I am getting started in all-grain brewing, and was looking for information regarding how to make each beer style. This book provides just that. It is a great resource and met my needs. I recommend this book for anyone wishing to brew all-grain beers and especially those wishing to enter competitions.

This book is an excellent, in-depth resource on the subject of homebrewing. It is an incredibly detailed and well-researched book, and doesn't shy away from simple math, as many others on the subject do. For those brewers that aren't as mathematically inclined, the equations presented are tabulated, so that they never HAVE to be used. Daniels carefully explains the factors that affect important brewing parameters, such as OG, IBUs, extraction efficiency and water quantities and chemistry, and describes how to quantify them for your particular system. Many may argue that this level of detail is not required. Why worry about the effect that already-dissolved iso-alpha acids have on the solubility of more? Well, as Daniels explains early in the book, his goal is to help you predict as precisely as possible the character of your finished beer, so you won't be disappointed. If you are thinking about brewing your first batch of beer, this book is NOT for you. However, if you have a couple of batches under you belt, and want to dabble in partial- or all-grain brewing, a copy of this book belongs on your shelf.

Ray Daniels' Designing Great Beers was my second book - after John Palmer's How To Brew. Though I have since read many more brewing books, this is by far my favorite. I read it in a week - and three more times in the following months. It is well written, well organized, and an overall joy to read. Being a bit of a beer history and styles buff, I very much enjoyed well-referenced sections on classic beer styles. One could build a complete library from the references in this book. Well done, Mr. Daniels.

Actually, I bought this book when it originally came out. The pages are in tattered now, but I can't live without it and all the notes placed in the margins. It's a superb guidebook for brewing.

I recently purchased a new copy for a friend, a fellow homebrewer. Why? Because, if you are a serious homebrewer, this is the best reference I know of. It takes a while to get the formulas cross-referenced and the graphical choices for what you are brewing in line, but the math works. I really think you will live by these rules for all your brewing. The second plus is the reference to award winning recipes in the last half of the book. They are all excellent brews.

If you want consistant results, hit target recipes, be on the marks, you have to buy this book. Extract the formulas and adjust the graphs for the grain bill available to you and you can get the perfect brew. If you experiment with brewing, this is how to know what you're doing. Daniel's book is the best gift you can give to a brewer outside of a hops farm in Moravia.

A Dark and Stormy Knight, Harmonics, Orphan Records

This book is best regarded as a recipe guide for the competitive brewer. While the styles presented are regrettably limited, the styles that are presented are wonderful. Each style section presents the ingredient incidence and range of ingredient percentages for both commercial examples as well as 2nd round National Homebrew Competition entries. There are very helpful comments on each style as well - mash approaches, comments on the different malt bills, etc. I have to stress the notion that this is a recipe guide - no actual recipes are presented. Rather, the focus is on the different approaches commercial brewers and homebrewers use to brew to style as well as how they are perceived in judging.

As an example, for Scottish Ale, you'll find comments on the use of smoked malts - right down to rauch vs. peat-smoked, roast malt vs crystal, residual sugar levels in different style sub-types, etc. What you won't find is a suggested malt and hops bill along with a mash schedule. Thus the audience is the competitive brewer looking to divine what his competitors are doing, how, why, and how it's being perceived in judging.

The shortcomings of the book are its limited style and sub-style coverage. I also found the upfront chapters (i.e., those preceeding the style sections) of limited value. Finally, I'd like a lot more on mash schedules. The information presented in the style sections is priceless, however. If you are interested in even a single style or two in the book - two primary styles interested me - it's well worth the price. To my knowledge, the comparative recipe information is found nowhere else.

I give it 5 stars for its unique information. I'm tempted to downgrade it for its limitations, particularly since there are some really egregious style omissions, but it's just too valuable in terms of what it does cover.

This book is best regarded as a recipe guide for the competitive brewer. While the styles presented are regrettably limited, the styles that are presented are wonderful. Each style section presents the ingredient incidence and range of ingredient percentages for both commercial examples as well as 2nd round NHC entries. There are very helpful comments on each style as well - mash approaches, comments on the different malt bills, etc. I have to stress the notion that this is a recipe guide - no actual recipes are presented. Rather, the focus is on the different approaches pros and amateurs use to brew to style as well as how they are perceived in judging.

