Yankee Brew News Archive

Review: The Brewmaster's Recipe Manual

Originally Published: 07/95

By: Don Gosselin

The Brewmaster's Recipe Manual

By Stephen Snyder

Published by Beer Garden Press, Guttenberg, New Jersey

272 pages, $18.95

Joining the company of Brewing the World's Greatest Beers and the electronically-disseminated Cat's Meow, The Brewmaster's Recipe Manual is the latest in a series of texts to focus predominantly on homebrew recipes.

The book spends the majority of its 271 page, spiral-bound girth on actual recipes formulated by American and British homebrew supply vendors. The recipes are mostly malt-extract and partial mash, and thus geared towards the beginner to intermediate homebrewer. Snyder covers some newer ground with helpful notes on the wide variety of liquid yeasts now available to the homebrewer.

One caveat however. Snyder includes a handful of beer recipes from British supply shops. Most of these recipes call for an inordinate amount of table sugar, glucose or corn sugar. Only in very rare circumstances should sugar of any form exceed 15% of your recipe's fermentables. If you exceed that figure, you run the risk of creating a thin, cidery brew (See Yankee Brew News, Vol. 4 # 1, Spring 1993). Adjust the British recipes accordingly.

For the beginner or intermediate brewer seeking to expand their recipe repetoire, The Brewmaster's Recipe Manual is a good source.