                       The Beer Homebrewing Guide
                      Reviewed by Andrew J. Pardoe

    "So you want to brew beer?" Ever heard that question before? Well, here
comes another one. This one, however, is for good.
    I've put a lot of money into my home-brews in the past couple of
years. I've brewed double bocks and root beers, meads and sake. And I've
bought a lot of books, magazines, and even a few programs. But nowhere
have I found as much information for such a low price.
    The Beer Homebrewing Guide features a how-to book with pictures on
every page which I found to be basic, although accurate. For the
advanced homebrewer, there is a reference guide of supply shops,
catalogs, homebrewing books, etc. What sets this disc apart, however, is
the capture of messages on an internet homebrewing newsgroup. Most of
the messages are quite informative and, as anyone who has tripped
through cyberspace knows, detail problems and solutions from actual
people in your situation. Every to I looked for was included in the
index, although the nature of internet sessions cannot guarantee to be
comprehensive. In any regard, it certainly beats paying for online
access time.
    The disc also includes over 400 recipes in the following categories:
pale ales; lagers; wheat beers; steam, smoked and sourmash; stouts and
porters; bocks and Doppelbocks; herbs and spices; fruit; Scotch,
Trappist, Belgium and other ales; Meads; Ciders, Other and Historical
Interest. If that isn't enough for you, extra recipes literally
photocopied out of catalogs, newsletters and the like are included.
    Is this disc the best thing to hit homebrewing since canned malt
extract? Not in the least. But it is much more useful than any one book
I've seen. This isn't the type of disc you'd ever want to lose,
regardless of how experienced you become at brewing. The biggest problem
I have with this disk is the fact that it is Windows handicapped: I much
prefer DOS, but was able to glide through this disk with ease.
Everything is cross-reference in hypertext, and the graphics quality was
excellent. Make sure to b g a sixer of homebrew to the 'puter when you
first boot this up--you won't want to leave the screen long enough to
run to the fridge.

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