Books every home-brewer should read

There are hundreds of brewing books on the market today with just as many new ones hitting the shelves soon. If you’re anything like me, my shelves are full of books and unfortunately a lot of the home-brewing books are just repeating the same content and adding some nice images. So, we’ve done the hard work for you so you don’t have to fill up your shelves with 20 different books. We’ve picked three books that every brewer regardless of your experience, should read.    

The Complete Beer Course - Joshua M. Bernstein

The complete beer course is the first of the three books we’ve picked. The Complete Beer Course, does exactly what it says on the cover. This book will take you through twelve classes and does a great job at breaking down some of the main beer styles and their siblings to educate the reader on the origins of the styles whilst also highlighting some of the elite beers within the style that you should add to your next beer order. There are a couple classes that break the format and Joshua Bernstein does a great job at creating some very accessible information around cellaring beers and food pairing. 

Whilst someone new to brewing would probably gain the most from this book, it’s also recommended for anyone who want to learn some of the origins of the styles or for beer inspiration. 

How to brew - John J. Palmer

Possibly the most popular home brewing book on the market. How to brew will take the reader on an exciting journey. It’s starts off explaining the world of extract brewing and teaching some of the basic processes that are important to consider when brewing e.g cleaning and some of the ingredients. Then John walks the reader through the process of brewing with extract and specialty grains and then all-grain brewing and then what would a brewing book be without recipes to brew up at home.

This book has a lot of really important information and I mean a lot of information. This is a no frills kind of book, the layout of the book and images could do with some refining but the information in the book is too good to pass-up. You should defiantly buy a version and keep it on your shelve, I can’t remember the amount of times I’ve been trying to work something out and i’ve always got what I needed from the book. 

It’s also worth highlighting that there is a free version of this book that’s accessible Here. This version makes some of the information easier to read but it’s really worth using both the book and the site to get the full picture. 

Joy of Home Brewing - Charlie Papazian

Originally released back in 1976, Joy of home brewing is now in it’s 4th edition. Disclaimer: I haven’t read all four versions. I have the 3rd edition and at the moment it seems to work wonders for me. Charlie Papazian will take you through the fundamentals of home-brewing in a humorous and easy to read manner and on more than one occasion you’ll be encouraged to "Relax and have a homebrew”. Joy of Home Brew does a good job at delivering a lot of information and then ultimately explaining how that information you’ve learnt can help to take your beer to another level using very strong examples. Ok, so just like How to brew, It might be worth re-thinking the artwork and images but the information is very solid. 

As I said before, there are many different books out for anyone starting to brew. Most of those books are pretty dated but in this case that’s fine for me. The processes, ingredients and science behind brewing hasn’t changed too much over the years. Two of these three books have passed the test of time and the other one will is bound to be around for a very long time. I’ve brought these books and I’ve never regretted spending my hard earned cash on them. 

Anyways, if you’re reading this and you got some better books or anything we should’ve added, please do feel free to get in touch.