Saturday mail delivery: Brew Like a Monk and Farmhouse Ales

[niels]

The mailman dropped off a packet with two new books for my brewing library: Brew Like a Monk (by Stan Hieronymus) and Farmhouse Ales (by Phil Markowski).

Both are well-known books, but since I'm only brewing for less than 3 years I still have to build up my library.

The first book that I will read is Farmhouse Ales as I'm planning on brewing a saison on the 7th of March.

Feel free to post your opinion on either of the books.

Niels

[BrauTim]

Brew like a monk gets a

I made my Duvel clone from the info in this book.

[Dan]

I have BLAM. It's a great read.
Very informative.
I brewed a R10 clone using info found in there, but it's only been out of the fermentor for about 3 weeks so not drinking yet.

[cpa4ny]

I got both of those books and I think they are great!

Just received "Water" by Palmer/Kaminski - started reading it over the weekend.

[Batz]

I have just ordered both these books as well.

[niels]

I got both of those books and I think they are great!
Just received "Water" by Palmer/Kaminski - started reading it over the weekend.

I have all three current books in the series too. Both "Yeast" and "Hops" were very enjoyable and informative. I liked "Hops" very much because of the background information about hop growing etc... "Yeast" was very informative, but I skimmed over the last chapter about setting up a yeast lab as it is not relevant for me at this moment.

I started reading "Water" but is very scientific and since I mostly read when going to bed it is not the most light read available... (Also, not being a native English speaker requires some extra attention when reading this types of books.)

I have just ordered both these books as well.

Good choice! I finished the first part of Farmhouse Ales (about bière de garde) yesterday and started with the second part (about saisons) in the evening. It reads very easy and is very informative. It gives you a good idea about what bière de garde is without ever having one before.

There a few small things that irritated me a bit (being a Belgian), but these are only details. Sometimes I can be a bit nitpick about small things.

• The author mentions the "Kingdom of Flanders". As far as I know this has never existed... But I'm not an historian, so I might be wrong.
• The author refers to Hainaut as a region while it is actually a province. In the part about sainsons Hainaut is referred to as a province, but it is written by a Belgian.
• The author repeats too many times that bière de garde and sainsons don't fit predefined style regulations and this might throw off people that want to match every beer with its corresponding style requirements.

Niels

[luk-cha]

i have both of those, great books, and very inspirational reading for those kinds of beers, and it give you a great base to play around with Belgium style beers, that is, basically anything goes!