Book Review: The Homebrewer’s Garden

This book came to me as a Chirstmas gift this year.  I’ve been struggling with growing hops the last two years.  While the hops bines usually grow well I have not had the yeilds I would have liked.  As you can imagine, I was very excited to get this book to help me with the finer or more complex details of growing hops.

This book was a very simple read, easy to understand concepts and language that was clear & concise.  I was able to read the book in several hours, one day of Jury Duty.  The book is  divided up in to four basic sections, Hops, Herbs, Malting and Recipes.  I got the most benefit from the hops sections since that is what I was most interested in.  There was tons of great information from planting to harvesting, soil minerals to pest control.  I was looking for information on pest control & treatment, pruning and soil care.  This book covered all with good detail.

Admittedly I skipped much of the Herb section, but it has lots of great information on how to include different herbs in your beer.  The malting section was very interesting; I knew the basics of malting but this book had good detail about how to do it at a homebrewer level.  The only thing I found missing from that section was smoked malt.

The last section which I skimmed, was a collection of homebrew recipes.  On the surface it appears to do a nice job of incorporating may of the ingredients/techniques described in the book.

A good book for me and would also say a Great book for the homebrewer looking to make a start of really putting the “Home” in homebrewing,