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On this matter I have a few, I have well over 30 books on the subject and I would be the first to say that this is too many. One or two good books will have more than enough information. If you brew kits the instructions are included so no book needed. Country wine making demands a good book or web site and hopefully one day this web site will mean you only need to buy a book because you want one and not because it is essential. If I lost all my books and was allowed to buy just a few then I think this would be a tough choice. Some of the books I most like are hard to get like “Wine Making in Style” and “Prize-Winning Recipes for Homemade Wines”. “First Steps In Wine Making” is still available and has been around for donkey's years, I and others rate this book as pretty good. To a degree all my homebrew books show their age. I do not mean the condition I mean home brewing has moved on. It's got much better but the contents of some books are still back in the 70's when people had different tastes and wanted different things from home brewing. I tend to find that the books either go fully with additives or try to do things too natural e.g. not putting in yeast. I guess we all have different styles but few books reflect this. They tend to do things one way the other. Books prior to the 70’s tended to have a natural but risky method of wine making, 70’s style books tend to be more focused on additives and on styles of wine that have long since been abandoned. The 80’s & 90’s were not bad.
When it comes to beer making I quite rave about "The Complete Joy of HomeBrewing" I love to look through it and yes it goes into it in more detail than I will ever need but it is presented well. I reckon Dave Lines books on brewing have got to be an all time favourites.
I was just playing around on the site with links to Amazon for visitors that needed more information than is here on the site. I set up a self optimizing Amazon link on the Cider page. Amazon try to work out what the visitors will be interested in and in the link they show the top three item of interest. Sometime it’s quite good and sometimes its not e.g. they show apple computer products. The most common books people buy from the cider link is making cider on a small scale. A book I do not have. Maybe a Christmas present request to Heather.
Brew Books - The Complete Joy of HomeBrewing
Value for money ****
Recipes ****
Guide to home beer brewing *****
Overall *****
Want to know more about beer brewing beer in an easy to read yet in depth way? Then my favourite book is The Complete Joy of Homebrewing it manages to go into good detail and still keeps it easy to read at the same time. If you want a copy then I have included a link to amazon.co.uk so you can read the current reviews. At time of writing this book got the maximum rating of 5 stars.
Time
has not been kind to the contents of this book. Dave line's excellent book
“Making beers like those you buy” has stood well to the test of
time but not so this book. The reason is the wine drunk in the 70s in the
The book is most bizarre it matches the recipes to wines that you never here much of these days. It has a bizarre range of diverse recipes that all tend to taste like a Hock. How can this be? Why not appreciate damson wine as damson wine and apple wine as apple wine. If you want Hock the go buy some. Well that my view.
Value for money **
Recipes **
Guide to home wine making **
Overall **
So
why, when I rate it as poor have, I got two copies? Just my luck I bought one
copy new and I bought a job lot of book from eBay and a copy was sneaked in.
Should have asked the seller to bin it and save me a bit on postage.
St
Michael Home Made WINES & BEERS by Ben Turner
Nice introduction lots of photos. It’s out of print but sometime you see this book in the charity shops. Brew books are less prevalent in charity shops.
Value for money OUT OF PRINT
Recipes ****
Overall
****
Pete’s
Book Reviews
* = Don’t
bother, ** Not very
good, ***O.
K., **** Very
Good, *****Excellent
NOTE:- All these recipe books cater for
“extract” brewers & “mashers”.
Value for money ****
Recipes ****
Guide to home brewing ***
Overall ****
A glossy magazine rather than a book, freely
available in the U. S. but the only retailer I could find in the U. K. was www.beertech.co.uk , selling at £5.49
inc. delivery (limited stock), this worked out at less than 4p for each tried
& tested recipe, excellent value for money. About ¾ of the recipes are for
American brews with
Value for money *****
Recipes *****
Guide to home brewing ****
Overall ****
To me, Dave Line is the C. J. J. Berry of home
brewing. My Recipes & Overall ratings of this book have been
downgraded as it is a bit dated, some of the beer styles he tries to emulate
(over 100 in the original book) are no longer available, the ingredients
available have altered over the years and there are a few mistakes but Dave, an
entertaining writer, was a pioneer this field and did a great job!
Brewing Beers Like Those You Buy by Dave Line (Amateur Winemaker; Revised 1995).
