Yankee Brew News Archive

Book Review: Dave Miller's Homebrewing Guide

Originally Published: 04/96

By: Brett Peruzzi

Book Review: Dave Miller's Homebrewing Guide

Storey Publishing, Pownal, Vermont

$14.95, 358 pages

Vermont-based Storey Publishing has produced another winner with Dave Miller's Homebrewing Guide. Second only to perhaps Brewers Publications of Colorado in the number of beer and brewing-related books it has published, Storey has been a major contributor to the growing body of quality beer books available in the United States.

Miller is a familiar figure to anyone who has been around homebrewing for a while. 1981 AHA Homebrewer of the Year, currently working as a commercial brewer, he is the author of several other brewing books, including 1988's seminal The Complete Handbook of Home Brewing, also published by Storey. I give my dog-eared, annotated, mash-stained copy of this book a good deal of the credit for my own brewing progress, in making the transition from OK homebrew to award-winning beers.

Dave Miller's Homebrewing Guide picks up where The Complete Handbook left off, incorporating the amazing number of improvements in both homebrewing supplies and equipment, as well as techniques, that have occurred between 1988 and 1995.

As always, Miller's writing style has the precision, clarity and detail of the technician he clearly is, but he avoids the textbook dryness of other detailed brewing texts. With a total of 38 chapters, three of which are dedicated to clarification and filtration and two to draft system design and operation, this is as comprehensive a handbook as even an advanced homebrewer could want.

But Miller includes enough introductory information to initiate the new homebrewer into the world of wort, with subsequent chapters that build the brewer's body of knowledge. Miller provides a good mix of conceptual and procedural information, and illustrations, to make the book easy to understand and follow. In addition to providing a liberal amount of recipes and an explanation of beer styles, Miller also provides a guidelines for recipe formulation.

Whether you're a beginning brewer anxious to beef up your skills and knowledge, or a terminal beer geek with a head full of formulas and a cellar full of gadgets, this book should make you happy. For serious homebrewers, Dave Miller's Homebrewing Guide will no doubt become a classic reference.