Brew: The Foolproof Guide to Making World-Class Beer at Home

If you like good beer and are ready to move up to brewing your own, Brew by James Morton is an excellent choice. Morton did a great job of systematically explaining the entire process of beer brewing, from selecting your equipment and purchasing your ingredients to capping bottles and storing them. The book is a hardcover with heavy paper stock pages and superb photo illustrations throughout, including many good thumbnail photo series to visually demonstrate the instructions (e.g. fifteen photos showing the steps of basic brewing). Equally good are the photo series used for reference, like the malt color chart and beer color chart. Many useful reference tables and charts help your brewing process. Most beginners start with a beer kit, which Morton carefully explains before going on to brewing from scratch. His writing and explanations are clear, simple, and precise–very readable. His troubleshooting chapter is as good as you’ll hopefully ever need. His recipe section is in four categories, British/Irish ales, American beers, European ales, and specialty beer, with many recipes under each category and then a list of suppliers. This is a British book, thus measurements are in metric followed by American units, which is not an inconvenience for American brewers.