Value for money *****
Recipes *****
Guide to home brewing ****
Overall ****
My old, ex-charity shop book is literally
falling apart & so I invested in this “new” edition which has
been up-dated & revised somewhat by Roy Ekins, another well respected beer
& wine author. The main changes are replacing invert sugar & glucose
chips by a similar amount of brewing sugar & some of the errors have been
corrected although I’m still not happy with the Arkell’s Brown Jack
recipe. Unfortunately the amounts of hops used have not been revised, some of
Dave’s original figures were sometimes a little erratic but the alpha
acids of hops change from year to year. Hallertau hops had around 4 or 5% alpha
acid when Dave wrote his book, to-day the figure is nearer 2! I still consider
this to be a very good book.
Brew Your Own Real Ale At Home by Graham Wheeler & Roger Protz (CAMRA Books).
Value for money *****
Recipes *****
Guide to home brewing *****
Overall *****
One of the best home brewing books available, very
well researched and written with over100 named beers to emulate. This book
inspired me to produce my own beer design calculator. Graham’s books
always quote the hops alpha acids so the brewer can adjust the quantities to
compensate for any changes.
Other, equally rated books of theirs include Brew
Classic European Beers At Home & Brew Your
Own British Real Ale At Home.
Great Beer Guide by Michael Jackson (Dorling
Kindersley).
Value for money *****
Recipes 0
Guide to home brewing 0
Overall ****
Pictures of the bottles & glasses, complete with descriptions, of Michael’s 500
favourite beers in the world. The pictures alone will make you drool. A fabulous book, the pride of my bookshelf. Available at most Public Libraries now.
Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion.
Value for money ****
Recipes *
Guide to home brewing **
Overall ****
A book absolutely full of information &
history associated with all types of beers. Whilst not aimed at the home
brewer, there are quite a few useful snippets of useable information such as
Highgate Mild has an O. G. of 1035.5, is 3.2% ABV, made from 6 different
malts& brewing sugars (mainly pale, crystal & black) giving a colour
of 63EBC & Goldings are used with no late or dry hops. Truly a very good
beer companion.
Real Ale For The
Home Brewer by Marc Ollosen.
Value for money ****
Recipes ****
Guide to home brewing ****
Overall ****
Some very good recipes.
WINE
Award Wining Wines by Bill Smith (Nexus Special Interests)
Value for money *****
Recipes *****
Guide to home wine making *****
Overall ****
The very big problem with this book is the very small print which makes it very difficult for me to read, hence the churlishly lower Overall rating. A well written book only contains about (excellent) 30 recipes of varying difficulty & styles, but it does cover many aspects of wine making, giving lots of advice on recipe design & how to improve wine quality.
Common-Sense
Wine-Making by Anne Parrack (Amateur Winemaker).
Recipes ****
Guide to home wine making *****
A useful, well researched little book
containing some good recipes & advice although possibly a little dated.
Value for money *****
Recipes ***
Guide to home wine making ****
Overall ****
Many people, including myself, will always
remember the great contribution to home wine making and, to a lesser degree
home brewing made by Cyril Berry, he virtually pioneered home winemaking in the
U. K. This book, first published in January 1960, is still selling strong,
after over 46 years! To-day some of the recipes may seem a bit bizarre, Birch
Sap, Bramble Tip & Oak Leaf wines for example and I think some (most) use
too much sugar, also I do not normally believe in adding tannin to white wines.
But, having said that, the millions of people who, like me have bought this
book, think he must have got most of it right. Overall a very well written
& comprehensive book but, unsurprisingly, a little dated.
Home Made Wine by Judith Erwin.
Value for money *****
Recipes *****
Guide to home wine making *****
Overall ****
A slightly expensive but beautifully presented
book, full of superb photos and good recipes.
Value for money OUT OF PRINT but widely
available.
Recipes ****
Guide to home wine making *****
Very easy to read with its nice & simple layout & clear photographs, the recipes aren’t too bad either.
A
slightly expensive but beautifully presented book, full of superb photos and
good recipes.
Value for money N/A
Recipes N/A
Guide to home wine making N/A
Overall N/A
This book is intended for a specialist American market and thus cannot be rated using the normal criteria.
Value for money 7th IMPRESSION OUT
OF PRINT but readily available via the internet.
Recipes **
Guide to home wine making **
Overall **
As
Stefhan says in his review, time has not been kind to this book. The very first
recipe calls for (Allinson’s) bread yeast! Confusingly,
some recipes are for 4.5 litres, others for 20, personally I think it is easier
to scale a recipe up rather than down, also I personally know that it is much
easier to shift 4.5 litres of rubbish than 20! (That is my basic home-brew
philosophy as all home
brewers/winemakers can easily produce rubbish, sometimes at some expense.)
Must by Gerry Fowles.
Value for money *****
Recipes See Below
Guide to home wine making ****
Overall ****
A wine maker’s handbook that contains no recipes & is made up from articles in an old quarterly magazine “Wine For All Seasons”. Because of its roots, the book can be hard to follow, complex in content and the information incomplete. Despite these comments I find it essential when designing wine recipes.
