September 2001

Issue 51

http://www.hbd.org/carboy

Bill Pollard (blyrbow@bellsouth.net)

Carboy would like to express our sympathy to anyone who might
have been affected by the tragic events of September 11, 2001.

August 2001 Meeting Minutes

1. The annual PUBCRAWL was discussed and planned. Details on that are already on the homepage. It happened August 25!
   
2. OCTOBERFEST was discussed and planned. It will be at Montague’s Pond in Cary on September 29, 2001 in South Cary.
   
3. Mike Dixon presented a thorough "bibliography" on books that a homebrewer should or could have. He presented it in a particular order. The order followed the various levels that a home-brewer could expect to find himself/herself getting into, from the very beginning to the very serious. He pointed out that if one got into the "STYLES" series, one should ALWAYS purchase all of the ones for a particular style, as there are several in the series that revisit particular styles, and they are not duplicates.

One can find the complete bibliography below.

We then went into "TELL US ABOUT THIS BEER", and it all went uphill/downhill from there.

The October COC will include California Common Beer, with entries due in by September 28. Get brewing those California Commons!

SHARED WITH THE CLUB

Next meeting is Wednesday, September 26, 2001.

The Brewing Library
By: Mike Dixon mpdixon@ipass.net

Most of us began brewing with a simple kit and a set of instructions. Others came probably came with the most basic of brewing texts, a book by William Moore titled Home Beermaking The Complete Beginner’s Guidebook. It is widely distributed and is a great little text for beginners. Next you most likely moved to texts penned by Charlie Papazian, or something like Beer for Dummies. Some people never move past those texts. Others find they desire more information about the brewing process, ingredients, or recipe formulation. I thought I would offer some advice to guide the people who were in search of next texts and information.

A really great but dated book is The Big Book of Brewing by Dave Line. Dave wrote this book in 1974, and sadly he died in 1980. He was on the right tract to be an expert in the homebrew community. If he could only have seen what is available today. He also wrote Brewing Beers Like Those You Buy. Both these texts are a little out of date, but they are good additions to the brewing library.

The first book I got out of the gate was The Complete Book of Home Brewing by Dave Miller. There are some errors due to the change in ingredients, but this is a wonderful text. Also Dave wrote Dave Miller’s Homebrewing Guide, and Brewing the World’s Great Beer. These books are nice to have and are filled with useful information.

A book I wish I had had from day on is Home Brewing The CAMRA Guide by Graham Wheeler. It is a truly awesome text and can now be found from a US source. Wheeler teamed up with Roger Protz and wrote many recipe books that are nice to have. The only problem is they are very light on yeast suggestions. The two US available titles are Brew Classic European Beers at Home, and Brew Your Own British Real Ale. The predecessor of the second title is available in the UK and worth searching out. Its title is Brew Your Own Real Ale at Home.

If you like brewing lagers (or ales for that matter), wonderful resources are the books by Greg Noonan. Brewing Lager Beer and New Brewing Lager Beer are both titles that should be in your library. The second is a rewrite of the first, but it is a complete rewrite. Read both.

If you want to learn more about brewing to a particular style then you should get the Classic Beer Style Series. To date there are 18 books, and you should get the styles you are interested in, or better yet, get them all. One note, book 1 is Pale Ale, and book 16 is Pale Ale. You should have both these texts; the second is not just a rewrite, but also a different text.

If you just want a book of recipes, there are many out there. One of the gems is a book by Higgins, Kilgore, and Hertlein titled Secrets From The Master Brewers. It gives great recipes. Some are extract, some are all grain, and many have tips from the brewmasters themselves.

If you are brewing all grain, then you must have the book Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels. It does not have one recipe in the 390 page book, but it will help you in recipe design, ingredient selection, and calculation. Daniels book is an indispensable text for the brewing library.

If you have all of the above, then you should go for the science behind the brewing process with the books by George Fix. Principles of Brewing Science, and An Analysis of Brewing Techniques, are the pinnacle of scientific homebrew information. Not for the faint of heart.

Finally, if you have all of the previously mentioned texts and are looking for the final frontier in brewing, then look no further than the book by Pierre Rajotte titled First Steps in Yeast Culture. It is a wonderful book with step-by-step instructions on yeast ranching. The only caveat about it is I was never able to find it discounted in price anywhere.

Some good sources for books are:

American Brewmaster www.americanbrewmaster.com

Beer Books Online www.beerbooks.com

Ebay www.ebay.com (watch that shipping cost when you bid)

Or my personal favorite:

Half.com www.half.com

I hope this has sparked you to look for additions to your existing library, or to being a collection of your own. There is so much useful information at you fingertips when you have a complete brewing library.