of these... formulas, numbers, and science. It's dizzying, and I want to skip it altogether, but I'm sure there's great information in here.
I bought this book to find out what hops go well together, what hops to use in each style, and other fill-in-the-blanks kind of information that new homebrewers don't quite have their head around. I've skimmed the second section, which looks more to what I'm looking for.
 tons of info on styles - great for somebody beginning to design their own beers! February 8, 2008
The book is similar to "how to brew like a monk" in it's mission to describe the styles and to give you an idea of how to create that style while stopping short of providing any specific recipes. I think that's the best part about this book. Daniels actually teaches you something about brewing a particular style and why you should add each ingredient instead of what you should add. That knowledge gives you the freedom to design your own brew that will stay within the intended style while giving you the chance to be creative. It's a great book and one that i'll be referring to many times as I attempt to create my own signature beers.
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