The Homebewer’s Answer Book – By Ashton Lewis

The Homebewer’s Answer Book – By Ashton Lewis
Solutions to Every Problem, Answers to Every Question

Pickup this book after you have been brewing for several months to fill in some gaps in your knowledge and open the door to new ideas. The book is compact in size but thick. It is not suitable to read for a raw beginner. It gets into a lot of complicated and advanced areas. I would get it in the first year and refer back to it over the course of your progression from beginner to master. Mainly the book focuses on how to perfect your brewing processes. Every home brewer can get a lot out of this book.

Topics unique to this book:

• Sanitization techniques
• Answers about use of materials in brewing, such as CPVC vs copper pipes, stainless steel vs aluminum, etc
• Dry hopping vs using a hopback
• Brewing with different levels of water hardness
• Reusing yeast and re-pitching rates, yeast considerations for lager beers
• All grain techniques, tradeoffs with different mash schedules, and the basic chemistry involved
• Putting beer on tap using nitrogen (nitro)
• Troubleshooting to improve head stability, chill haze, DMS, etc.
• Troubleshooting with bad batches