CAMRA's Brew Your Own British Real Ale: Over 100 Recipes to Try

If you're starting to brew, this book is fantastic. It starts by guiding you through the ingredients and adjuncts, all-grain brewing process, and finish with the recipes. Pros: Easy to understand, easy to read, friendly, concise. Step-by-step guide to brewing from scratch. Easy to read recipes, simple presentation. (for non-us residents) Metric system as primary. Cons: Easy and concise sacrifices depth and details. Little to no explanation on hard, cold measurements and indicators Focus on all-grain brewing, lacks the grinding guidelines Overall is a great book, perfect if you combine it with a couple of youtube videos on brewing.

Quality was exactly as described. Very useful book for real ale recipes

Wheeler's _Brew Your Own British Real Ale_ contains a great store of recipes for commercially produced British real ales. The first half of of the book is devoted to general discussions of beer and brewing. Wheeler's treatment of these topics is nowhere near as useful as Palmer's in _How To Brew_; the real value of the book is in the recipe section, which contains recipes based on information from the original brewers. I have enjoyed this book a great deal and I have found the recipes to provide a useful survey of British brewing conventions---my own brewing of British beer styles has improved as a result. Below I list a number of criticisms, but please don't lose sight of the fact that Wheeler's book is a great compendium of recipes and overall a great resource for anyone interested in producing ale in authentic British styles. Now to the criticisms: (1) Wheeler gives malt bills in weights rather than percentages; percentages make it easier to convert a recipe to your own brewing system given a known target original gravity and your system efficiency. (2) Recipes do not list the color ratings for the various malts included. "crystal malt" is not especially useful when a range of crystal malt from 10 L through 135 L and higher is available. I have had good success with British Crystal 77 L from Simpsons, but surely this is not the malt that all commercial brewers use for all their beers. (3) In cases where I have an independent, reliable source for a brewery formula, Wheeler's recipe is often substantially different. Riggwelter from Black Sheep, for instance, is listed as containing sugar, but when interviewed on The Jamil Show on 3/29/2010, the head brewer claimed that sugar was not in the formula for Riggwelter. Additionally, from tasting comments in the same program, it was clear that a major flavor of the beer was contributed by pale chocolate malt (around 200 L), whereas Wheeler seems to have achieved the same color using a smaller amount of higher kilned chocolate malt (around 400 L), which would contribute a substantially different flavor. In another recipe, Adnams Explorer is listed as using exclusively Liberty hops, but Adnams claims to be using Columbus and Chinook on their own website; Liberty and Chinook are pretty dissimilar! Some of the variation surely comes from the revision of commercial formulas over time, but these examples don't inspire confidence in the accuracy of the recipes as a whole. Other recipes, like those for Fullers ESB and London Pride---see data given by Fullers in the the Sept/Oct 2008 issue of Zymurgy---and Worthington White Shield, seem to be spot on, but about half of the recipes I have independent sources for seem to be substantially different. (4) A huge factor in the final flavor of a beer comes from yeast strain selection and fermentation practices. There are many different yeast strains available to home brewers, and Wheeler gives little advice about how to select appropriate strains for each of his recipes (his comments on yeast strains are generic and not tailored for different recipes). The recipes would be improved if Wheeler provided some guidance as to which sorts of yeast are more appropriate to particular beers---homebrewers have ready access to around 20 strains of yeast originating from British breweries, and each strain produces a different beer from the same wort. (5) The author says that in many recipes he includes a small addition of black malt to correct for color (perhaps because of a faulty assumption about the color level of a crystal malt addition, or perhaps as an alternative to brewers' caramel coloring or an extract like sinamar). Even in small quantities, these black malt additions will change the beer flavor. The basic strategy is fine, but it would have been nice to know exactly where a malt addition is made by Wheeler to correct color and where it reflects the actual practice of the original brewer. (6) Dry hopping quantities are not given; dry hopped beers all contain the same generic instruction: "dry hop with a few cones of [insert hop variety]". A half ounce per five gallons seems to work pretty well in most British styles where dry hopping is appropriate, but that is at best a rule of thumb. Regarding hop schedules in general, Wheeler says that dry hopping and hopping in a hop back or whirlpool are more common than late kettle additions in commercial practice, but that his recipes substitute late kettle additions (sensibly since few home brewers use a whirlpool or hop back). nonetheless, it would have been nice to know where a late kettle addition in one of Wheeler's recipes corresponds to a commercial brewer's late kettle addition and where it corresponds to a hop back or whirlpool addition. Points (2) through (6) suggest that the recipes are substantially a product of Wheeler's interpretation and inference just as much as they reflect commercial practices. I don't mean to suggest that Wheeler has made lots of bad interpretations and inferences, just that the book would be more useful if Wheeler had said where he was extrapolating or guessing and where he was using information from the original brewer. Of course many people just want a collection of recipes that will make nice tasting beer in roughly the intended style, and these collected recipes will certainly do that, but these recipes are not going to *clone* the commercial beer in many cases, even if you chance on an appropriate yeast strain. All of that said, I still recommend the book to any homebrewer interested in developing a better understanding of the range of British beer styles, especially in concert with other resources (like K. England's yeast strain chart available on Zainasheff's Mr Malty website). Those of us interested in British brewing and beer styles are indebted to Wheeler for his work in collecting so much information from commercial breweries and in general to the good work done by CAMRA to protect and preserve traditional British ale. Cheers!

