Radical Brewing, by Randy Mosher

While entitled "radical" it is more like a gateway to radical brewing. Each chapter covers some variation on brewing, such as spicing beers, adding fruits, experimenting with sugars, historical recipes, Belgian beers etc. Each opening the doors to a much larger realm of experimentation that just requires you to take the next step. For instance, there are a large number of books dedicated to Belgian beers, or for historical recipes I would more likely recommend A Sip Through Time. But this book is really not meant to be a comprehensive guide to all brewing that falls out of the norm, but rather sketch out the areas for further investigation.

Enough with the qualifying and onto the beers! The book has a ton of tasty looking recipes -- all of them are all-grain, and about half of them have extract equivalents, which is kind a bummer for us extract brewers. But there are also a ton of ideas you can take from these all-grain recipes even if you cannot make them exactly. Mosher also provides even more ideas for recipes that are ways to enhance your favorite recipes, for instance taking your favorite IPA recipe and adding honey and candied ginger to the secondary (p.169), something I am going to do asap. For chapters like adding spices or fruits, there are tables of potential additives and notes on their use or if they should be avoided -- all with a note of humor, for instance pineapple is good for hats but not so good for beer. And recipes all have a historical placement, which gives you a story to tell when you serve up your brew to friends.

At the beginning you will find the requisite "how to brew" at the beginning as well as an introduction to styles. While I would not use it as a set of instructions for my first time, it has a very nice explanation of ingredients and processes that other books seem to lack. Towards the end there are tips for fabricating equipment and things to do to expand your beer knowledge, including brew club activities.

I would highly recommend this book for intermediate brewers who are looking for new ways to spice up (literally) their brewing and anyone who wants to know about the potential of the regular styles and get a taste for beers that do not fit within the BHCP styles. All and all an excellent gateway to a much wider world of brewing!