Wood & Beer: A Brewer's Guide

Are you a homebrewer? Read lightly, the book will frustrate. You'll glean a superficial appreciation for the history and practice of brewing with wood, but you'll pay the price of frustration at all you know you're missing here, with much obscured by a fog thick with arcane concepts and the technical jargon of botany, biology, chemistry, history, cooperage, wine and beer making and cellaring.Read with attention and focus, you begin to see through the fog and glean a more penetrating understanding, and the book invites you back for an additional read and beckons me back to the barrels to explore some of this arcanery. The reading of the book lends the feeling of actually having experienced much of what's been conveyed.The depth of concepts and technical information found here lie somewhere between Jeff Sparrow in "Wild Beers" (more approachable) and Greg Noonan in "New Brewing Lager Beer" (much of which is incomprehensibly technical to many of us).Not a casual or Sunday read. But if you're a bit of a geek and harbor a love of rabbit holes, burrow into it. If you want to get at all serious about wood and brewing it's a must.And, oh, that Cantwell can turn a phrase.

A great overall look at the historical implications of the barrel and how they translated to the world of fermentation. Many will look to this book to tell them exactly how to utilize barrels in the production of beer. There is simply too much information; too many variables. This book will, however, get the creative juices flowing and have you looking forward to including barrel aging in your brewing techniques, even if it is on a small garage scale. There are lots of excerpts from some of the pioneers of the practices in order to give you an insight to how methodically difficult, wildly unpredictable and incredibly rewarding barrel aging can be.

So many questions i had have been answered by this book. I have always enjoyed beers that aged in a wooden vessel for various lengths of time. Good thing is i am learning more every day i read this book, bad thing is it has a side effect... you may experience hallucinations of opening your own cooperage and making barrels and foeders while drinking a nice brew.

Very comprehensive, but spends a lot of time on barrel-making and barrel repair. Great if yo9u aspire to be a cooper, which I don't. I just want to know how to keep my barrels clean and bacteria-free, and how to optimize the flavor of the beers in the barrels. That information is contained in the book. I honestly think the author included all the rest at the editor's request because nobody would pay so much for a thin book which just dealt with what most of us want to know.

When I purchased this book I was looking for information on both barrel aging of beer and barrel maintenance that would be useful to both professional brewers and homebrewers, and this book met both of those expectations. I would consider this book a valuable resource for any brewer planning on using wooden barrels for fermentation and/or aging of beer. A must have for the libraries of all professional brewers and beer judges.

I can't think of a book such good planned like this. I think Dick Cantwell and Peter Bouckaert made an outstanding work prior to type a word, resuming the information that integrates the wood element into anyone interested on beer. It's not a beer book and I'm glad of it. Just a comprehensive guide to get into wood without doubts and understanding where are you going with this. Congrats!

Not what I was expecting or hoping for, had hoped this would be a handy how to guide for the use of homebrewing and aging beer in a wooden barrels. Unfortunately it seems to be very heavy on background and technical information about barrels and beer but very light on practical hands-on information such as cleaning the barrel after you have aged a batch of beer in it or prepping a barrel for the next batch of beer. It would also benefit from more illustrations particularly in color.

First of all this book is not 400 pages as per the listing but is only 228 pages including the index. The book itself has lots of background information on using wooden barrels but is light on practical uses for the home brewer. An OK read but lacking on what I am really looking for.

Loads of information on Oak barrels their history and but a lot less on practically flavouring your beers. It is very light on anything other than Oak. It Should really be called Oak Barrels and Beer.Sections of it seem like filler, I was hoping for a book full of more meat and less fluff. Has some great sections but I felt like I was wading through others like treacle.Having re-read sections it is better than my initial 2 stars so I am going to bump it up to 3.

A worthwhile purchase if you have an interest in SPBW or beers from the wood. However, most of it is US based with comment on European barrels. I would have preferred a UK based book with more local information.

libro di circa 300 pagine , interessante se si vuole conoscere il mondo che gira intorno alle botti & co......ma purtroppo non va oltre ad un testo di narrazione. Manca di indicazioni pratiche sulla gestione della Birra nelle botti che non vengono mai approfondite all'atto pratico demandando a fatti di storia .Se avete intenzione di scoprire come trattare la birra nelle botti.....non prendete questo teso.

Excelente produto.

A lot of information, very helpful.