Extreme Brewing: An Enthusiast's Guide to Brewing Craft Beer at Home,   ISBN:9781592532933

Customer Rating: 

The book is written for beginners. I purchased this book hoping it was written for experienced homebrewers. All the recipes in the book are extract recipes. In general, had I known what I now know about this book, I would not have bought it. I would get radical brewing instead. I do like DFH brews, and respect Sam for what he has done to get his brewery running, I just don't think this book is worth it.

Customer Rating: 

First off I will qualify myself as a librarian and avid home brewer. Though I love brewing at home, I have not as yet made the jump to "all grain" brewing. What I was looking for was a book that had some more advanced recipes aimed at the "weekend warrior" home brewing types that still use malt extract in their beers. This book fit the bill perfectly! With contributions from some of the biggest and most respected names in the craft brewing world, this book is both instructional as well as inspirational. Not everyone pops out of the womb as a superstar brewer, and I think Mr. Calagione should be commended for writing a book aimed at the beginner and intermediate home brewers. I found this a well written, attractive, and informative read. Highly recommended!

Customer Rating: 

This isn't a bad book. Written as it is by the head of a brewery known for its over-the-top beers, this is definitely a good book to buy on the subject. The recipes are mostly fairly cool, and there's a lot of good tips for brewing in general and brewing the big beers in particular. But there's two things that drag this down.

First, there's no coverage of high-gravity grain brewing. Yes, it's definitely easier to do the high-gravity brews from extract, and extract brewing doesn't necessarily imply slapdash brewing by any stretch of the imagination. But during the last big wave of homebrewing popularity of the late 90s and early 2000s, the big beer styles like Imperial Pilsners and Double IPAs were still in the experimental stages, and the standard texts like Papazian and Miller only covered the very basics, for things like barleywines and bocks. The author could have made a much greater effort to cover the details, but chose to stick with the basic, homebrewing 101 stuff. Not bad for someone who just wants to slam out a clone of their favorite high-gravity brew, but not really what an advanced brewer looking for a challenge is looking for.

The other concerns the food section. While it's conscientiously arranged and covers its territory quite competently (especially as regards cheese selections), the recipes are sort of mezza-mezza. The author would have benefited from more input from chefs and foodies in constructing that section.

At the end of the day, I'm not even sure what star rating to give this book. It's a decent and quick read, but it's fundamentally a book of shortcuts. With proper care and attention to technique, if that's your bag, go for it. But you may want to move on to another book that deals with all-grain fundamentals, in which case, do everything you can to avoid buying this book at full price.

Customer Rating: 

Santa brought me Sam Calagione's "Extreme Brewing" for Christmas. As a veteran homebrewer and beer enthusiast, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I do not believe it will replace cornerstone texts like "The Joy of Homebrewing", "How to Brew", or "Designing Great Beer" as a reference or instructional guide. It is, nonetheless, an extremely interesting and informative book, a tasty sidedish to the other books' meat and potatoes. "Extreme Brewing" provides a useful, if somewhat abbreviated, "how to" description of the homebrewing process. The rest of the book focuses on ingredients, recipes, and brewing techniques. As other reviewers have mentioned, the recipes presented in the book are written for extract brewing. Unlike other reviewers, however, I do not believe this relegates the book to the "novice brewer" category. Each recipe includes a description of the techniques used to produce the beer, and the "extreme ingredients" used to give the beer its special qualities. I found several of the techniques (e.g., continual hopping, multiple primary fermentations, etc.) very interesting. I also appreciated the discussion of "extreme ingredients" (what they are, how to use them, how much to use, etc.). The use of these techniques and ingredients is far from basic. I count several of the Dogfish Head Brewery offerings among my favorite beers (even though I have to drive to the next state to get them). Now I have new insights into how they achieve some of their results. I do not think I could have simply figured it out on my own. Finally, the book is well made and looks good, with glossy pages and high quality photos. It is a beer book you would not be embarrassed to have out on your coffee table. I recommend it.

Customer Rating: 

This book is a nice picture book of brewing techniques and not a lot more. It is part basic equipment and instruction manual, and part recipe book. It is well done for what it is, but can be passed by if you are already doing more than beginning extract brewing and certainly if you are already into all-grain brewing. The "Extreme" in the title should be regarded as from the extract brewer's perspective (i.e., all grain is more involved than extract), or perhaps it's a hyperbolic reference to some of the more unusual ingredients mentioned in some of the recipes.