This book is a one stop source of information for brewers. Written in as easy to understand text as possible for people just starting up brewing their own. Well worth the space on your bookshelf even if your a seasoned brewer.

Excellent synopsis of modern brewery operations. Well struck balance between a simplified review and a scientific approach. This book is a great "Step B" for those who want to go from a beginner level understanding of brewery operations to an intermeidiate level. decent coverage in addressing how Craft brewers approach the process versus larger breweries.

A Very Good Book. Its easy to read and easy to understand, contains enough technical information to make it usefull.

The handbook is a good read, if a little disjoint. Its packed with useful information to help brewers understand the process of brewing and the basics.

I only have a couple of issues with the book. First of all, the chapters are in a weird order. Mashing is one of the later chapters, when its one of the first things you need to know. The chapter on grain assumes you know about mashing. So the book is a bit awkward if you read the chapters in order.

My second issue is the disjoint information in the chapters. Did this book go through an editing process? It seems like this is just a brain dump from a brilliant brewer. I recognize that this isn't supposed to be entertaining, but transitional phrases never killed anyone.

Those points aside, I am very happy with this book, and I'm glad to have it in my collection of brewing literature.

This book is a great introduction to advanced brewing topics. Chapter one discusses the US Beer Market, from a craft brewing perspective, the arrangements between brewer-distributor-retailer-consumer; various state laws; taxes; production. A very interesting read. Further chapters discuss characteristics of malt, hops, adjuncts, and yeast, going over composition, how they affect brewing, compromises that can be made.

This is a fantastic book for understanding why beer works, and how to make it work better and more consistently. The only problem is that the book has no data more recent than about 1997, making some of it (particularly the US Beer Market chapter) obsolete, as it is now a decade old. Still a great and easy read, particularly for the introduction to advanced brewing techniques.

This book has a wealth of information in it, but it is sometimes hard to find a simple answer to common questions. For instance, today I wanted to determine the fermentability of a wort mashed at 150 degrees F instead of 155 and the subject was addressed, but didn't provide a clear definition of mash temperature vs. fermantability of wort. It did tell me, after reading almost a whole chapter that mashing at a lower temperature for a longer period of time would provide the highly fermentable wort that I wanted.

Good information but not very good as a reference book.

I requested this book for Christmas based on the reviews and that a LHBS said it was at a technical level for someone with a chemistry degree. The book also describes itself a a complete book. Neither of these statements are true. This book should be described as an overview of brewing and the brewing industry.
Homebrewers will get a lot more information from books by John Palmer, Ray Daniels, and Charlie Papazian if you are a beginner. Although I was disappointed to find Greg Noonan's book was not about lager, it provides a lot more detail than this book.

Possibly the biggest problem is that it is out of date and is in desperate need of updating with the latest hops, grains, extracts, yeasts, equipment techniques, and so on.

In my opinion, there are no brewing books that could be considered complete, and this is as far from complete as I feel it could be.

I am currently studying to take the GCBP certificate from the Institute of Brewing and Distilling(IBD), and this book is an awesome resource for studying difficult to comprehend sections. The book matches the syllabus very well.........As far as the homebrewer is concerned there are a few useful sections (Beer Spoilage Organisms, Wortboiling, and a few others) but this book is written to mainly cater to the professional (or aspiring to be professional) brewer. This to me is nice because most of the books I have found are written geared to the home (5-15 gal) brewer.

There is nothing that did not like about the this book. Easy to read, comprehensive and well-laided out.