As an example, for Scottish Ale, you'll find comments on the use of smoked malts - right down to rauch vs. peat-smoked, roast malt vs crystal, residual sugar levels in different style sub-types, etc. What you won't find is a suggested malt and hops bill along with a mash schedule. Thus the audience is the competitive brewer looking to divine what his competitors are doing, how, why, and how it's being perceived in judging.

The shortcomings of the book are its limited style and sub-style coverage. I also found the upfront chapters (i.e., those preceeding the style sections) of limited value. Finally, I'd like a lot more on mash schedules. The information presented in the style sections is priceless, however. If you are interested in even a single style or two in the book - two primary styles interested me - it's well worth the price. To my knowledge, the comparative recipe information is found nowhere else.

I give it 5 stars for its unique information. I'm tempted to downgrade it for its limitations, particularly since there are some really egregious style omissions, but it's just too valuable in terms of what it does cover.

This book is concise and broken into two major sections, the science and the styles.

The first part, dealing with the math & science of brewing, goes through all of the critical calculations for creating your own recipes, and provides and excellent reference for hitting a target gravity or a desired hop level.

The second part goes through the major styles of beer (focused on the styles as they are seen in competitive brewing), giving a history and summarizing each style as to major constituents (from a grain & hops perspective) as well as good target gravities, bitterness & characteristics.

This book has helped me to create many batches of excellent beer. At this point, I've forgone recipes not my own...

This is my number one reference book for designing my new batches of beer, but I'm looking for a better one. This is the book I pick up when I decide to brew a new batch. It has excellent technical info in the first half of the book (*however, I'd prefer an even more in depth discussion of mathematics, since I like to calculate these things for my beers - I end up struggling with converting the equations to ways that I can use - I wish there were more equations and a more complicated discussion of mathematical things such as calculating hop utilization, controlling mash techniques for sugar profiles, fermentation temperature control, and brew chemistry). The second half has a short, well written history and background for each of beer discussed, and compares many recipes within a given style, providing the reader an adequite understanding of the style so that you can design one for yourself. Useful tables and graphs are available for every type of beer discussed, such as the percentage of beers that used a particular type of grain, and the range of % malt bill for each grain. **I wish the 2nd half of the book would have a seperate section for each of the 20-something beer style categories. I highly recommend this book. I wish he would design a 2nd volume that would delve a little deeper, though.

gives a great base to create your own recipes based on the style you are looking for. should be easy to adjust your second and third batches if need be

It is a very technical book with lots of graphs and charts. If I ever have any technical homebrew questions, I will pull out this book. I might need to go back to college and get a masters degree to understand it, but I do now own it. Until I need it, it will just collect dust as part of my homebrew book collection.

This is a really great book overall that gets down and dirty into tons of info on specific styles. The beginning goes over the basic ingredients and techniques, but it's the style chapters that really shine. Daniels has done a ton of research and complied a ton of data to break down exactly what goes into different styles of beer and gives a fantastic building block for designing your own version of the style.
I dock one star for what is missing. There are no mentions at all of the fantastic beers of Belgium, or the American "hybrid" styles like cream ale or amber ale. I love his methodical style of breaking down the beers, and I would really like to see this applied to these styles, especially the Belgians! Also there are a lot of simple grammar errors that any copy editor should have caught that get a bit distracting. I'd say time for a second edition with more beer styles!

When I first got this book I didn't like it much. Why would I need all of this "data" when my BeerSmith program does all of the calculations for me? But as you perfect your style and technique--you find that you want to know "why" as much as "how". This book is GREAT for that. It is almost compulsively detailed and falls somewhere between a casual brewers how-to book and a full blown textbook of beer. Especially cool are the comparisons of the evolution of different styles; the grain bill comparisons for contest winning examples of styles; and the various graphs and charts which illustrate many of the intricacies of bringing beer within your BJCP guidelines.

