The Complete of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian Reviewed by Tom Heinrichs copyright 1991 Tom Heinrichs This is a different kind of homebrew than Home Power readers are used to. There are no FET's, rheostats, or puffs of capacitance mentioned in this book. We're talking barley, hops, and yeast in The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. It costs the large American breweries a few cents to produce a bottle of beer. So where does the other forty-seven or so cents they charge for their product go? It goes to the Big Three in our consumer society: advertising, packaging, and distribution. Yes, you're paying to see washed up jocks push a product on TV, for containers the have to be melted down and remanufactured in order to be reused, and for gasoline to truck the stuff around. But there is a better way: get a copy of Charlie Papazian's The Complete Joy of Home Brewing. This book will tell you everything you need to know about how to make your own beer that is approximately 947 times better than the stuff that passes as beer in American convenience stores. The plan goes like this: first, lay your hands on the necessary equipment. You need a five gallon bucket with a lid or a five gallon glass water bottle ($0-20), a rubber stopper and fermentation lock ($2), a hydrometer to measure the density of the beer ($4), three feet of plastic tubing to siphon the beer into bottles ($1), and a bottle capper ($4-12). You also need a big (3 or 4 gallon) kettle to boil the ingredients in. Second, you buy the ingredients (malted barley extract, hops, and beer yeast) for about twenty dollars. Third, you boil the stuff up, mix it with water in your big bucket, and add beer yeast. Put the lid with fermentation lock installed on it on the bucket. The fermentation lock is a one way valve. It lets the carbon dioxide out of the bucket as the yeast turns the sugars from the barley into alcohol and CO2, while keeping the air out. Now you have to wait about a week for the yeast to do its thing. When the density of the beer (measured with your hydrometer) has stabilized, it's time to put it in bottles. You add 3/4 of a cup of corn sugar to the fermented beer and syphon it into bottles scrounged (reused!) from the recycling bin and cap them. The yeast uses this bit of sugar added at the end to make a little bit more alcohol and carbon dioxide. Wait another week for this carbon dioxide to form and be trapped in solution and carbonate the beer, then you're ready to drink your five gallons (50 bottles) of beer. That's the quick rundown. You really need to lay your hands on The Complete Joy of Homebrewing for the whole story. Charlie Papazian will get you started with lists of ingredients, equipment, and instructions, and carry you just about as far as you want to go, even to the "Advanced Homebrewing" chapter where he tells you how to malt your own barley. Want to know what "malting" is, how yeast does its thing, or why there are hops in beer.* You'll find it in this book. You'll also find scores of recipes and discussions of the various types of beers from around the world. Grow your own hops; make your own Guinness Stout. This book is an information bonanza. You might worry that a book with an information density as high as this one has might be dull--the Gray's Anatomy of beer, or something. Don't worry, The Complete Joy of Home Brewing is extremely well written and FUN to read. Papazian has a conversational writing style and provides information at several different levels: if you just want to know how to make the stuff, it's here. If you want the gory details of enzymatic actions, the fermentation process, or water chemistry, you'll find it in this book. You will be inspired to action by this book. Once you get going, you will find your own beer tastes better because it's made from better ingredients and because it doesn't have the bad karma associated with it from the national advertising industry, disposable containers, and energy spent moving what is mostly water all over the country. Your own beer is inexpensive ($20 for fifty bottles!) It's also more nutritious. You pay $8 per pound for nutritional ("brewers") yeast at the health food store. All those B-complex vitamins are found in your bottle of homebrew. But mostly, your own beer will taste better and be because you made it yourself. The Complete Joy of Homebrewing: you need a copy. Access: The Complete of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian is published by Avon Books, a division of The Hearst Corporation, 105 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016. 1984, cost: $8.95 paperback (331 p.), ISBN: 0- 380-88369-4 Homebrewing supplies: look in the yellow pages under "Winemaking"; mail order: look in the classified adds in the back of Popular Science (or another hobbyist magazine) under "Winemaking" Tom Heinrichs POB 84411, Fairbanks, AK 99708