The first book in our Classic Brewing & Distilling Series is The Complete Practical Brewer from M.L. Byrn, 1852.  Not to be confused with the "Practical Brewer" produced by the MBAA during the mid to late 1900s, this is one of the early American brewing texts.  Authored by an American, M.L. Byrn, and printed by one of the earliest American publishers of technical books, Henry Carey Baird. (Also published by Baird was Byrn's The Complete Practical Distiller, which we have also recently republished.)

An American Perspective
This text contains in-depth information on the production of beer via two methods: the "Scotch System" and the "English System" as viewed by the American author. This includes differences in mashing, boiling, cooling, fermentation, and "cleansing."
 
Porter Explored
The text includes a separate section for the production of porter. It covers the changes in porter from the use of brown malt to pale malt, and includes discussions on what brewers used to replace the lost attributes of the brown malt.  The text helps document the period where Porter was referred to by terms like "stout porter" and "double stout London porter."

Recipes
One important aspect of the text is that it contains period recipes. The text contains a number of recipes and/or instructions for many beers, including small beers (root beer, ginger pop, mead, spruce beer), porter, Burton Ale, Windsor Ale, Welsh Ale, Reading Ale, Wirtemberg Ale, Hock, Dorcester Ale, and more.*

Additional Topics
Additional topics include: grain, malting, brewing, brewery machinery, small scale brewing, private family brewing, hop cultivation, bottling beer, and filtering.
 

Table of Contents
To get a better idea of what the book contains, take a look at the table of contents from the actual book.  A PDF version can be viewed by clicking here.

Book Details
The book, as seen to the left, is hard cover bound in bonded leather with gold foil stamping on the spine and front cover. It is 199 pages and printed on 60lb. natural offset paper.

Review
If you would like to read an independent review of the book, Click here to read a review written by Jeff Renner which appeared in the Homebrew Digest.

How to Order

No longer available, individually. The stock on this book is extremely low, and there are no plans to do another print run. The remaining copies have been reserved for sale in the sets.

The following sets are available:

Purchasing with a credit card: We accept credit cards via PayPal. If you would like to pay using PayPal, you can simply click on the "Add To Cart" button below. Then when you are done shopping, select "Check Out" from the shopping cart window.

International Customers (non-US): Please remember to go to the order page and add the additional shipping charges for international shipping. Click Here to go the order page.

All Six Remaining Books In The Series:
To order The Complete Practical Brewer, Scottish Ale-Brewer, The Town and Country Brewery Book, M'Harry's Practical Distiller, Combrune's Theory and Practice of Brewing, and Every Man His Own Brewer: US$200.00

Purchasing with check or money order: We also accept checks and money orders. Click Here to go the order page.

* A limited quantity of these sets are available due to the limited number of copies remaining of some of the books. (Complete Practical Brewer and Complete Practical Distiller.)

** Sets that contain a pre-order book: If you order a set of books which contains a pre-order title, the entire set will be shipped when the pre-order title comes back from the printer.

* Disclaimer: Recipes from old books should be viewed with caution. Ingredients may have since been deemed dangerous. These books are being published soley for the historical perspective and information.