The Homebrewer's Answer Book: Solutions to Every Problem, Answers to Every Question

By Ashton Lewis and Lewis

Book Overview

Ashton Lewis supplies practical, easy-to-follow answers to all the questions that bubble up in the course of brewing your own beer. Covering all stages of the homebrew process, Lewis provides expert... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Perfect Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1580176755
• Release Date: July 2007
• Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.4" x 1.1" x 4.8"

Customer Reviews

Answered alot of my questions that I had about brewing

Being fairly new into homebrewing (about 8-10 batches), this had answered alot of my questions especially about hops, yeast, cleaning and off flavors. It is a good book because you can skip from chapter to chapter to read about the things that are most important to you or questions that you might have. I is a good book to read if you want to learn more about brewing and improve your beer. I know there are several books out there to read, I would recommend this one in your arsenal. A quick read and reference book.

Useful resource for home brewing

Have a home brew question? This book will most likely have an answer from the simplest questions to the more obscure. It's full of useful information and best practices. The Q & A format provides a way to quickly find what you are looking for. I would recommend this to any home brewers shelf. This book does not contain recipes or a step by step guide on how to home brew. If that's what you're after, keep looking.

On time, product as described.

Ordered this book from this seller 3 weeks before Christmas. Got it in one week. The book is almost brand new, just like described.

100% Q & A From an Expert

I picked this book up after a brief scan of the contents. Having read through it, what I really liked was Lewis' opinions. I.e., while there is plain-Jane factual content, many answers go beyond and touch on his preferences and rationales. He actually calls himself "ferociously opinionated" in one answer. In the end that's what I'm really trying to get out of a book like this. Brewing can be approached in a paint-by-the-numbers fashion or more thoughtfully, with understanding and a full appreciation for the alternatives and creativity involved. Thoughtful answers and opinions from an expert support the latter. He simply refuses to buy into the notion you can scale recipes up and down in simple fashion, for example. Moreover, he offers tidbits of advice you won't find elsewhere, e.g., splitting a sample section of hose to look for cracks indicative of beerstone buildup, as one small example. Or his thoughts on sanitation, which offers both opinions and data I haven't seen elsewhere. Ditto filtration, yeast propagation, equipment, hot side aeration and a score of other topics. So ... I find myself in agreement with John J. Palmer on this review - not a bad place to be! (John J. Palmer is author of one of the very best homebrewing books available: How to Brew: Everything You Need To Know To Brew Beer Right The First Time) And I COMPLETELY disagree with another reviewer that this book amounts to "Brewing for Retards." The only thing I don't like about this book is the format. It's a blocky, squarish, fat little book with cardboard covers of the type you find on children's books. I can't think of a single good reason why the publisher chose this format. My 4-star rating reflects the format, not the contents.

Good Information, compact format

The Homebrewer's Answer book contains a lot of useful information in it's 400+ pages. The writer of the Ask Mr. Wizard column in Brew Your Own magazine has always provided well written, thoughtful replies to the questions he's received from all levels of brewers over the years, and these are collected in this book. Some of the questions are very basic, especially in the first couple sections, but there are a lot of very good questions from intermediate brewers in the later sections. The only problem with the book is the format. It is small - a little shorter and wider than a standard paperback, which makes it difficult to hold and read. Perhaps the publisher thought that a pocket manual would be nifty. Unfortunately it tends to impede the readability. Second, while the Questions are organized into several sections: Sanitation, Ingredients, Lagering, Packaging, Troubleshooting, Extract Brewing, All-grain Brewing, etc., there is no list of questions at the front of each section so that you can easily find Your question, and you therefore have to keep turning pages to find what you are looking for. Fortunately, the Questions are in bold, with seperators between questions, and there are several diagrams and sidebars to help illustrate the Answers. The index is well done too. Bottom line: a good source of brewing information from a solid author, with an Issue, Consequences, and Resolution writing style, which I like. Perhaps the compact format won't be a problem for other readers. Get yourself some 3M Post-It Flags (tm) and this can indeed be a handy book. John Palmer author of How To Brew