Dave Miller’s Homebrewing Guide: Everything You Need to Know to Make Great-Tasting Beer
In this comprehensive guide to homebrewing, Miller clearly explains the best techniques for every step of the entire brewing process. Clear enough for the novice but thorough enough to earn a home in the libraries of brewmasters, this is the essential volume on brewing great-tasting beer at home.
While authors of entry-level brewing books do well to alleviate the fears of anxious new brewers, advanced writers benefit from a pointedly informative approach. Dave Miller’s dry, technically
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Very informative, but not always easy to read.,
I liked this book very much and learned a lot from it, but I think it could use some editing and revision. The book seems to hop from one thing to the next with no clear structure and even repeats itself a few times. It also lacks all of the great illustrations that good brew books are usually filled with. Granted, this is not really a beginners brew book, but nonetheless, I wish it had been edited more clearly. However, I will not criticize the information that dave offers the homebrewer. He is certainly an expert and gives the reader much detail in each aspect of brewing. This is a great book for the partial mash or extract brewer out there who wants to move into all grain brewing… or if you’re the kind of guy that needs to add another brew book to your shelves, go ahead and get this one. You’ll learn a thing or two no matter how long you’ve been brewing.
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Detailed, but repetitive,
This book contains a lot of good info, which I’ve found to be both interesting and useful as I get back into brewing after a break of a few years. I have Papazian also, and of the two books, I pick this one up more often, and find what I’m looking for more easily.
Despite the comments of some other reviewers, one doesn’t need to be an all-grain brewer to find this book useful. I’m creating my own recipes using extracts and specialty grains, and find this book to be very helpful.
However, Miller is pretty repetitive. It is only a slight exaggeration that there are 3 chapters on each topic: on each on theory, equipment and method. I find that there is a moderate degree of repetition of material across these chapters. A consolidation of each topic into 1 chapter could well result in a 1/3 reduction in pages for the book.
I’ll echo another reviewer, who commented negatively on the recipes towards the back. They are really just lists of ingredients, without discussion on method (eg. mash temperatures) or variables.
Having made these mild complaints, I’ll go on picking this book up every day or so as I think about what to do for my next brew.
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