Is this book serious?

[Blackjack]

The book is
The Homebrew Handbook
by Dave Law & Beshlie Grimes

I appear to have very foolishly splurged £15 on a very pretty book but that also appears to have been written by someone ( or two people) definitely under the influence. I bought it because it has 75 recipes for every sort of beer imaginable.

BUT to quote a few examples.........
Talking hops on page 23 they define AA as Apparent Attenuation !
pg 17 A picture of Calcium Chloride Flakes is labelled "Sterilising Chemicals"
pg 55 Christmas Beer OG1.046 FG1.015 Target ABV 7.3%
pg 63 [British Bitter] "is usually described as an IPA which generally has an ABV of up to 4.1%"
pg 71 Golden Summer beer OG 1.073, FG1.010 ABV4.5%
pg 76 Dark Ruby Mild OG1.034 FG1.014 Target ABV 5.6%

There is a right old howler on almost every page.
Has anyone else bought this book or perhaps know the authors?
One of them claims to run a pub!

[Paddy1989]

Morning haha I bought this book yesterday I thought it looked good too never mind iv spent £15 on worse things haha.

[Dave S]

Maybe if you read it when drunk it all makes sense

[Eadweard]

Dave Law runs The Eagle Ale house (and I think another pub as well) in South London. It's a cracking pub which has great beer festivals, shame his home brewing knowledge seems a bit lacking.

[Blackjack]

Dave Law runs The Eagle Ale house (and I think another pub as well) in South London. It's a cracking pub which has great beer festivals, shame his home brewing knowledge seems a bit lacking.

OK Righto. I think I shall write and ask him if he is doing refunds and would he like to buy it back off me.

In a similar vein his description of sparging is incomprehensible and the volume for each beer ( 23lts ) is the water needed for everything including the sparging !

[lord.president]

I bought this book,and in the end,stuck the recipes in Beer Engine/BeerSmith for water volumes. They do actually turn out right. Though it took me a bit of browsing on here to find out the deficiencies for a beginner.

[lord.president]

I'll also point out that I appear to have an American adapted edition,some of the language and particualarly seeing 'color' and 'flavor' repetitively is annoying.

[lord.president]

Right,well I stuck that Christmas beer in 'beer smith' and,somehow,it comes out with the OG and ABV in the book! Perhaps both of us don#t know how to use it- I have noticed the default recipes on there are for 18 litres/5 gallons,should this not be 23 litres/5 gallons?

Bit pissed off that of the three AG's I've done, one is the Summer Golden beer and the other is the Christmas beer. Indeed,I started a thread at the time asking why I hadn't got the expected AG of the Golden summer beer!

[AnthonyUK]

18l would be 5 US gallons

[lord.president]

Yeah,I was half wondering that. Maybe that's why the recipes in this book don't quite work out?

[Bribie]

Yes five pints to the American Gallon which is why the old gas guzzlers like Chevvies appeared to be even far worse than they actually were when expressed in Miles per Gallon. Their pints are the same, which is why a pint bottle of whisky is referred to as "a fifth".

[Matt12398]

That doesn't make sense either Bribie.

One imperial pint is 568 mL
One US pint is 473 mL

One US gallon is 8 US pints

[oz11]

I think 1 US pint = 16 fl. oz while 1 uk pint = 20 fl. oz?, so a us pint is not the same as a uk pint. Even fl. oz might differ between uk and us

[Dave S]

Here's an interesting article guaranteed to boggle the mind even more - especially regarding fluid ounces.

[oakwell]

I've used this sight for conversions
http://www.searchthingy.com/weight.htm