Yesterday I received several books on beer and brewing. The first one I've dug into is John Palmer's "How to Brew" with the subtitle "Everything you need to know to brew beer right the first time". I quickly got sucked in by the detail oriented nerdiness of this book, and spent hours reading it the first night.
The other book I have is Papazian's "Joy of Homebrewing" so I can't help but compare the two. I really like the JoH and I'm glad it was the book I started with. Papazian's approach is very readable, and he continually stresses the idea that in spite of the complexity of brewing the homebrewer, especially the beginner, should relax and enjoy the process. After spending a good amount of time with JoH I felt like a had a good general understanding of the sorts of brewing that I was doing - extract and specialty-grain brewing, but I've still been less-than-confident about moving into all-grain brewing. Papzian gives all-grain brewing a decent treatment, but he didn't dive into enough technical details to give me the sense that I fully understood the various options available to the all-grain brewer.
On the other hand "How to Brew" gets down to the glorious and painful nitty gritty. The first couple chapters are geared for beginners, but I think these aren't as enjoyable to read as the JoH beginner chapters. That being said, some of the equipment information in HtB was more recent. However, after the beginner chapters HtB really starts to shine. The author is metallurgist and appearently works in aerospace engineering. I think his background in science is well represented in this book as he give tons of technical details about the hows and whys of brewing science. The material is presented in a logical progression and seems to flow nicely as a "read", but also is easy to use as a reference. After spending several hours with this book I now feel confident that I understand all-grain brewing well enought to invest in equipment. Of course nothing can replace hands-on experience, but Palmer provides so much information that I really think I "get" it.
I'm extremely happy that I've added this book to my burgeoning collection. I don't know that I'd recommend it as a "first book" for a true beginner (unless the person is a real tech geek), but I think as a second book it's fantastic.