I would say that this book is nearly indispensible for the intermediate homebrewer. Once you have figured out how to keep your equipment clean and the basics of brewing, this book is the next logical step. It does not replace a good brewing software program (like ProMash or BeerSmith) but it does let you know what is going on "behind the scenes" in those programs (how is it calculating my lovibond? how is it getting an ABV? why is that a style paramater?).

Get. This. Book.

Admittedly, I've not finished reading this yet. The book is broken out into two sections: The first gives a rather thorough and dense description of each ingredient and its effect on the final product: beer. The second is a recipe section of sorts, that outlines many popular beer styles and how to make a representative of the style.

I got into homebrewing to be creative, and make some "great beers". Then I found out about all of these... numbers. If you're looking for a book to read in bed, the first half will certainly assist in slumber. All of these... formulas, numbers, and science. It's dizzying, and I want to skip it altogether, but I'm sure there's great information in here.

I bought this book to find out what hops go well together, what hops to use in each style, and other fill-in-the-blanks kind of information that new homebrewers don't quite have their head around. I've skimmed the second section, which looks more to what I'm looking for.

The book is similar to "how to brew like a monk" in it's mission to describe the styles and to give you an idea of how to create that style while stopping short of providing any specific recipes. I think that's the best part about this book. Daniels actually teaches you something about brewing a particular style and why you should add each ingredient instead of what you should add. That knowledge gives you the freedom to design your own brew that will stay within the intended style while giving you the chance to be creative. It's a great book and one that i'll be referring to many times as I attempt to create my own signature beers.

The book is similar to "how to brew like a monk" in it's mission to describe the styles and to give you an idea of how to create that style while stopping short of providing any specific recipes. I think that's the best part about this book. Daniels actually teaches you something about brewing a particular style and why you should add each ingredient instead of what you should add. That knowledge gives you the freedom to design your own brew that will stay within the intended style while giving you the chance to be creative. It's a great book and one that i'll be referring to many times as I attempt to create my own signature beers.

This book is great! This book is for anyone who has learned the brewing basics and take their skills to the next level.

This book is more valuable than all the other brewing books I've either bought or borrowed combined. It's the new companion to my trusty Brewmaster's Bible, and so far the only book on recipe formulation I need. It's increased my knowledge of brewing tenfold.

Buy it!

This book contains great technical knowledge on how to brew various styles of beer, however for the casual brewer, it may be a little too technical. The title tells all. If you're into the nitty gritty of brewing various styles of beer, this is a good book for you.

Excellent book for taking your homebrewing skills to the next level. This book is definitely not for beginners and is mainly geared toward All Grain brewers, although it does cover extract w/grains. Rather than just giving you specific recipes, it teaches you how to formulate and tweak your own recipes for common styles. Definitely recommended reading if you want to transition from mainly brewing from recipes to creating your own recipes.

Truly great book, I taught I knew all about craft-beer-making, but in this book I've found many useful tips & tricks for adanced homebrewers.
But - this book is not for beginers.

Daniels' book is a must-have for the intermediate brewer. Invariably newcomers to brewing start off with extract kits, which can produce decent beer and have the virtue of simplicity. However, after a few batches, the now-intermediate brewer typically wants more control over the result, which leads to forays into recipe formulation. Daniels provides a wealth of information that can help with that. This book does not provide recipes, but it does provide great information about the fundamentals that you can use to formulate your own recipes. I wouldn't want to be without this book.

After trying to come up with my own recipes and having to guess at hop varieties, specialty grains etc. I wanted a good resource for outlining what characterizes a certain style. "Designing Great Beers" is just that. Ray Daniels analyzes winning brews over many years and provides great little tables about typical grain and hop bills. If you design your own recipes, this is a MUST HAVE!!!

This is a great book. Ray breaks the book into 2 sections: generic design and then history/style/specifics for major styles. I found myself switching from back to front as I was recently brewing a Bock. The history of the style really helps to understand beers especially in a category like Bock which has many variations.

