Writen by Charlie Papazian. Known to many as the homebrewers bible it has sold more then one million copies over 25 reprintings and 3 editions. After an introduction the book is split into three parts: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Each section has adequate information. There is, in the beginners section, a step-by-step guide. If your totally new to beer there is a style guide too. In intermediate and advanced there are recipes, various methods, ingredient details, helpful charts, and even a bit of yeast science.Some of my first beers were from the intermediate recipes. They deal with kits, extracts, small amounts of malt, adjuncts and hops. I did a Cushlomachree stout (page 208) from a coopers stout kit and it turned out to be, up to then, the best I made.
The advanced section deals with all grain brewing. Water adjusting, culturing yeast, grinding grain, mash tuns, lauter-tuns and different mashing methods. If it goes over your head dont worry Mr Papazian writes: Relax. Don’t worry. Have a homebrew!
As a reference, I cannot stress how useful this book is. When I'm looking to buy ingredients or following a recipe, I can always check the hop chart, style guideline or look up an adjunct. Just last year I wanted to try using pears from our garden tree. I looked up fruits and found instruction on how to pasteurize fruit (page 89-90). If your starting to be a serious homebrewer there are three and a half pages on growing hops in appendix 7 (page 353).
If your new to brewing or looking for an excellent reference I recommended it.
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