Erica Shea

We got into homebrewing during the pandemic for a few reasons, most of which are probably obvious. My husband got this book as a gift and it was our first time doing all-grain brewing. The recipes are interesting with a lot of variety, and there are a bunch that I'd like to try. The beer that has been made so far is tasty.

These are 1 gallon recipes. They give instructions for scaling up to 5 gallons, but I'm not actually sure I want/need 5 gallons of lavender beer until I try it. So, the show more small batch size makes sense. I've never done one gallon brews before this (except hard lemonade and cider, which are easy processes). It is fairly labor intensive to do a full brew day just for one gallon of beer. Each recipe only made 6-7 bottles, which seemed like a lot of work for that amount. (We bottle into 16-oz Kolsch bottles, so you'll get a higher yield from longnecks, but it's still only going to be like 8 or 9 bottles.)

The recipes are clear and well written. My one complaint is that they do not provide OG or FG target numbers. There are ways to calculate OG based on your grain bill but what's the harm in doing it for us? Maybe they wanted to make brewing seem easy and approachable without needing a lot of specialized equipment? In spite of this I was happy with the beer that was produced, definitely a good present. show less

3.75 Stars
A brief history and travelogue of the owners of the Brooklyn Brew Shop with some interesting and original recipes. The beers are separated by season and the book includes very short intros to the breweries that inspired the writers. A great gift for any at-home brewer, especially those just starting out.

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review.