All solid recipes in this book!

Husband and son loved the book. Thanks

Very good book

I worked in the UK for quite a while and became a lover of British beers. this book from the group CAMRA is helping me make better real ales. The only fault I find is lack of detail in the recipes. It would be nice to know the color levels of the crystal malts as well as the alpha rating of the hops. Overall a pretty good guide.

I would like to offer a long needed counter to the complaints regarding the lack of a color rating (in Lovibond) for the Crystal malt in the recipes. If you know anything about crystal and color you know that the outcome of color is obviously the malting of the crystal and THE QUANTITY of the crystal in the recipe. But which Crystal should we use? Mr. Wheeler does tell us in the text of the book, but most of us fail to take notice. Honest, it is there. How do I know? I contacted the author, Graham Wheeler and here is his reply that helps make sense of his recipes and maybe why a lot of people "get" his recipes and rave about the book... "Although some largish British commercial brewers have their malts made to their own specification, by tradition the typical standard crystal malt is what today we would call medium or standard colour. The colour does vary slightly between manufacturers from 120 EBC (about 60L) to about 170 EBC (about 85L), but 140 (about 70L) or 150 EBC (about 75L) is usual. I used 150 EBC (about 75L) in the recipes. I did try to address this in a ham-fisted way in the paragraph on crystal malt where I said: "The recipes usually use standard crystal malt." I do not know how the word "usually" crept into that sentence. Perhaps I was subconsciously hedging my bets just in case I came across a brewer's recipe that used something other than standard. I should have said: "Standard crystal unless noted otherwise." As it happened all the recipes use standard. It is only relatively recently that light and dark crystal malt have appeared, particularly on the British home brewing market. There was just "crystal malt" without qualification and it was expected to be about 140 EBC (about 70L). Indeed, some long-established commercial brewers are of the opinion that crystal malt of above about 200 EBC (about 100L) imparts an inappropriate burnt flavour to a beer. You are doubtless aware that you can divide EBC by two to approximate Lovibond." There you have it folks... Standard Crystal malt is someplace between 70 to 85 lovibond and they let the quantity in the recipe control the color. I have sold brewers grain and will attest that only recently have color ratings have become consistent. Up until a couple of years ago (10) have grains actually achieved any consistency of color and even today brewers have to make a test distilled water color mash to find out where their latest batch of grain is going to take them... now we open up a whole 'nother can of worms where it is the responsibility of the brewer to control his color, not the malster or a simple recipe to achieve consistent outcome of color and flavor. The more we learn the harder it gets.

La bible du brasseur amateur. Il n'y a plus qu'à brasser. Les recettes sont claires et simples - même pour les brasseurs qui ont du mal avec l'anglais.

This book is nothing special and makes no effort to be. and that is why it's such a good read. All the basics are here. A detailed run down of the four main components of beer and how to use them when brewing classic British ales at home, home brewing techniques with equipment needed for brewing of course the obligatory series of recipes for different styles of British ale. Like this reader said, nothing special or groundbreaking here. The recipes are simplistic side, detailing only the most basic and simple parameters. However, the variety of different recipes is a point really worth mentioning in a positive light. Over 100 different recipes are detailed within. Overall, if you are look for a simple, uncomplicated book on how to brew classic British ales, then this is te book for you.

I have been a home brewer for many years and have on my bookshelf various books on the subject of brewing including one on brewing beers like the ones available commercially. The problem is that over the years various methods become outdated and certain ingredients are no longer available. Therefore, this book addresses both these problems in that it describes more modern brewing methods and also the ingredients such as hops, malts, yeasts, etc. which are available today. The other thing which I find very encouraging is that the recipes are far less complicated than the ones found in older books and yet still manage to produce some great beers, including bottle and keg ales, bitters, porters, stouts, in fact just about all of the brews with which the reader is likely to be familiar. I have recently returned to the craft after relocating from the UK to Ireland and am likely to make use of this book for many more years. Highly recommended to the beginner and expert alike.

If you brew British beers then this is the best book for you with a good explanation of process. Been making beers for 40 years and I always start with these recipes. All grain and malt extract beers but no lagers.

il libro è ben strutturato, le ricette sono molto semplici e divise per quantità ed è di facile comprensione anche per chi non ha una conoscenza approfondita dell'inglese