After your first brew, which will be successful if the instructions are carefully followed, the book guides you into more involved techniques that allow greater creativity and flexibility to brew the beer you want to drink. This book encourages you to experiment, to mix and match ingredients, and learn by doing. It clearly demonstrates the author's great enthusiasm for homebrewing and successfully passes this to the reader.


Excellent "First homebrewing book"   January 9, 2005
 43 out of 43 found this review helpful

Look no further if you are shopping for your first handbook on home brewing. In fact, if you are even considering giving brewing your own beer or mead a try, this is THE book for you. Charlie Papazian will take you through the fundamentals of homebrewing in a humourous and easy to read manner.

The book starts with the basic techniques needed to brew a great tasting beer from a kit; then progresses through more advanced extract and adjunct brewing to All-Grain brewing, while keeping things as simple and straight forward as possible. The book also covers the equipment that you need to start homebrewing and gives an introduction to different beer styles and how you can reproduce them in your kitchen.

The book is a super introdction to handbrewing and a good reference book for the intermediate homebrewer, while the advanced homebrewer is probably better off going for Papazian's Homebrewers Companion or maybe a book on brewing science from one of the academic publishers.

All in all a joy to read for everyone even remotely interested in homebrewing and definately must-have in any homebrewing library.