Yankee Brew News Archive

Book Review: Homebrew Favorites, A Coast-to-Coast Collection of more than 240 Beer and Ale Recipes

Originally Published: 04/96

By: The Naughty Nurse

Homebrew Favorites, A Coast-to-Coast Collection of more than 240 Beer and Ale Recipes

By Karl F. Lutzen and Mark Stevens

1995, Storey Publishing, Pownal, Vermont

$12.95, 250 pages

Reviewed by The Naughty Nurse

At last a book of homebrew formulations that is not just a dry list of recipes. There are lots of little asides here that help to maintain interest, but the strength of this book is the sheer number and variety of brews described--a whopping 240. Brewing techniques are described and many have a personal note from the brewer, sometimes even including what went wrong and how to improve it.

The introduction is full of sense, explaining that it will not teach you how to brew beer, and it goes on to credit Dave Miller and Charlie Papazian with having done that already. (Here, here! But let us not leave out Greg Noonan.) Chapter one discusses recipe formulation and strikes a balance between solid information and not getting too technical.

The broad Pale Ale category describes 57 entries--talk about there being many ways to skin a cat! This huge number gives the reader a chance to realize how many variations there are on the basic recipe of a hoppy, pale malt ale.

Some elements of the brewers' descriptions made me grimace, but also caused me to realize that questionable techniques can apparently still produce good beer. Take, for example, the practice of conditioning each bottle with "a scant 1/4 teaspoon of sugar." How you do that in a sterile fashion, I don't know.

Homebrew Favorites allows the reader to examine several somewhat wacky brews -- products of great imagination but of questionable purpose. What the heck, though, it's only beer. In case you ever wondered, Paul Fitzpatrick recommends 32 Vivarin caffeine pills for a 3-gallon batch of his Caffeine Ale. The adjacent page describes Old Hag's Pale Ale brewed in honor of Ray Taylor's wife who might, or might not, still be with him. The humor also extends into the technique descriptions. With Stormbrew Hootch we're informed that "the fermentation lock spewed beer four feet high."

What use is this book? For me, it was an imagination stimulant and plain fun reading. Unfortunately, if two brewers were locked in the same room with identical recipes, equipment and ingredients, the beers would still turn out different. In other words, great recipes don't make great beer. Great brewers do.

That aside, it is still intriguing to read how someone went about making a pyment mead. One hundred five pounds of DeChaunac grapes must have been his first obstacle.

Before brewing this weekend I couldn't resist referring to Homebrew Favorites, although I decided to forego the caffeine pills.