[yso191]

I received my copy of the long-awaited Malt book yesterday.  I spent some time reading and surfing through it.  It is well written and I'm sure I will learn from it.

However.  It does not have the ONE thing I was hoping it would have: A chart of malts, detailing each one's flavor descriptions.  I was even hoping that it would include what a malt tastes like if there is too much of it in a beer since some malts go from a pleasant range of flavors to unpleasant, different flavors.

He has some of this in there but it is scattered around.  Bummer.  In fairness, he does list major categories of malts with flavor descriptions but it is far too general IMO.

Also, anticipating responses, I know there are lists online but they are not very descriptive nor very complete.  And, given that this book is One of the Four, it would be more reliable/researched than 'a list I found online.'

Sigh.

[Alewyfe]

Yes, that's a disappointment. I've been in search of some of that same information lately. I'm fine with experimentation, but in the interest of scooting up the learning curve a ways, it would be nice to have a good reference. Maybe you/we need to compile some kind of a poll, say do it with 10 malts at a time, and give people a way to post their flavor descriptors based on their experience using these malts. See if we can build some kind of a useful reference. There's an awful lot of experience on this forum to pull from.

[hopfenundmalz]

I was going to go to a book signing at Bell's on Sunday, but that has been postponed. If I go to it when it happens, should I ask Mr. Mallett? Maybe not, as other authors have said things that they would have liked to include were not in due to deadlines.

[yso191]

Yes, that's a disappointment. I've been in search of some of that same information lately. I'm fine with experimentation, but in the interest of scooting up the learning curve a ways, it would be nice to have a good reference. Maybe you/we need to compile some kind of a poll, say do it with 10 malts at a time, and give people a way to post their flavor descriptors based on their experience using these malts. See if we can build some kind of a useful reference. There's an awful lot of experience on this forum to pull from.

I like that idea a lot.

[yso191]

I was going to go to a book signing at Bell's on Sunday, but that has been postponed. If I go to it when it happens, should I ask Mr. Mallett? Maybe not, as other authors have said things that they would have liked to include were not in due to deadlines.

If it works out, for sure.  It would be interesting to know.  No doubt he put a great deal of work & thought into the book.

[denny]

Yes, that's a disappointment. I've been in search of some of that same information lately. I'm fine with experimentation, but in the interest of scooting up the learning curve a ways, it would be nice to have a good reference. Maybe you/we need to compile some kind of a poll, say do it with 10 malts at a time, and give people a way to post their flavor descriptors based on their experience using these malts. See if we can build some kind of a useful reference. There's an awful lot of experience on this forum to pull from.

We cover some of that in EHB, as well as a base malt taste off.

[denny]

I was going to go to a book signing at Bell's on Sunday, but that has been postponed. If I go to it when it happens, should I ask Mr. Mallett? Maybe not, as other authors have said things that they would have liked to include were not in due to deadlines.

Deadlines and space constraints. We had to lose 30K words because it would have made the book to long.  As author you like to think that more info will be better, but there's a business side ti think about.

[yso191]

We cover some of that in EHB, as well as a base malt taste off.

I can't believe that I have not purchased that yet, so I just took care of it!  Thanks!  I look forward to it.

[hopfenundmalz]

I was going to go to a book signing at Bell's on Sunday, but that has been postponed. If I go to it when it happens, should I ask Mr. Mallett? Maybe not, as other authors have said things that they would have liked to include were not in due to deadlines.

If it works out, for sure.  It would be interesting to know.  No doubt he put a great deal of work & thought into the book.

Someone said he had >1000 hours in on it.

[reverseapachemaster]

I wasn't overly impressed with the other three books in the series because I wanted to see more practical applications discussed. I felt like each time there was so much time spent on the basics that there could have been space for a more in depth discussion with some different editorial decisions. With that in mind, I'm not rushing out to pick up Malt to complete the set. It sounds like from the posts above that the content in Malt matches the other books and I should flip through the book before making a decision.

[HoosierBrew]

I wasn't overly impressed with the other three books in the series because I wanted to see more practical applications discussed. I felt like each time there was so much time spent on the basics that there could have been space for a more in depth discussion with some different editorial decisions. With that in mind, I'm not rushing out to pick up Malt to complete the set. It sounds like from the posts above that the content in Malt matches the other books and I should flip through the book before making a decision.

+1.  I felt the same about the others, too.

[narcout]

I'm surprised to hear you guys say that. 

I feel like I learned a lot from each of the other three books (even if some of it wasn't directly applicable to my brewing), and I'm really looking forward to picking up Malt.

[dbeechum]

There's generally two stages in writing a book:

- How am I going to fill up all XXk words?
followed by:
- How am I going to fit everything in XXk words?

Seriously, the 3 full books I've written went something like this:

Everything Homebrewing: Contract rate - 83k words. Initial Draft - 128k words. Final draft - 87k
Everything Hard Cider: Contract rate - 83k words. Initial Draft - 97k words. Final draft - 87k
Experimental Homebrewing: Contract rate - 69k words. Initial Draft - ~115k. "Final" draft - 100k. "Death to Words" edit - 75k

Editors have to stick pretty close to their page targets (from which word counts are calculated) to avoid cost overruns. That one extra page of text may actually incur another leaflet that needs to be filled, designed, printed and bound - that increases the cost to create, ship and sell the book and eats into the target revenue.

It's still damn annoying from an authors point of view, but it's understandable at least - even when you want ot grouse.

[theDarkSide]

Everything Hard Cider: Contract rate - 83k words. