Book Review

Title: The Practical Brewer.

Editor: Harold M. Broderick.

Published by Master Brewers Association of the Americas, Wisconsin. 1977. Tenth printing 1993.

Summary

The book is sort of a handbook of brewing for industry professionals. The book is separated into chapters, each of which covers a different facet of the professional brewing, and written by members of the MBAA (Master Brewers Association of the Americas). Even though its target audience is large brewery operations, the book is also of interest to intermediate and advance home brewing enthusiast and small brewery enterprise.

Details...

The book is laid out as a handbook. The first section is history followed by three sections on ingredients Water, Barley and Adjuncts. The Hops are talked about in section 8. Sections V, VI and VII are all about mashing and boiling. Wort cooling (chilling), Fermentation and Yeast strains are the last three sections in the first half of the book. These sections, though they were developed toward large scale production are quite interesting to the home brewer.

The last half of the book, from p253-407 also has some interesting sections but most of this is exclusively for the big brewery. In particular, Cellaring, Packaging (both draft and bottles) and Taste Methodology is still applicable. The less interesting parts to home brewers is the remaining sections such as Intrepretation of Lab Analysis and Utilities engineering. This is of course a generalization as there are parts of this section of the book that can be useful as well.

Below is an illustration showing the function of a large scale boil kettle with Calaendria. This book is definitely not a good reference book for the beginning brewer but may give ideas to the small home brewery designer or be of general interest to the intermediate and advance home brewer.

Notes:

This book is part of the Draught Board lending library if you would like to borrow it. Check with the club officers for more information. The lending library is a free privilege of membership in the club.

For a review of the original book written in 1947, here is a link to a site on the net.

Organization of book:

Section Forward Introduction History of Brewing in the Americas Water Barley and Malting Adjuncts Wort Production Wort Composition Wort Boiling Hops Wort Cooling Fermentation- Principal and Practice Yeast- Strains and Handling Techniques Cellar Operations Packaging- Bottling Operations Packaging- Draft Operations Beer Quality and Taste Methodology Statistical Analysis of Plant Data Interpretation of Laboratory Analyses Utilities Engineering Sanitation Process Control and Instrumentation Safety Appendix A- Flavor Terminology Appendix B- Bengtsson's Tables, Conversion Factors and Brewing Journals

# pages 1 2 12 8 19 22 27 18 11 19 13 23 56 18 17 17 21 17 10 29 12 30 26 7 5