I’ve produced 27 books since I became publisher at Brewers Publications and many title ideas have come from our homebrewing community! As I plan for the future, I’m interested to know if there are subjects that you would like to dive into more deeply? What will help you on the next step of your brewing journey? What do you feel would help you improve your processes, techniques, or understanding? What resource are you missing in your library?
In your opinion, what are up-and-coming trends or styles? What do you want to know more about that falls into the category of fermentation? What brewers/writers would you like to learn more from?
Finally, if you have enjoyed any Brewers Publications books, I’d like to encourage you to leave a positive review on Amazon, Goodreads, Bookshop, etc. Reviews can improve our standing in search results and help our authors (and BP) be recommended more often when customers need guidance.
Please drop me a line and share your input directly with me or note your ideas below. I look forward to hearing from you and appreciate your support of Brewers Publications!
I do all my “reading” on Audible nowadays. If BP released their books in audio format I’d snap them all up. Many of the authors are very well-spoken and would be great narrators as well.
Fact: A huge percentage of homebrewers (I’m thinking at least 50-60%??) are scientists, engineers, and IT people. Give us SCIENCE and give us MATH. We want to learn everything there is to know about mashing temperatures, mash time, hop boil times, whirlpool hop additions, experimentation, and the most accurate way to calculate IBUs.
We don’t care about IPA. Give us science.
And give me some good German lager.
You know what we really need?! A new update to Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels. If he ain’t going to update it, FIND SOMEONE WHO WILL. WE WILL BUY THAT BOOK.
What about stories and biographies? I personally don’t want math or science. I do that at work. I also don’t want recipes. I get those for free here. But, I bet there’s a lot of stories to be told.
I agree. Most books are written for beginners or intermediate brewers. I find myself reading more white papers on studies done for the professional brewing industries on different aspects of brewing to learn more about brewing. I find more information put out by professional outlets like Master Brewers Association than from home brewing sources. Something other than the basic subjects covered in greater depth would be nice. I like the idea of historical and biographies too, but I’m looking more for advanced techniques, science and processes. German beers in depth.
Dude, you would NOT want to spend hours listening to me read a book. Not to mention that authors arent always great speakers. I produced a lot of audio books back I studio days and the author almost never read them. A trained voiceover person would do it.
+1 to this suggestion. The statistics that were in the original DGB book were really helpful…at the very least, a book with a bunch of numerical tables would be something I would use. E.g., a “Homebrewer’s Handbook.” Bring all the stuff together, no fluff, just the data. Water profiles, hop profiles, yeast data, style data, etc. I have these spread across a gazillion individual books, websites, programs, and PDFs right now…
Designing Great Beers-I kind of think it’ll become outdated too quickly. Too many new styles, malts, and hops coming out.
How about a homebrewer version of the Quality Management/labs book? I think there’s a lot of info on yeast, cell counts, etc. but I’m sure there’s a lot of simple things from the pro side that could be adapted to homebrewing. Like using sieves to quantify mill crush.
Or a book on homebrew clubs and competitions? Could dive into some of the history, etc and have sections for legal considerations, paperwork, bylaws, etc.
“Farmhouse” brewing and techniques from around the world? There’s ~3 forests worth of books on lager, european beer, and IPA. I’ve enjoyed some of the Zymurgy articles on Tej, distilling in South American, etc.
Denny, isn’t podcasting just reading a very poorly edited book?
I agree. I have an audiobook copy of Beer by Charles Bamforth and the material just doesn’t translate well for me.
At the moment, my interests lie in two areas.
First, I’m more interested in books that tell the story of brewing … I’d like more books on historical brewing – local & national traditions. Martyn Cornell or Ron Pattinson or Andreas Krennmair type stuff. Or think of the huge classic beer styles series (e.g., #11 Barleywine), but do each volume as an in depth exploration of a culture’s brewing tradition rather than a system of styles that were only codified recently. Secrets of the Master Brewers does a good job of exploring history and applying it to the hobby, and I hear Beer Bible 2nd Ed. expands on this idea.
Second, I’m homebrewer: this is a hobby. I’m not trying to be the next Sierra Nevada or even the next Straight to Ale or Monday Night. Even if I went pro, that market is crowded. Give me books about doing fun stuff with the ingredients around me. Hyper-local brewing. Like the Growing Beer podcast or The Wildcrafting Brewer by Baudar.
PS - track down Jannsen and make him turn the disjointed series of blog posts at Hors Catégorie into a cohesive exploration of turn of the (last) century Franco-Belgian brewing.
As a brewer since 1990, many of your books have been purchased and read from cover to cover.
Today much of the info sought by the average brewer is available online. With a few simple mouse clicks. There are multiple brewing forums that can and do offer good advice.
It is doubtful that we would purchase any new book.
