10 Best Books on Brewing

This is a collection of my 10 favorite brewing books. Since i got into home brewing, i have read every book on beer i could get my hands on. There must have been over 30 books in total. Some books i really disliked and many were outdated. That’s why i created this list, to give you the best of the best.

These book are not just for reading once, you should keep them in your brewery-bookshelf and take them out if you need guidance. When I’m creating a new recipe, i always go back to some of those 10 for reference.

I’m always on the lookout for new books, feel free to comment if you have something to add.

Designing Great Beers
by Ray Daniels

If you want to create and brew new recipes to style and enter them into competition, this is the book for you. It is also great for beginners wanting to create their first recipes. Ray takes hundreds of competition winning recipes and presents them in nice graphics and tables. With the help of his book, you can quickly check your new recipe and get ideas to add new malts and hops you may not have thought about.

Radical Brewing
by Randy Mosher

Radical Brewing is the book for the creative recipe designer. There are a lot of wonderful new ideas for the not so standard brews. This book will get your creativity going. I really liked the completely new and very uncommon recipes.

American Sour Beer
by Michael Tonsmeire

Even if you are only remotely interested in brewing sour beers this is a must read. Hands down the best book on sours i have read. Michael gives very practical, no bullshit advice. He describes methods from the pros and makes them easily adaptable for home brewing.

Experimental Homebrewing
by Drew Beechum and Denny Conn

Finally a how to brew book that is up to date. Drew and Denny have come up with some brilliant stuff. If you want to improve your brewing setup and get new ideas on the whole brewing process, this is it.

How to Brew
by John Palmer

The classic from a pioneer of home brewing. It gets you trough all the basics on home brewing. A must read for every beginner. You can find an online version for free on http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html

IPA
by Mitch Steele

This is the book on IPAs and their sub-styles. The content is well researched and there are many commercial recipes inside. I thought that a lot of those are somewhat under hopped for a home brew scale.

Wild Brews
by Jeff Sparrow

This was the best book on wild/sour beers before American Sour Beer came out. If you want to get more in depth and read historical information on this style of beer, read it.

Brew Like a Monk
by Stan Hieronymus

Similar book to wild brews but for classic Belgian style and Trappist beers. The author visits a lot of monestarys in Belgium and describes their method of production. If you are interested in brewing dubbel, tripel or strong ales i would recommend reading this book.

Brewing with Wheat
by Stan Hieronymus

Superb insight on wheat beers. You want to create a good hefeweizen? Read this! I was particularly amazed how Andechs produces their hefe.

Yeast
by Chris White

This would be the first book from the brewing element series that i recommend you to read. Some of the information is very technical, but you know the yeast not the brewer makes the beer.