Doing your own research

My kettle, wort chiller,
and siphon in action.

One cool thing about brewing is that every brewer does it differently. There are so many different products and methods available, not to mention DIY solutions, that it's nearly impossible to have unified "best practices" for all brewers to follow. I brew with a huge 15 gallon false bottomed pot, a propane turkey fryer for heat, and an igloo 10 gallon cooler with a false bottom that I use for both mashing and lautering. Almost every technique I use will be different from the guy who is doing a partial-volume extract boil on his electrical stove beyond the fact that we are both going to end up with a sugary water that we pitch some yeast into.

Every brewer has his own goals and tastes that also drive what they find to be important in their beers. I for one give zero attention to a big brewing bugaboo that drives many people to near insanity: Clarity. Since I have a wort chiller, a lot of the proteins and hop particles present in young wort will precipitate out leaving my beer fairly clear with maybe a little bit of haze. I personally find that this has zero effect on flavor, and many other brewers feel the same way telling new brewers to stop worrying about the cloudiness of their first batch. Many other people find clarity so important, however, that they are willing to use fining agents like PVPP plastics, collagen derive from fish bladders, extracts from dried seaweed, and unflavored gelatin, the only one I'd really consider using.

Where am I going with all this? Well, basically, I think it's really important that all brewers spend some time to sit down and decide their goals with brewing. Thinking about what is important to you and your finished beer provides an effective framework and point of view for doing research on not just special techniques for certain styles, but also on general practices. When you have already decided what is important to your beer, everything you research and read gets screened through your own goals instead of the authors. It enables you to take a look at an authors techniques and say, "Ok, this guy thinks this is a really important step, but what effect does it have on beer in general? how will it affect my brewing goals? and is the effect great enough that it's worth either the time or cost of implementing it?"

As I've mentioned before, the blog The Mad Fermentationist has been a wealth of information for me in doing research into sours. I've also picked up a copy of Jeff Sparrow's Wild Brews, which I haven't gotten around to reading yet, and Stan Hieronymus's Brew Like a Monk which I have. Though Brew like a Monk has little in the way of sours, it does give information about traditional lambics and Orval's use of souring due to the influence of their brewmaster's Flemish assistant. Orval being one of the ever so famous Trappist breweries, it's influence in brewing can't be understated with the fresh leathery taste of certain brett strains being nicknamed Goút d'Orval. Another plus to Brew Like a Monk is it has a very in-depth exploration of Belgian styled beers and the techniques that they use, which are often counter to what traditional wisdom says is best for brewing 


Outside of sours and getting more into general or practical brewing information, my first instructional read in homebrewing came from John Palmer's How to Brew. The first edition is what I read, since Palmer offers it free online and it's a highly comprehensive piece. If you have never brewed before, I recommend skipping the sections on water chemistry, all-grain brewing, and only skimming the section on yeast. His water chemistry section goes into too much detail for novice brewers, he makes all-grain brewing sound a thousand times more complicated then it needs to be, and a lot of his information on yeast doesn't really reflect the modern yeasts available from Wyeast and White Labs in terms of their health and viability. Other then that, it's a fantastic resource for learning about the techniques of extract brewing, steeping grains, what hops do to beer, equipment, and other basic info. 


The second real book on brewing I read was Charles Papazian's The Complete Art of Homebrewing: Third Edition which, though kind of dated, does a fantastic job of reminding the reader that brewing something that tastes good is pretty easy. I also feel that it has a much more clear explanation of what is actually happening when you do an all-grain batch, and his instructions are much more straightforward. Additionally, he offers a healthy section of recipes and several appendixes on other items of homebrew interest like kegging, mead, souring, growing hops, judging/tasting beer, and a really simple explanation of the science behind siphoning. 


Also in my library is Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing, which I have yet to read cover to cover, but has certainly been an excellent resource while working on my own recipes. Radical Brewing has a ton of recipes and at a whopping 22 chapters, it covers everything from brewing history to critical tasting to recipe formulation and more. The last book currently on my shelf, which also has unfortunately been waiting in line to be read is Ray Daniels's Designing Great Beers. A detail oriented technical manual divided into two sections. The first half is a collection of tools and equations for calculating things like grain bill, hop bill, hitting the OG, and so on. Part two takes a scientific analysis of beers that made it to the second round of the National Homebrew Competition and pairs that information with the traditional and historical ingredients of their particular styles. It gives a solid basis for the formulation of your own recipes, but doesn't actually provide any recipes itself. It is a book for the brewer who wants to learn the the hows and whys of a particular style.


And even though I'm behind in my printed reading, (I still read homebrewing forums and websites nearly every day) I still have my amazon wishlist ready to add any new books to for when I get around to buying more. Currently in my planned purchases several books:
Tasting Beer by Randy Mosher
Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation by Jamil Zainasheff
Brew Chem 101 by Lee Jansen
The Complete Mead Maker by Ken Schramm
Brewing Better Beer by Gordon Strong

Hopefully I've provided enough links in here to fairly highly rated brewing material that anyone will be able to start critically thinking about their brewing process, habits, and goals. If you have any suggestions of must read resources on brewing, please leave a comment so I can check it out.