Book Review: Brewing Classic Styles

I had heard about Brewing Classic Styles, by Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer, on the Brewing Network's Sunday Session podcast. Last month, I received it as a birthday gift. Now that I've read the book, here is a review.

Like most books, I started at the beginning: the introduction. This gave some insights as to its origins. According to the introduction, the book was originally conceived as a book to cover brewing from extract. John Palmer had been throwing the idea around when he mentioned it to Jamil Zainasheff. Somehow, by talking to him, the book evolved into a recipe book that covers all the BJCP styles, providing an award winning recipe for each one, though the first part of the book, the part by John Palmer, still included a section on extract brewing techniques.

I then thumbed thought the first chapters, John Palmer's portion of the book. There I noticed that it included the chapters Brewing with Style, Choosing your Ingredients, and Brewing Great Beer with Extract. In those chapters, John detailed how to choose malt and hops, yeast pitching rates, water adjustments, partial boils and its effects on wort creation and hop utilization, and much more.

After John's portion of the book lied Jamil Zainasheff's portion of the book, the chapters with the recipes. Most recipes were given as extract recipes with all-grain options given at the end. However, some styles required a mini mash, or all-grain to be executed properly.

One of the things I really enjoyed about the book was that each recipe included a story about the recipe's origin, written in first person, which gave the book a very personal feel. For instance, the section on altbier detailed Jamil's travels to Düsseldorf, Germany, and his discovery of true altbier served from wooden kegs, in German pubs. He told the story of taking a picture of the beer when one of the locals exclaimed, "Hey Cowboy, are you taking a picture of me?" They became quite excited when they found out that he loved the beer so much as to take its picture. As a result of the story, Jamil named his own altbier "Coyboy Alt."

Though all the recipes I read through were all award winning, not all of them were Jamil's recipes. For instance, the recipe called Janet's Brown Ale came from Jamil's good friend, Mike McDole, named for Mike's late wife. It was her favorite beer. The recipe was included as a tribute to her.

Because this beer covers so many styles, when I read it, I personally thought that the book would make a good companion to Designing Great Beers, by Ray Daniels. Designing Great Beers looks at statistics over a swath of award winning beers for specific styles while Brewing Classic Styles gives a single award winning recipe, with notes on brewing that style. Between the two, one can really get the feel for a specific style.

In the end, I highly recommend the book. It should make a good addition to any brewing library. I'm happy to have it as part of mine.