In search of great recipes...

Forbinsbrew · Post by **Forbinsbrew** » Saturday Feb 26, 2005 9:07 am

I'm an editor for a small publishing company in Boston, as well as an avid brewer and beer lover. I'm currently putting a book of Homebrew Recipes together and am searching for the best of the best. If you have a great recipe and would like to submit it for consideration, it would be greatly appreciated. Because of the small size of our company we're currently not buying any copyrights. However, if your recipe is chosen, you will receive a cash royalty for each book sold for the life of distribution, along with the recognition of a name published beer (if you dontt want your name to be used we will publish your recipe under anonymous or a pen name). You will also receive a free copy of the book. The inspiration for this book is based on "The Real Book".

Post by **Oliver** » Saturday Feb 26, 2005 10:01 am

Hi Jason,

I'm sure you'll get a few contributions from people here.

Just a question: What type of recipes are you after? Do mash, malt extract and kit brews all fit the bill?

Cheers,

Oliver

Forbinsbrew · Post by **Forbinsbrew** » Saturday Feb 26, 2005 10:14 am

The book is going to categorize all different types, so feel free to submit anything...there will most likely be a section for it. We're looking at including around 800 recipes in the book. We're also planning on launching a CD-ROM with the book so that people can find certain types of beers based on criteria such as type, origin, brewer, etc.

Dogger Dan · Post by **Dogger Dan** » Saturday Feb 26, 2005 2:20 pm

I am sure I have a recipe for Red Sox brew around that I can basterdize from my Blue Jays recipe or maybe a Bobby Orr lager.

For the rest of you, there is always good comraderie, well, comraderie between Beantown and The Big Smoke, especially in baseball and hockey, so I thought I would get in the first dig. Thanks

Dogger

gregb · Post by **gregb** » Saturday Feb 26, 2005 2:58 pm

Can you advise us when this book hits the shelves.

Thanks,

Greg.

Forbinsbrew · Post by **Forbinsbrew** » Sunday Feb 27, 2005 1:05 am

We will be accepting recipes until March 18th, at which point we will make the final decisions on which recipes will be in the book. The book should be coming out soon after that. I'll keep in touch.

thehipone · Post by **thehipone** » Monday Feb 28, 2005 9:38 am

Thanks for the invite, but I'm not sure you'll be able to carve out a place as "the standard homebrew recipe book". The market is a little full with recipe books and I think you'll find as most people advance in the hobby they look more to designing their own recipes.

How are you going to screen the recipes? There's plenty of stuff, especially on the internet, that someone says "this is the best beer ever" (hell, I'm probably guilty of it) and some actually turn out really well, while others you can just tell that they aren't likely to turn out too well.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Monday Feb 28, 2005 9:59 am

What we're trying to do with this book is fill it with great recipes that will serve as guidelines to brewing your own beer. We want the book to act similar to "The Real Book" for jazz musicans. "The Real Book" consists of sheet music from some of the greatest jazz standards of all time. I've used this book constantly while learning how to play the guitar and progressing in my style. The music serves as a standard guidline which one usually improvises from. That is our goal with this Homebrewing book. We want people to have access to some great recipes but also have the freedom to improvise off of them as well.

As for determining which recipes are the best...what we've been doing up until now is traveling to beer tasting events and seeing what responses people were having to diffeent beers. We would taste a lot of the beers ourelves, but we were also interested what others thought, so we chatted around. Then, we would have to see which brewers were willing to share their recipes. This new method with the submissions will no doubt be much more difficult, but we think we have a decent panel of judges, and we felt we could really encompass the entire brewing community better and try to represent everyone from all over the world. My Dad has been brewing for as long as I can remember and he's going to be taking a lot of the recipes and brewing them up. We've recuited a local brewer who's actually judged a few events in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. And we're chatting with the owner of a local brew pub here. We obviously won't be able to brew all of the beers and we will be placing some emphasis on creativity and originality as well. It's going to be a lot of work, but we think we'll be up to the challenge. Feel free to offer any suggestions...we appreciate any help that we can get.

Terry · Post by **Terry** » Monday Feb 28, 2005 10:11 am

Sounds great. These recipes will certainly be a great help to those new to home brewing such as myself and perhaps those who may need a bit of a hand to get into all grain brewing. A guiding light in these instances would be handy. Also, maybe you could get your hands on some recipies that have won competitions and awards.

Regards,

Terry.

thehipone · Post by **thehipone** » Monday Feb 28, 2005 10:29 am

If you want my honest opinion, this territory is amply covered by Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels and Clone Brews/Beer Captured by the Szamatulskis. DGB provides the framework for "improvisation" while the others are more the "classic sheet music" as it was originally played. For the even more "out there" brewers, Randy Mosher's book has received lots of acceptance and is the standard guidebook for the more experiemental brewers.

As someone who owns the above mentioned books, this is what is going through my head when I see a new homebrew book that I may consider buying. I ask what will this book offer and is it different from my current library?

There is room for a book covering the Belgian styles and this is one of the more commonly mentioned requests among brewers. Although
Belgians are sort of, by definition, not to style.

What I would like to see is a book that crosses over a bit between craft brewing and homebrewing. Specifically from the US, since that is where craft brewing is most popular, but a worldwide perspective would be better. A collection of articles/chapters from people like Jack Joyce from Rogue ales, Sam Calagione (sp?) from Dogfish Head and Randy Thiel from Ommegang. For instance, Enhancing Classic Styles, Making your beer stand out by Joyce, Extreme beer Formulation by Calagione and a Belgian Chapter by Thiel. Thiel's 1 page article on Witbiers in the Northeast Brew News was extremely heplful to me. I know the Dogfish team started as homebrewers. These people are established as knowledgable and competent brewers and would surely provide reliable advice. [/i]

Dogger Dan · Post by **Dogger Dan** » Monday Feb 28, 2005 11:13 am

Nice

Dogger

Forbinsbrew · Post by **Forbinsbrew** » Monday Feb 28, 2005 1:50 pm

It's nice to get feedack and advice on putting this book together, especially from someone as knowledgeable as thehipone...thanks. This book is attempting to create something that can be used from new brewers to advanced. I'll take every bit of feedback and advice to the table when this book is being assembled. Thanks again. If anybody would like to see something in particular fill this book, please let us know.

Jason

mordy43 · Post by **mordy43** » Monday Feb 28, 2005 8:49 pm

Tell them nothing. they are all double agents those yanks.

thehipone · Post by **thehipone** » Tuesday Mar 01, 2005 9:28 am

Just working with a fellow double agent then!

Forbinsbrew · Post by **Forbinsbrew** » Saturday Mar 05, 2005 7:04 am

I'd like to thank everybody that has been sending in recipes, but we're still looking for more. We've gotten some really good, as well as interesting ones - it'll be fun brewing some of them up. But, in order to get this book together with a wide range of styles, we really need some more beer recipes from all of you. We've been getting a lot of great feedback on the book and we feel it's going to be a great success. We're going to be putting a short on-line commercial together to try to start a buzz for the book. I'll be posting it here shortly. Thanks again, and feel free to ask any questions.

Jason

Forbinsbrew · Post by **Forbinsbrew** » Thursday Mar 17, 2005 4:11 am

We'll be accepting recipes for 2 more days (until March 18th), then we'll begin to make our decisions. Thanks for everybody's help.

Jason