Belgian Ale (Classic Beer Style Ser)

Montreal native, author, home brewer and founder of Montreal’s first brew pub, Pierre Rajotte has written an important book of Belgian Ale. He provides a precise history of Belgian style ales and discusses their character profiles. He focuses the bulk of the book on homebrewers with detailed chapters on materials and equipment, processes, and recipes. Many homebrewers and even quite a few craft brewers miss the mark with their Belgian ales. Rajotte’s chapter on processes is essential, especially his discussion on high gravity mashes, brewing, fermentation, ester development and brewing beer with higher alcohol. The discussion is concise, easy to follow but perhaps less technical than some might like. If you understand the essentials of brewing, the book should help improve your Belgian Ales. The book concludes with appendices on commercial examples, how to read a Belgian beer label and Belgian beer schools. Although the book was published in 1992, Rajotte’s discussion of the brewing process is still very relevant.

AS a home brewer with 20 years experience, I found the book very useful when I decided to delve into the mysteries of brewing Belgian Ale styles. I think this book and others in the series need to be periodically updated. Since returning from college in Europe in 1976, the number of European beer styles available in the US has increased dare I say, 1000 fold. In 1976 you were lucky if you could find a Lowenbrau (Germany's Budweiser at the time), St. Pauli Girl or a Becks. Now the number of beers imported is virtually uncountable.The section in the book near the end giving us commercial examples of the types of beer, as well as offering up the author's opinion on commercially available varieties, "if you can find them" and giving us is horribly out of date. Today the number of Belgian ales avaiable at any good liquor store is mind boggling. The increase in the availability of this incredibly diverse beverage needs to be reflected.I recommend the book to any would be belgian ale brewer. I found it particularly helpful in cloning some of my favorite belgian ales. The process for doing that could also be added to any update of the text.

For those who want a book that contains almost everything one needs to know about Belgian Ales look no further. Pierre Rajotte is a master of Belgian beer and gives the reader a unique insight into this style. In addition to the extensive history of Belgian Ales, the author goes into great detail explaining the different styles as well as the individual requirements for each style and the ingredients they usually contain. Pierre Rajotte helps the reader make sense of the dizzying array of Belgian Ale styles and lists a few commercial examples at the end. The author is also a brewer and presents detailed information about mash schedules, ingredients, brewery equipment and re-fermentation techniques (adding a dose of fresh yeast along with sugar at bottling). Despite the fact that the recipe section of this book is quite limited, the author does such an excellent job of outlining each style and individual ingredient that it is possible for the homebrewer to use this book as a starting point when writing their own Belgian inspired recipes. This book goes into great detail regarding Belgian Ale yeast, but the author has written another book that goes into yeast culturing in greater detail. See "First Steps In Yeast Culture" by Pierre Rajotte for another excellent work by this author if you are interested in culturing your own yeast.Also worthy of note: this is not a guide to all Belgian beers, only ales. Since Belgian Ales are my primary interest I was not at all disappointed and commend Pierre Rajotte wholeheartedly for his excellent work. For those seeking information regarding Belgian lagers do not write negative reviews about this book, instead simply look at the title and realize that they were not meant to be included since lagers have entirely different requirements when they are brewed.

Belgian Dubbel's are my favorite brew so picked this up to help improve my own brewing skills. I found a bonus in Rojotte's coverage of the Belgian styles and things to make note of in future tastings. The book is definitely work grabbing if Belgian beers are your thing. ~m

This is a great book on Belgian Ale, but the content is pretty dated. If you're looking for a history lesson, and a lot of background info about Belgian beers, this is a great book.

Well written, packed with info, this book has everything you need to make great Belgian ales at home. You may not perfect a Chimay clone on your first try, but you will probably produce a very drinkable beverage in the style!

If you like Belgain ales (making or drinking), this is an excellent starting point. Some of the information is older but I do not think it affects the information in the book. I raise my glass to you Pierre!

awesome

This book is a revelation to understanding the dark arts of Belgians. Mostly an overview of production methods used by the Belgian breweries It is full of little titbits of knowledge that you would never have guessed. I thought it was a fab book and if you are into Belgian style brewing it is a must. There is only a few recipes but useful ones at that.

not as useful for homebrewing, too technical but good if you want lots of background and were not planning to use it to brew your own

Item order arrived/delivered early. Home-brew making is for life in small retirement brewing to keep a small personal domestic supply available while/when watching TV sporting events at home with family&friends. No car driving required. On hot summer days, a cold home-brew is nice thirst quencher or with our occasional family&friends spring/summer BBQ,. Definitely not a fertilizer for our backyard vegetable garden. Lol. Haha. : )

Book finished - loved itThere is also a few recipe at the end which I don't really care usually, but the book was really interesting. Not so much content and pages, but I feel much of what needed to be said was in this book.

Un "must have" per chi come me adora la cultura birraria belga! Naturalmente è in inglese ma nulla di troppo complicato anche per chi non parla fluentemente l'inglese come me! Da spunti, idee e riflessioni sulle migliori tecniche per brassare birre belghe!