Dave Miller - Dave Millers Homebrewing Guide: Everything You Need to Know to Make Great-Tasting Beer

Everything you need to know
to make great-tasting beer

Dave Miller

The mission of Storey Publishing is to serve our customers by publishing practical information that encourages personal independence in harmony with the environment.

Edited by Christine P. Rhodes and Elizabeth McHale
Cover design by Greg Imhoff
Cover photograph by Nicholas Whitman
Text design by Cindy McFarland

Text production by Carlson Design Studio, production assistance by Susan Bernier

Drawings on pages by Carl F. Kirkpatrick.

Indexed by Northwind Editorial Services

1995 by Dave Miller

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages or reproduce illustrations in a review with appropriate credits; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwithout written permission from the publisher.

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Printed in the United States by Versa Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Miller, David G., 1945

Dave Millers homebrewing guide: Everything you need to know to make
great-tasting beer / Dave Miller.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-88266-905-2 (pbk.)
1. BrewingAmateurs manuals. I. Title.

TP570.M53 1995
641.873dc20

95-13385

CIP

To my children, Steve, Tony, Paul, Bart, and Cathy;
and to my wife, Diana,
my toughest critic and biggest fan.
Without them, there would be
nothing to celebrate.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to all the homebrewers who have encouraged me by their questions and compliments and inspired me with their enthusiasm for the craft of brewing; in particular, I would like to single out the Saint Louis Brews, my hometown club and a continuing source of inspiration and good fellowship.

Individually I would like to acknowledge my friends George Fix and Byron Burch, who have done so much to advance homebrewing and my own fund of knowledge; and Charlie Papazian, founder of the American Homebrewers Association, who, besides contributing to the ongoing dialogue of home-brewers, created the forum for it in the first place.

Note:

The words that appear in bold italics are defined in the glossary.

A mid the many changes taking place in America at present, one of the most pleasant is a change in the attitude toward beer. Once regarded as a uniform commodity, whose manufacture was the province of large corporations, beer is increasingly regarded as a beverage of great complexity and variety, worth learning about and cultivating an appreciation for. This development has spurred, and in turn fostered, the growth of a new industry in this countrythe microbrewing industry, which has grown at a spectacular rate through the early 1990s and shows no signs of slowing down.

Microbrewers are a throwback to an older culture, where quality was the result of individual efforts and the craftsman or craftswoman gave each product a unique character. In the Old World, hundreds of small local breweries still function this way; in America, it is a tradition that we are just beginning to recover.

But behind the microbrewery movement lies a slightly older one: homebrewing, which was long a discredited relic of the Prohibition era but which re-emerged in the 1970s as an effort by a small number of dedicated beer lovers to supply themselves with the type of beer they had fallen in love with in Europe. To them, domestic beers seemed monotonous and imports old and oxidized. The perishable nature of beer, as much as the price of imports, is what forced these pioneers to try their hand at the ancient art.

The phenomenal growth of homebrewing in the past decade has pushed the hobby into the national consciousness. Homebrewers have appeared on national television and radio programs, and have been interviewed by major newspapers. One major American brewing company has paid the hobby the supreme compliment of denigrating homebrew in a nationally run television ad. Such an attack acknowledges that homebrew is, indeed, an alternative to commercial beer; and if it is a real alternative, it must have reached a certain stature, both in popularity and in quality.

Homebrewing is no longer a cult phenomenon. But there are still many peopleprobably the majority of beer drinkerswho have never tasted home- or microbrewed beer, and do not yet realize that quality as well as variety is quite achievable for the small-scale brewer.

Quality is what this book is about. You can make beer at home that is as good (by whatever criteria you choose) as any beer you can buy. However, to accomplish this goal, you need a practical understanding of brewing, and some knowledge of the science that lies behind it. I have tried throughout this book to convey those two things. The intent is to provide you with both a guide and a reference source as you explore the craft of making beer.

If you are a beginning brewer, I would suggest that you get, in addition to this book, my earlier book Brewing the Worlds Great Beers (Storey Publishing, 1992). That book takes a somewhat different approach, leading you step-by-step through the various techniques that homebrewers use, gradually introducing more elaborate procedures as you grow in confidence and experience. This book is more comprehensive, describing the steps of the brewing process in detail and outlining both alternative procedures and the science behind them.

The impetus for this book was Storey Publishings suggestion, in late 1993, that I consider revising The Complete Handbook of Home Brewing, which was written in 19861987. I accepted their offer gladly. I have enjoyed hearing comments from readers of The Complete Handbook. Many people have urged me to write about some of the newer advancements and developments in the field. With this volume, I have addressed these issues.