Designing Great Beers The Ultimate Guide to Brewing Classic Beer Styles




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

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Great book for the serious home/craft brewer
This book is amazingly well written and immediately applicable for either the home brewer or small craft brewery. It’s not for beginners wanting to copy down some easy recipes. Instead, it is a great compilation of equations, tables and facts that will greatly help the consistency, quality and authenticity of the beer you produce. So if you are looking for a book that will help you construct a grain bill for your award winning stout or trying to figure out how much gypsum you need for that porter, this book is for you. I wish I bought this book years ago!

5 Stars Brewing Bible
Very good book with many recipes and very techical notes on brewing classic beer styles

5 Stars Must have book for any brewer
I picked this book up on the recommendation of others and I’m glad I did. It is a bit dated but the information is timeless. This book will not teach a beginner the steps to brew, it teaches the whys not the hows. This should be required reading before any brewer advances to all-grain.

3 Stars Good book but might be getting outdated now
A very useful and informative book, packed with lots of great in-depth detail, covering a wide range of information from historic beer-brewing facts and analysis through to modern home-brewing techniques and tips.

However, a substantial portion of the information provided focuses on ‘NHC Second-Round Beer’ and what (home) brewers used (or did not use) in their entries into the second-round of the NHC Competition. So much so that at times it almost seems like a statistical analysis of the competition entries. Given that the data is about 10 years old now and is focused on only a small sample, I do wonder how relevant that portion of information is now and what may have changed since.

5 Stars Excellent guide for designing your own recipes
This is a great book for the advanced brewer who is tired of blindly following recipes.

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