Brewing Beer Like Those You Buy

[Dennis King]

As Amazon have them on sale 2 books for a tenner, I've ordered them both for a read.

If you have ordered the Ken Shales book please don't expect to much from it. It was written in the early years of home brewing being legal. Just spare a thought for those of us who started brewing in the 70s when this was considered one of the most advanced books around.

[Graham]

If you have ordered the Ken Shales book please don't expect to much from it. It was written in the early years of home brewing being legal. Just spare a thought for those of us who started brewing in the 70s when this was considered one of the most advanced books around.

The early days of British home brewing was dominated by winemakers. Unlike home brewing, home wine making was never restricted and was never the subject of licensing. Also unlike home brewing, "country wine-making" did not require specialist ingredients, but could use garden produce, stuff gathered from the wild, or supermarket fruit or juices. Consequently, when home brewing became free of licence, home wine making was already firmly established and the wine makers were already in the majority and dominated the scene. They dominated the clubs and their committees, looked down their noses at us common upstarts, who preferred beer to dandelion wine, and they generally gave an impression of superiority and of knowing it all.

The fact that winemakers also dominated the hobby's printed media damaged home brewing to the extent that it is only in relatively recent years that it has recovered from that early, near-fatal blow. It was winemakers that wrote the first home brewing articles in the magazines and winemakers that penned the first books on the subject. Unfortunately winemakers treated home brewing as an extension of country wine making. As will be understood there is not a busting lot of fermentable material in a bucketful of dandelions, so if one wants some alcohol in a dandelion wine one has to add loads of household sugar to provide some substrate for the yeast to work on. Consequently a winemaker's interpretation of a beer was a malt-and-hop-flavoured country wine; a minimum of decent ingredients, loads of household sugar, yeast nutrient to compensate for the deficiencies inherent in the approach, ten-minute boils and so on. Indeed, I remember having an argument with a member of a local home brewing club in the early seventies, who was convinced that it was impossible to make beer without a kilo or more of household sugar. We still see remnants of this approach in the can and a kilo beer kits that still exist today.

So considering some of the stuff that was around at the time, Ken Shales' "Brewing Better Beers" was not too bad; although some of his recipes leave rather a lot to be desired he tended to use significantly less sugar than many other writers.

Back to Dave Line. Despite Dave Line being the hero of this piece, his lesser-known, third and final book: Beer Kits And Brewing is, in my view, worse than Ken Shales' books. Beer Kits And Brewing is not a good book; an unexpected anachronism when one considers the standard of his earlier stuff. What ever possessed him to write it is beyond my understanding. I can only assume that he was pressurised by the home brewing supply industry, who, I know from experience, get rather jumpy and obstructive if you seem to be diverting people away from their precious and lucrative beer kits. Some of his recipes use 2kg or more of sugar and there are some astounding technical blunders that were not in his earlier stuff. Dave Line died before this book went to print and I can only assume that he was seriously ill during the writing of it, or, more likely, that the book was subject to incompetent editorial interference after his death.

Anyway, if you are quick, you can snap up a copy of Beer Kits And Brewing for only £624 plus postage on Amazon

[FUBAR]

Good news there may be a new book but sad to hear you are stopping brewing.

+1 would brewing smaller volumes make it possible to carry on brewing ?

[barneey]

Just ordered a 2nd hand copy of the aforementioned Beer Kits And Brewing for a couple of quid on Amazon, just for a fascination / read of things gone by.

[a-slayer]

Ken Shales's book was the one I started with too and moved on to Dave Lines, following his recipes and ideas improved my brewing no end. I give credit to my wife for having the sense to buy Dave Lines book for me and that's what started me into AG brewing with an Electrim boiler with mash bag, perhaps she was telling me my previous efforts were not up to much!

[Dave S]

Ken Shales's book was the one I started with too and moved on to Dave Lines, following his recipes and ideas improved my brewing no end. I give credit to my wife for having the sense to buy Dave Lines book for me and that's what started me into AG brewing with an Electrim boiler with mash bag, perhaps she was telling me my previous efforts were not up to much!

I went exactly the same way. So a debt of gratitude is owed to both I think. Didn't have any support from the wife though, which probably increased the gradient of the the uphill struggle that is brewing.

[BarnsleyBrewer]

Good news there may be a new book but sad to hear you are stopping brewing.

It's an age thing, I am not yet, not quite, official retirement age, but I have the fitness of a man twice my age. I still have an issue with balance and an unpredictable left hand; not as unpredictable as Doctor Strangelove's hand, but it makes lifting and moving full vessels around a risky business. Time to call it a day I think. I have been at it since 1979 and the enthusiasm is not as strong as it used to be.

It won't stop me lurking on here, though, and causing as much controversy as I can. Ah! simple pleasures.

Good to see you back on Graham, I was asking how you were on another thread and got directed to this...

BB

[Le beer]

Great reading here on the history of homebrew. I can back up some of the argument about the early days and recipes being dominated by winemakers. I was visiting my mum over the weekend and stumbled across the attached leaflet

The attachment WIN_20181105_115802.JPG is no longer available

. I can't date it exactly but it references the change in law in 1963 permitting homebrewing. It is also pre-decimalisation, so ithink that places it somewhere in the mid 60's. Here are another couple of images. Look at the ratios between malt and sugar. In the mild ales and brown ale recipe it only uses crystal and roasted malts, so the bulk fermentables would be the sugar or golden syrup. I can't imagine what the finished product would have been like but it might have had me rushing to the local for a pint of red barrel or double diamond to wash away the taste. Thankfully we have moved on considerably in the last 50 years. I am sure I have a book somewhere by CJ Berry, probably written sometime later, as I can't remember it being so bad.

[Le beer]

Some of the images did not attach

The attachment WIN_20181105_115940.JPG is no longer available

[Le beer]

[Jim]

Good old CJ Berry! I used to have his winemaking book and later got his beer book (not the one shown above though). Happy day!

Mind you some of the recipes were very suspect indeed by modern standards.

[RobP]

I had a CJJ Berry book, "Home Brewed Beers and Stouts" that influenced my step-up from using kits to making what would now be known as "partial mashes" diastatic malt extract was available in those days, so could make a mash with malt extract some adjuncts such as torrified wheat or flaked maize, crystal and/or roasted malts.
The next step up was down to Dave Line's Big Book of Brewing. Immensely useful for brewing all-grain, had all the information I needed at that time, he made it easy to formulate recipes. That book and an Electrim boiler were all I needed, I now know that not all of it was accurate but it worked. I also owned "Brewing Beers Like Those You Buy". Not wholly successful at what it aimed to do but following the recipes generally made nice beer. Not a fan of Saccharine in beer mind.

[MTW]

These two are in my collection. They certainly seemed old when I started brewing in the early 90s! I was inspired enough to buy an old Burco from a scrappy and attempt a mash in a floating 'tun' within. It didn't go well. I did adjust an extract old peculiar to good effect though, and my appetite was firmly whetted, even though my next all grain brew would wait nearly another two decades. How things have moved on!

I know this is an old thread, but in reference to the late Graham Wheeler's contribution above, I certainly felt the overarching hand of winemakers in the approach to homebrewing even in the 90s, when boots kits were only just disappearing and most paraphernalia I saw in shops was wine centred. "AW" on the Ken Shales book stands for "Amateur Winemaker" publication.