Looking for a good AG recipe book. Have “How To Brew” and “Designing Great Beers”, consider them “Go To” books to learn about brewing beers. Read “Joy Of Brewing” and “Brewing Classic Styles” and was not impressed. Now looking for a good book on AG brewing recipes. Considering “Best Of Brew Your Own 250 Classic Clone Recipes” and “Clone Beers”. There is another series of “Classic Brews”, each volume dedicated to one style. Any thoughts?
CloneBrews: Homebrew Recipes for 150 Commercial Beers (Paperback)
Also their 2nd edition
Brewing Classic Styles is the only “recipe” book I have, and is likely the only one I’ll ever need. I refer to it every time I’m brewing a style that I am not very familiar with.
I don’t own “Clone Brews”, but I have flipped through it. Some of the recipes in there for beers I’m pretty familiar with just don’t look right to me. YMMV, but I think BCS is a lot more useful.
What’s a book? 
I use this book also. It has a lot of good, personal tips for each style.
IMO, this is one of the worst recipe books I’ve seen. Others may disagree.
When you look at that in detail, I must agree. The yeast selections are all wrong.
Not a book, but Beersmith has a bunch of recipes.
I think BCS is a great starting point, and I like Radical Brewing for weird ingredients too.
BCS is THE recipe book. I know Jamil gets a lot of head-inflating props, but every one of his recipes has won comps. He is the type of brewer that will brew the same style 10+ times until he gets it right. Every style I have made out of BCS has turned out great.
I’ve also heard “Clone Brews” is terrible.
Also, Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels is another excellent resource.
I don’t own a recipe-only book, but designing great Beers, Radical Brewing, and listening to the Brewing Network have really given me the basics behind recipe formulation… But if you need more, look at the archived Zymurgy issues on this site… more than enough recipes there. Drew Beachum’s articles are some of my favorites for recipes.
WTF is a recipe?
Man, I gave up beertools recipe’s a long time ago. I felt like you could look up a style and get just about anything. Just because somebody called their 50 srm, CTZ hopped beer a kolsh doesn’t make it so. :o
OK, I’m being a little rediculous there. But if I have no clue how to get started with a style, I want something that’s been reviewed a little.
i agree - Brewing Classic Styles is the only recipe book I own. I’ve made a few recipes from it, but mainly I use it as a reference. Every other recipe book I’ve seen is suspect, in my opinion.
BCS and Joy of Homebrewing will both give you dependable, straightforward recipes. Joy of Homebrewing recipes might be a little dated but they are decent starting points to begin developing your own recipe. Recipe books are always going to be somewhat ineffective because they become dated after a few years as new ingredients and techniques arise and people demand new/different flavors in beers.
I also agree with the sentiments above that the internet is a real hit or miss way to find recipes. There are a few blogs I trust to rely on to develop recipes and some recipes online are great but the vast majority of recipes are of questionable value, especially when they don’t have good notes about how the recipes turned out or what the flavor profile is.
The NHC winning recipes and most of the other recipes published in Zymurgy tend to be good recipes to work off of as well.
I often use recipes out of BCS as a starting point. DGB has a lot of great information, but is a bit dated. For belgians, sours or wheat beers I like the Farmhouse Ales, Brew Like a Monk, Wild Brews and Brewing ith Wheat.
+1 to BCS. I love it as an accurate reference of recipes within a style, unlike other recipe books where style lines are blurry, at best. It’s a very good starting point, although I must like dry hopping pale ales and IPA’s a little more than he does.
CloneBrews: Homebrew Recipes for 150 Commercial Beers (Paperback)
Also their 2nd edition
The worst book I’ve ever purchased. Worthless. I know some of the recipes are not right and I’ve never heard of most of the beers.
That’s why I like BeerTools. You can sort by reviews, favorites, comments, etc.