The book doesn't give you specific recipes. It is designed to help you tweak existing recipes or in the creation of your own recipes.

My conundrum while reading this book.....the more I brew and the more books I keep finding and reading, the less I know about beer!

Cheers!

Very scientific stuff. This is for the serious brewer. The information is a little over my head. Maybe in a few years of brewing this book will be needed but this is not for the beginner.

Very scientific stuff. This is for the serious brewer. The information is a little over my head. Maybe in a few years of brewing this book will be needed but this is not for the beginner.

I enjoyed reading the book, and found a wealth of information that will heop me brew better beers. The Style guidelines while a little out of date (pre 2004 Guidline update), were very interesting, both in the history of the beer and the break down of the ingredients used in the Comercial and 2nd Round NHC recipes. I would highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to enter competitions and others who would like to brew beer to the classic styles.

This book does not contain recipes. However, it is a must in any intermediate homebrewing library. It takes a lot of guesswork out of recipe formulation. Types and proportions of ingredients used in winning recipes are listed in an attempt to nudge homebrewers in the right direction. I would suggest that Designing Great Beers is used in conjunction with brewing software. My only complaint is that it does not cover any styles from Belgium.

This book does not contain recipes. However, it is a must in any intermediate homebrewing library. It takes a lot of guesswork out of recipe formulation. Types and proportions of ingredients used in winning recipes are listed in an attempt to nudge homebrewers in the right direction. I would suggest that Designing Great Beers is used in conjunction with brewing software. My only complaint is that it does not cover any styles from Belgium.

Not having brewed for an incredibly long time, I can say that some of the language is over my head, but that's just part of getting into the spirit of brewing. This book really made some things more clear. If you want the in-depth study of every type of beer and what goes into making it, this is the right book.

I was very pleased with my purchase. It has given me a lot to think about when planning to brew different styles of beers. It provided me good info on what adaptations can be made to a beer while still remaining within the style guidelines. Good for anyone wanting to create their own recipes or wanting to know what to expect from their kit ingredients. Applicable for all-grain, extract, or partial mash brewers.

The typical analysis of each style is presented in a three entry table which makes impossible to formulate a basic style recipe from the table (grain type, proportion and incidence over a number of recipes).

Is hard to figure out a basic recipe from the style discussion and tables. Therefore,the author added half page at the end of each chapter telling you how to brew each particular style.

This book took me from following recipes (and still doing a lot of guesswork), to having everything nailed down ahead of time. Ever follow Papazian's recipes and wonder how much water you need for sparging? Ever thought about using distilled water? What about getting the color or body of a beer just right? How about substituting one hop for another. This book answers those questions by going over the relevant science in a very clear manner, and gives you what you need to get predictable results: the math!

If you're math-phobic, no worries. None of the included formulas are very complex, and Daniels will often give you an easy rule-of-thumb alongside the more technical explanation.

The best part about this book-- I now regularly design my own beers. I have an idea, I write down the qualities I want, and then I calculate how to brew it. I'm not always right, but that's half the fun. And my friends think my pumpkin beer is the best they've ever had (to the point where they now buy the ingredients for me).

If you brew all-grain, you MUST read this book.

Thanks, Ray, for a great book. When you're done with this one, move on to New Brewing Lager Beer by Noonan.

After all of the great reviews, I really wanted to like this book. Unfortunately it leaves me feeling a bit like something is missing. There's a lot of information based on statistics and history of classic beer styles, but no real examples. Several example recipes for each style with comparisons would have been very helpful.

Overall I think the author had good intentions - I just don't feel very confident that I could formulate a good recipe on my own using only the information in this book.

This is an excellent resource if you are geeky about making beer or looking for some great ways of formulating your beer. The math is broken down simply and is easy to follow.

If you are interested at all in brewing to style you need this book. Even if you aren't and you're interested in learning about different beer styles you NEED this book. The information and statistics are a bit dated, but the underlying theories and methods for balancing a beer recipe are dead on.

I formulate nearly every recipe I brew from scratch. I never formulate a new recipe without this dog-eared and beaten up book at my side.

