The Complete Joy of Homebrewing Fourth Edition - Fully Revised and Updated

When I started brewing I borrowed the 3rd edition from a friend to learn the ropes. I have now been brewing for 3 years and wanted to get this new edition mostly as a reference source. Its a great book with lots of basic info to get you up and brewing as well as some more advanced topics to help you fine tune and improve your beer. There are a few new tweaks in this edition, but I mostly use it to quickly review beer styles/ingredients/technical stuff.

This book gives a complete description of how to brew and has a lot of good recipes. Most the discussions on theory and science were really shallow, often times inaccurate, and almost always came with an advertisement for a more in-depth discussion if I spend more money on his other book. Putting all that aside though, I now know what I need to know to brew up a batch of beer which is what I was after in the first place.

I borrowed this from the library and liked the info, so I bought it because it has enough information to keep going back to it. I think it has a lot of history and such that isn't so much interest to me, but I just wade around that to 'foment' my home-brew experience. ( See what I did there? foment vs ferment?)

This was a great book in its day. Funny drawings, and good recipes but repeats his catch phrase so many times it gets annoying. I would rate this higher If it was not for Palmer's book "How to brew."

I bought this for my boyfriend after his was stolen when he was robbed at gunpoint. No, seriously. He was absolutely thrilled to have a replacement and a newer edition, and I was happy with how quickly it arrived.

While I can appreciate everything the author has done to bring homebrewing to the fore, I was very underwhelmed by this book. Personally, I found John Palmer's "How to Brew" to be an infinitely more valuable resource than Papazian's book. If you're on the fence as to which of the two books you should purchase, DEFINITELY go with Palmer's book...

The Complete Joy of Homebrewing Fourth Edition contains lots of good information about the brewing process and use of different sugars, ingredients such as berries, coriander, chocolate and when to add them.

There is also a useful description of different hops, basic guidelines of quantities of malts and hops to use for various styles of beer and a significant number of recipes. Unexpectedly there are also a number of different Mead recipes. There is even a section on growing hops.

The coverage of Brew In A Bag (BIAB) was quite light and I didn't see any coverage on how to scale a recipe (maybe I missed it).