IPA: Brewing Techniques, Recipes and the Evolution of India Pale Ale

I'm really enjoying this. The historical chapters are very readable and the recipes are helpful if you know how to use them (which other reviewers apparently didn't). To calculate the hopping rates, you take the IBUs given in the analytical targets, then use the percentages given in the hopping section to calculate how many IBUs you need from each addition for each hop. Then you use for system's hop utilisation rate at that addition point, the brewlength, and the alpha acid content of the hop variety to turn the IBU figure into a number of grams. E.g. if you know you need 87 IBUs, and your brew length is 20 litres, and the recipe tells you to use 17.7% alpha acid CTZ at the start of the boil, to provide 23.3% of the IBUs and your system has a 35% utilisation rate at the start of the boil, then you want 87 * 0.233 = 20.271 IBUs from your addition 1 IBU = 1 mg/l alpha acid, so you need 20.271 * 20 = 405.42mg alpha acid for a brew length of 20 litres, which given utilisation is 405.42 / 0.35 = 1158.34mg. And CTZ has 17.7% alpha so that requires 1158.34 / .177 = 6544.3mg, or roughly 6.5g. Similarly, the malt bill is stated as percentages rather than in terms of weight to allow brewers to adapt them to different brewlengths as required. One criticism I would make at this point is that it is not explicitly stated whether the malt percentages refer to malt mass or percentage of the extract. Does 90% pale malt mean 90% of the mass of malt used is pale malt, or does it mean 90% of the extract making up the wort comes from pale malt. Different malts supply extract at different rates, so, for example, if 10% of your extract had to come from crystal malt, the mass of crystal malt would be more than 10% of the total malt mass. Here's how I would calculate how much to use for a beer that was supposed to be 94.3% pale and 5.7% chocolate malt with an original specific gravity of 1.070 for a brewlength of 20 litres. 1.070 is 70 'brewers points' 70*20 is 1400 brewers points altogether. You need to know your mash efficiency. Suppose it is 75%. So you need to add 1400 / 0.75 = 1866.67 brewers points to the mash tun. 94.3% of those come from pale malt = 1760.26. And from the malt specification sheet for the pale malt it should tell you the extract yield in litre degrees per kilo, say 301 'as is', so that is 1760.26 / 301 = 5.85kg pale malt. If the chocolate malt makes up 5.7% of the extract and has an ldk of 265 'as is' you need 1866.67 * 0.057 = 106.4, 106.4 / 265 = 0.4kg. So going by extract, you need 5.8 kg pale and 0.4kg chocolate (in terms of mass these would be 93.6% and 6.4%, note the difference).

If you quickly skim the title, you see, "IPA: Brewing Techniques". That's kinda what I was hoping for. I SORTA feel like I got it, I guess, but it clearly wasn't where the bulk of the material of this book was focused. I did expect some IPA history. For those of us who are primarily into the APA beer style, it's fairly well-known that the beer England was cranking out back in the time of the US Civil War was NOT the same thing. So, while I'm generally really into history, I just couldn't get into the shipping records of some beer company from 150+ years ago who makes a style of beer that I'm not really into. The history portion is much longer than I expected and is radically nerdier/deeper than I expected.The recipes are never a bad touch. I didn't see their value so much at first, but I have went back and referenced them on multiple occasions. The web is filled with beer recipes, however, so this certainly isn't an exclusive source of such info.I feel there was quite a bit of brewing information that was left out. There was a sense of elitism without explanation (always a red flag) when it came to jabs against dry yeast or extract brewing. Simply stating that extract "doesn't taste as good" (to paraphrase) wastes an incredible opportunity to teach. I came across as dogma to me and that won't improve my brewing. I missed out on the "why" part.The trickiest part of all this is I'm not a huge fan of the Stone IPA, but am a huge fan of Stone Ruination. Because of this, the book's claims of using extremely small amounts of specialty grains to keep from masking the flavor of the hops may or may not be for me. The author sure seems to be a fan of following the rules for any given style of beer, and I generally abhor such talk. I'll just have to do my own experimentation and find out. You could argue that's a strength of the book, but I'm not so sure. I bought the book to rule out a bunch of low-hanging-fruit-issues so that I could move to more pressing experiments. Oh well.Overall, it's not a bad read. The extremely detailed history lesson of IPA is going to be for a TINY segment of the population. The recipes are....well....recipes. The information ain't bad, but I don't recall any Eureka moments. If you've got The Complete Joy Of Brewing and John Palmer's How To Brew, this book really doesn't add much.

Mitch Steele graduated from University of California Davis with a degree in fermentation science in 1984 and he spent a major chunk of his brewing career as a brewer with Anheuser Busch. For the past 8 he has been head brewer at the Stone Brewing Company, known for their assertive IPAs. Mitch has an incredible amount of experience making beer and he buttresses that experience with extensive research into IPAs. In this book he provides an excellent history of the development and growth of IPA from the early 1700s to the present craft beer revolution. He gives a good overview of the current IPA variations and presents some of the challenges of brewing each. Mitch follows this with a good section on IPA ingredients and finishes with 60 pages of recipes. The recipes do not give specific amounts. He gives targets, identifies the percentages you need to meet the targets and assumes that you will use the information in his ingredient chapter to scale the recipe up to your size of a system. If Mitch’s explanations are not clear enough (I thought they were), you can figure the specific amounts for your system using either Ray Daniels Designing Great Beers or John Palmer’s How to Brew. This book is published by Brewers Publications, a division of the Brewer’s Association, a craft brewer’s trade organization. The book is intended for both craft and home brewers but by shooting for both audiences, doesn’t always serve both well. On the whole, this is an excellent, well prepared book.

This book uses IPAs as a catalyst for discussion about all beers. It has so much useful history, technical detail and general brewing advice and experience it is a must for any brewing anything - not just an IPA. The history of the IPA in the UK and in the US is fascinating. Recipes are also included which is a great way to create your own recipes. It discusses complex processes in a level of detail that keeps it interesting and entertaining. Will be referring back to this book a lot in the next year or so.

Great book for anyone who is a fan of IPA and would like to know the real history or the gaps in it, drinkers and home-brew fans alike.

Great historical detail. Recipes are interesting but many are vague and would be difficult to follow.

Talvez algumas pessoas esperem um livro de receitas, com detalhes sobre o que/como/quando colocar, isso dá certo, aquilo não dá, faça assim que sua cerveja vai ficar fora de série...... não é!Claro que é legal ter a receita daquela cerveja top que você curte, mas se tem uma coisa que aprendi no inicio de minhas produções é: crie sua própria receita, reformule, ajuste, e repita diversas vezes até chegar à perfeição.Este livro tem muitos dados históricos do estilo India Pale Ale, criação, evolução, informações que ajudam a abrir nossa mente para entendermos realmente o que é uma IPA, enfim, tudo o que se poderia aprender sobre o estilo, e de quebra algumas receitas das IPA's comerciais mais famosas do mundo.Vale a pena!!!

Ich habe mir das Buch gekauft weil ich mehr über das IPA und dessen Herstellung und Geschichte wissen wollte. Ich wurde beim Kauf nicht enttäuscht. Von der Geschichte bis hin zur Entwicklung, über die richtigen Prozesse und einige tolle IPA Rezepte ist alles in dem Buch enthalten.