If you ever intend to formulate your own beers instead of following recipes you must have this book. It's not for the beginning brewer however-it's very technical.

The volume answers the questions- where do you buy great beer and
what are the best beers? It is formulated for beer tasters and
enthusiasts everywhere. Restaurant owners, bar owners,
professional cooks and fine chefs will appreciate the presentation. It is easy to read and reasonably priced.
The information content is not easy to obtain so that the book
has a considerable value for the general public.

The authors describe the important characteristics of beer;
namely, appearance, aroma, taste and overall holistic impression.
Beer is best stored from 45 degrees to 60 degrees. There are
a variety of brews; such as calcium sulfate , magnesium
sulfate and calcium carbonate . Popular contents are yeast, gelatin,Irish Moss and the beer head. The book lists some popular acquisition shops and styles.

This book is excellent for beer drinkers and tasters alike.
The volume answers the questions- where do you buy great beer and
what are the best beers? It is formulated for beer tasters and
enthusiasts everywhere. Restaurant owners, bar owners,
professional cooks and fine chefs will appreciate the presentation. It is easy to read and reasonably priced.
The information content is not easy to obtain so that the book
has a considerable value for the general public.

The authors describe the important characteristics of beer;
namely, appearance, aroma, taste and overall holistic impression.
Beer is best stored from 45 degrees to 60 degrees. There are
a variety of brews; such as calcium sulfate CaS04, magnesium
sulfate Mg. SO4, and calcium carbonate CaCO3. Popular contents are yeast, gelatin,Irish Moss and the beer head. The book lists some popular acquisition shops and styles.

This book is excellent for beer drinkers and tasters alike.
The authors describe the important characteristics of beer;
namely, appearance, aroma, taste and overall holistic impression.
Beer is best stored from 45 degrees to 60 degrees. There are
a variety of brews; such as calcium sulfate CaS04, magnesium
sulfate Mg. SO4, and calcium carbonate CaCO3. Popular contents are yeast, gelatin,Irish Moss and the beer head. The book lists some popular acquisition shops and styles. The volume is for food
enthusiasts and beer drinkers everywhere. It is modestly priced.

The book has alot of good info but relates a little to much to the NHC brewing comp so you are limited to alot of that info. Some actual recipes or eg would have been good and some info on belgien brewing would have been good.

First, it should be noted that this is not a beginner homebrew book. It doesn't discuss how to brew, if you want that you'll need something else.

However, if you've made several batches of beer and want to know how to best design your own recipes for classic styles, this is the book for you. The book starts with a great deal of information on malts, grains, extracts, water, mash chemistry, yeast, hop bittering, hop flavor, and hop aroma. Pretty standard to many beer books.

I found the second part of this book to be the most useful. For each classic style, Daniels gives a brief history and then discusses how to brew such beer. He analyzes recipe data from commercial brewers as well as 2nd round NHC winners and compiles the data into a statistical model for common grain and hop bills. Information on preferred yeast qualities, water chemistry, mashing and fermentation proceedures are also discussed. From the data provided and his suggestions, you can begin to formulate your own recipes for these classic styles.

The first part of this book breaks down the elements that make up a beer - water, malt, hops, and yeast - and gives insight into how each contribute to the flavors and characteristics of the beer. It also looks at color and how it is measured and formulated. It's not light reading, and a background in brewing is pretty much required.

The second part of the book is devoted to beer styles - their histories and the elements that make them what they are.

This book is very helpful in giving technical advice on how to formulate recipes that fit into the traditional beer styles. It also gives a peek into the rich history that has brought us where we are in the world of beer.

This book is exactly what I was looking for in a brewing title. It includes a full examination of beer ingredients and utilization of those ingredients. Intermediate science and mathematics equations allow you to fully calculate the important aspects of your homebrewing experiences. The second half of the book also includes an in-depth tour of all of the major beer styles and how they are constructed based upon commercial and craftbrew examples. Highly recommended book.

A fine book with the inexcusable omission of the Belgian styles. They receive absolutely no coverage. But if you're an experienced brewer who wants to brew to the other target styles, this book is great.

