Radical Brewing

[Jovial_Monk]

Talking to an AG customer on Saturday got me to put aside the Farmhouse Ales book and dip into Radical Brewing.

Just reading the introductory chapters, was saddened to see a whole slew of errors, e.g. Priode of Ringwood is a NZ hop! No, Randy, Tasmania is NOT the South Island!

Anybody get through a lot of this book, does it get better?

Jovial Monk

 

[neonmeate]

yeah there's a HELL of a lot of errors in that book. all the metric conversions are done by a chimpanzee with downs syndrome and there's whole recipes under the wrong heading, etc. you should print out the two pages of errata on the radicalbrewing site.

still, i really like this book a lot cause he's got great ideas about combining flavours, great tips for mashing, and has a real "flavour as an end in itself" attitude which means he doesnt get bogged down in pages of meaningless statistics like ray daniels does. unfortunately he could have done with a little bit more attention to the numbers...
there's also a great section on spices and sugars. and some really wacky recipe ideas that ill probably never brew but make me think outside the square.
and i love the way he writes. that timeline with the stuff like "10000 BC. most popular food is still charred meat" is hilarious.

 

[RichLum]

I bought it at the end of last year and enjoyed reading it.
It is written in an easy to read style and the type of book you can pick up and just fkip through and read a section without having to have read everything up to then.

I'm fairly new to brewing so can't really comment on how accurate some things were or weren't but I thought it gave me a good understanding of different styles and the history of them.

The recipes were interesting but I didn't really buy it for the recipes as such.
If you want recipes there are plenty on the internet.
I think the ones in the book give you a good idea of what is involved in different beers.
You can still try and do them as is or use them as a basis to make up your own variatons.

I found the few other brewing books I've flipped through in the book store more dry and not as pleasurable to read. Focusing more on the recipes (which is good if you want a recipe book) but the type of thing you'd just flip through and read. You'd look up a specific recipe because you want to brew that type of beer.

Rich

 

[wee stu]

I've posted warnings about the errors in this book before.
The publisher acknowledges quite a few at this site - as neonmeate indicates.

For the lack of a proof reader, should you discard the entire book?
I think not. It is less dry than most others, is well presented and doesn't take itself too seriously.

I have used some recipes, making adjustments where I think relevant - and have thus far been satisfied.

JM - keep reading, how can you go past a book with chapter titles like Bent Beer, and Toot Your Fruit??

awrabest, stu

 

[Jovial_Monk]

Yeah the customer said it is a good book to read when your brewing is getting a little stale. He also mentioned the pages of errata: my bad, I should have downloaded those.

Still, all this goes to show: always calculate a recipe out first! Do NOT take them on trust java script:emoticon(':excl:')

JM

 

[BrissyBrew]

I emailed Randy about his metric conversions especially about the water to grist ratios. I have No! idea whatsoever how anybody could even get to the result he did, let alone look at the result and go yep that looks right, that aside, I love the book.

A

 

[ausdb]

I think its a great book, entertaining to read but also gerat for insight into tastes, flavours and interseting things you can brew with or add to your brews. Also the secftion on partigyling has really got me thinking about how I structure my brew days.

I had 2 kegs going last weekend for my partners 30th birthday, a keg of a koelschy styled 'bambi's best blond ale' and one of hefeweizen. The blond ale ran dry but there was still 1/2 of the hefe left so the masses enjoyed the beer.