I bought Extreme Brewing (and Brewing up a Business), the other day and I have to say I was pretty disappointed by it. Almost all the recipes are extract recipes which in itself is fine but not what I was looking for. I guess I just expected more from DFH. Do they make most of their beers from extract? I know I can work the OG backwards to get close but I was hoping for more direction on malt blends. What should I have bought instead? (I have Palmer’s, Strong’s and Daniel’s books already).
The book was targeted towards extract brewers naturally since they’re by far the majority of homebrewers. (It isn’t even close)
DFH definitely is not an extract based brewery.
For my money, pretty much anything by Randy Mosher.
Randy Mosher’s Radical Brewing would be a great complement to the three you mentioned.
I wasn’t overly impressed with Brewing Up a Business either, but I did learn a couple of things, so it wasn’t a waste.
I share your disappointment. I was expecting a master class in “Brewing the Sam Caligione Way” from “Extreme Brewing”, not a generic introductory homebrewing book. As others have mentioned, DFH is anything but an extract brewery.
+1 on “Radical Brewing” it’s probably the closest book to what “Extreme Brewing” should have been. Other people have made some good suggestions for other books. I’ll add “Brewing Classic Styles” by Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer, if you don’t yet have it.
Beyond that, what books you get for your brewing library depends on your budget and your interests. Just about any of the books listed in the BJCP Interim Study Guide (http://www.bjcp.org/study.php) are good. If your interests run more towards crunchy scientific works and you’ve got a lot of money to spend, consider investing in one of the more recent brewing science texts from Narziss or Kunze.