How to Brew, by John Palmer

This is the book that inspired me to brew! I was reading a slashdot post about open source brewing, and this book was linked to as a source for learning to homebrew, largely because the book is available for free on John's website. I started reading and the next day ordered equipment and a couple of brewkits from Midwest Supplies. The first few chapters about how to brew your first kit gave me the confidence I needed to get on this train without another brewer to guide my hand. As someone who learns from watching others do, learning skills from a book does not come easily, but this book lays it out so simply that there is no way you can go wrong (except for not sanitizing - that will go wrong, horribly wrong). The big takeaway from this book is that beer is a very forgiving substance (as long as you sanitize and maintain your sanitary conditions (a lacto bacteria breakout is not fun!)) so if you let it cook a little less than 60 minutes or you leave it in your primary fermentor for 3 weeks instead of 2 it will all work out in the end. It might require a little more bottle-aging to get rid of that weird taste, but it will go away eventually, or if it won't, and you can use the beer for stew. You get the idea.

For those of you who want more depth this book has alot of technical detail about the brewing process, equipment, terminology, developing recipes, and troubleshooting. From your first extract brew to a full mash, this book has you covered. And it is so good that you will want to buy it to read offline.