This is an excellent book for advanced brewers to learn recipe formulation and as a reference. The first half of the book has step-by-step instructions on how to create beer formulations. The instructions are concise, clear and written in a way that any experienced brewer should be able to understand. The book was written with the assumption that the reader has a comprehension of and experience in standard brewing methods.

The second half of the book gives an overview of the major beer styles, the common ingredients used in those styles. The chapters also provide information on how frequently those ingredients are used by second round National Homebrew Competition qualifiers and commercial brewers. This section is of most use as a quick reference to those brewers attempting to create their own interpretation of a particular style.

After NEW BREWING LAGER BEER, this has been the most helpful book to get my beer styles just right. It contains hordes of information usually available only in professional works, and doesn't over complicate it. I love this book and always refer to it before I start a new brew. It is the only accurate book that discusses the amount of water retained in your grain, and allows you to calculate the pre brew water quantity more accurately. A must for you home brew library.

This book is a fantastic help for a homebrewer who wants to create his own recipes. It isn't going to tell you how to clone Newcastle or Sam Adams, but it helps you create your own unique recipe within the framework of a classic beer style, whether a Northern English Brown Ale, an Oktoberfestbier or Sweet Stout. The detail is astounding, ranging from historical references, commercial and homebrewed examples. With a wealth of well-presented information, the two chapters on hops I've reread several times, along with many of my favorite style chapters. Practical advise is given for creating a successful recipe, drawing on the author's own experiences in National Homebrew Competition. One example I think of is from the Brown Ale chapter: he gives the suggestion of choosing just a couple specialty malts to compliment your chosen yeast, rather than the often-employed little-bit-of-everything approach to the malt bill. This book could be valuable to someone who's made a handful of extract brews and wants to create something within a style framework; likewise, it would be of value to someone who's been brewing several years. I'm still doing extract brewing, so I know I'll be going back over a lot of the material pertaining to mashing someday. Not to mention some of the style chapters that I don't have the ability to do yet, like Pilsner or Kolsch. By the way, the author himself recommends Noonan's Scotch Ale (Classic Beer Style Series: 8), and I would too.

This book does not contain recipes. It explains the guidelines for brewing different styles of beer. For every style it surveys the ingredients used in brews that passed to the second round of the AHA competition. This book is not an easy reading, yet it's not for-geeks-only. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to get away from the beaten path. Even those who want to stick to published recipes will learn a lot in terms of what is worth pursuing and what is not.

Any serious homebrewer, or anyone aspiring to become one, should read this book, and then use it as a reference tool.

It provides an introductory section, which is really a thorough course, in brewing technique, covering malts, water, color, hops and yeast. It is heavy in formulas and theory, but presented in an understandable manner (if you have already brewed).

Then it moves on to a section for each of the classical beer styles, with detailed information on each, and I was pleased with the coverage given to the traditional German ales, my favorite subject. But it is similarly thorough with respect to British ales and pilsners. Unlike other recent books, it does not put emphasis on the Belgian fad.

Since I brew mainly to please myself and not to win competitions, I am not convinced that the statistics on how the NHC runners-up brewed is significant (and there is a lot of it). It may indicate if these brewers hit a style right - but only as tasted and interpreted by the judges. Although it may be useful to take some inspiration and knowledge from these recipes, one should not be a slave to the taste (or lack of) of others or strict interpretations of style. My only other gripe is that some tables use different methods of measurements for the same thing, making it hard to compare values.

The many tables and formulas are mindboggling. Luckily you can buy software that will translate and calculate it all for you (ProMash comes to mind) - but the book is extrememly useful for your understanding of how values are calculated - in short how the beer might turn out.

After NEW BREWING LAGER BEER, this has been the most helpful book to get my beer styles just right. It contains hordes of information usually available only in professional works, and doesn't over complicate it. I love this book and always refer to it before I start a new brew. It is the only accurate book that discusses the amount of water retained in your grain, and allows you to calculate the pre brew water quantity more accurately. A must for you home brew library.