Value for money 18th IMPRESSION OUT OF PRINT but readily
available via the internet.
Recipes **
Guide to home wine making ***
Overall ***
How
disappointed I was with this book after seeing other well-known authors paying
homage to it. It is basically quite a big (425 pages) technical book that has
not aged too well as it uses Imperial measures &, confusingly, some recipes
are for 1 gall, others for 5 galls with the latter sometimes calling for over
40lbs of fruit! (See “Making Wines Like Those You Buy” comments.)
The Art of Making Wine and Liqueurs by Betty Sampson
Recipes ****
Guide to home wine making ****
Overall ****
A slightly expensive book that contains a good selection of over 100 recipes.
The Encyclopaedia of Home Winemaking by Pierre Drapeau & André Vanasse.
Value for money N/A
Recipes N/A
Guide to home wine making N/A
Overall N/A
This book, translated from French, is intended for a specialist Canadian/American market and thus cannot be rated using the normal criteria.
The Gervin Recipe Book by Gerry Fowles.
Value for money *****
Recipes *****
Guide to home wine making *****
Overall *****
A little booklet with 36 recipes ranging from the very easy to the very complex. Useful notes accompany the recipes.
*Winemaking in Style by Gerry Fowles.
Value for money *****
Recipes *****
Guide to home wine making *****
Overall *****
Basically a combination of Gerry’s “Must” plus “Winemaking in Style” plus
lots more. It probably contains more information than the average home
wine-maker would ever need. There are about 80 recipes ranging from the very
simple to the very complex, each one has a good write up with expected
parameters (alcohol, acidity etc.).
Gerry has written several other
very good wine books.
BEER & WINE
Boots Book Of Home Wine & Beers Making by Ben Turner.
Value for money OUT OF PRINT but
readily available via the internet.
Recipes ****
Guide to home brewing & wine making ****
Unfortunately the wine recipes all seem to contain 250g of grape concentrate, which I find a little irritating & limiting. This limitation is mitigated somewhat by the book being well written & illustrated, with a lot of information & good recipes.
St Michael Home Made Wines & Beers by Ben Turner (First published in 1979).
Value for money OUT OF PRINT but
readily available via the internet.
Recipes ****
Guide to home brewing & wine making ****
This is probably the same book reviewed above by Stefhan; I too found it to be well illustrated, with some good recipes and information it has dated very well.
St Michael Home
Made Wines & Beers by Ben Turner (First published in 1982)
Value for money OUT OF PRINT but
readily available via the internet.
Recipes *****
Guide to home brewing & wine making *****
This is another version of the above book, and what a difference! Most of the photographs/illustrations have been replaced by wonderful works of art & botanical paintings from various Museums, Galleries, private collections etc. The recipes have now been allotted to the 12 months of the year and the text is not as beginner biased, although they should still find it suitable for them.
Wine and Beer
Makers Year by
Roy Ekins.
Guide to home brewing & wine making ***
Not a bad book but I thought it a little dated.
1000 Wine & Beer Making Hints and Recipes by Ben Turner (St. Michael).
Value for money OUT OF PRINT & not readily
available.
Recipes ****
Guide to home brewing & wine making *****
There are only 120 recipes or so in this book
of over 380 pages but they include beers, wines, ciders, meads, cordials & VINEGARS!
Most of the book is dedicated to techniques with some very useful information
included. It is remarkably up to date despite being over 20 years old. A good
book for beginners & intermediate readers.
* Thanks to Stefhan’s
bulk-buying of books, he was able to pass these on to me. This is the
embodiment of our mutual hobby, people helping each other. THANKS AGAIN
Stefhan!
Old Books There are many of these to be found on the internet, in Charity Shops, Jumble Sales etc. Some are very good but possibly dated, some are quite dire. Beware of any books where most the recipes have excessive sugar (1.5Kg/3lb or more), and never float toast or bread in your wines, with or without yeast!
Note:- Some of the older wine books add the juice of oranges and/or lemons for acid, this can be a bit hit & miss, how big an orange or lemon? How ripe is it? Personally I would use 1 level tsp (5g) of acid (citric, malic or preferably tartaric) to replace each fruit. I would also generally forget about any added tannin for WHITE WINES ONLY.
I
would suggest you read other peoples’ reviews, and don’t forget, those
written here are only the reviewer’s personal opinions,
and you may well disagree with them all completely!
All text on this site is purely the contributing author's personal views and should not
be taken as fact.
No responsibility
is assumed or implied for anything
that happens as a result of reading these views.
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