Links And Further Reading

Site Map Home Introduction How To Use This Site Equipment You Will Need DIY Corner Materials You Will Need Water Treatment A Walk Through A Brew A Few Recipes Creating Your Own Recipes Danger - Quicksand! Frequently Asked Questions Links and Further Reading What Is Sensible Mole? Contact The Head Brewer

Here's some stuff to get your teeth into: The History of Brewing At Home the articles on home brewing hosted by Wikipedia, although largely American based, are worth a look. For instance, you never thought you had reason to be grateful to sexy Reginald Maudling? He abolished the 1880 brewing license that cost a whopping five bob (25 pence) per year. Cheers Reg!   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrewing#_note-license                     Reginald Maudling yesterday...

More History of Brewing Stuff This site concerns itself with medieval and Renaissance brewing and may have brief entertainment value. Why not argue about what beer looked and tasted like hundreds of years ago, safe in the knowledge that you’ll never be proved wrong (or right)!   http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/brewing.html   Technical Stuff The Brupaks site is a wonderfully comprehensive look at water treatment, sterilisers, yeast nutrients and stuff to clear your beer.   http://www.brupaks.com/brewing-aids.htm   ‘How to Brew’ by John Palmer. Gets quite technical at times, possibly at the risk of being overwhelming. Move on to John’s site when you’ve got a few brews under your belt and you’ve outgrown this one.   http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html   The Craft Brewing Association website is a great read and very informative although the lean towards competition might put off the fledgling brewer. Educational though, pick out the bits that interest you and ignore the rest. Details a few recipes you can trust.   http://craftbrewing.org.uk/     (Return to top of page)    The Brupaks guide to hops. The choice of hops in your brew can make or break the recipe. My advice would be to use only aroma hops in all of your brewing, it really does make a difference. Read this though and make up your own mind. (pdf file)   http://craftbrewing.org.uk/bcpdf/BRUPAKS_HOP_GUIDE_2005.pdf   Murphy & Sons Ltd guide to hops and their characteristics. Short but very informative guide.   http://www.murphyandson.co.uk/BrewingArticles/HopSpecs.htm           For ease and economy I’ve suggested you use rehydrated Safale yeast in most of the recipes on this site, but sooner or later you’ll probably want to branch out and use more exotic types of yeast. The main players are White Labs and Wyeast Laboratories - both are American companies but there are plenty of British homebrew shops that sell their products. Here are the links that will tell you what’s on offer:   http://www.whitelabs.com/beer/homebrew.html   http://www.wyeastlab.com/hb_yeaststrain.cfm   A list of beer styles may be useful but possibly only if you are considering entering competitions. My own view is that such a rigidly laid down set of rules as to what constitutes a certain type of beer goes against the ‘total freedom’ ethic offered to us by brewing at home. Have a read anyway, if you have the patience, then go and break the ‘rules‘: (pdf file) http://www.beertown.org/education/pdf/2006_BA_Beer_Styles.pdf   (Return to top of page)   Online Shops  The biggest recommendation or compliment I can pay is simply to say that I've used this shop for many years and haven't been let down once: http://www.hopandgrape.co.uk/home.htm     In the interest of striking a balance, this shop is also top notch:   http://www.hopshopuk.com/       Conversion Tables Why is it those naughty Americans were so quick to get rid of English rule but were so keen to keep our Imperial set of measures? You’ll need to convert ounces to grams and Fahrenheit to Centigrade at some point. This site should do it all. Remember though, there is a difference between a United States gallon and a United Kingdom gallon!   http://www.teaching-english-in-japan.net/conversion/celsius   Computer Software You only need the one and that’s Promash, a brilliant piece of kit - and the trial version is free! Take time to become familiar with it as it’s invaluable.   http://www.promash.com/   Brewing Forums Can be good but a word of caution - just because someone answers your question doesn’t necessarily mean he knows what he’s talking about or is bent on doing you a kindness - use with caution! Try these on for size:         British:   http://www.ukhomebrew.info/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1   American:   http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/discus/discus.cgi   (Return to top of page) Online Recipe Collections The two largest databases of recipes I’ve seen on the internet are ‘The Cat’s Meow’ and ‘Gambrinus’ Mug’, between them, holding almost 2,000 recipes. Treat these with caution and do not believe all you read; any Tom, Dick or Harry can post recipes and as such some of them are unworkable, some sound disgusting, and there are even more than a few where the person who posted the recipe hasn’t bothered to try it out themselves! You’d be much better off, and you’d learn more, making up your own recipes but just in case you’re curious, here are the links:   http://brewery.org/brewery/cm3/CatsMeow3.html   http://brewery.org/brewery/gambmug/gambmug.shtml     Brewing Literature In the past, CAMRA used to publish books of variable quality and usefulness on home brewing. At the time of writing (early 2007) all of these are now out of print. I asked them why and received a very nice reply from a Debbie Williams, CAMRA's Publications Project Editor. Basically they ’pulled’ their books because they need updating and are looking to publish at least one home brewing book when said rewrite has been done. If Graham Wheeler doesn’t come up with a rewrite they’ll be looking for another author to write one. Either way, expect no book to be available until at least summer of 2007 and possibly later. Essentially there are few home brew books written for the beginner that aren’t absolutely ancient. The best one in my humble opinion is ’Brew Your Own British Real Ale At Home’ by Graham Wheeler, but even in that book it is fair to say the amounts of grain and hops Mr Wheeler uses in his recipes has been the subject of some debate. This is far from being a disaster though as running his recipes through Promash will give you a better idea of the amounts needed. As CAMRA have decided to let this book go out of print, at the time of writing www.amazon.co.uk have just three copies of this for sale, at £86.43, £121.89 and £192.85 respectively! Ridiculous - mine cost me £8.99! My advice - don’t buy overpriced out of print second hand books; all you need is on the web.   Glossary of Brewing Terms Brewing is no exception to the general rule that we all like to saturate a subject with jargon whenever possible in a desperate attempt to make us appear much cleverer than we really are. This page will tell you far more than you need ever know; it’s all there, from AAUs to Zymurgy. (Bet you don’t get halfway through the alphabet at one sitting before deciding you have something else better to do, such as going off to watch your shed door warp):   http://hbd.org/uchima/glossary/glossary.html

Let's face it, you've never heard of Sensible Mole Brewery and consequently know nowt about it. On the next page is a tad more information about this one man band...

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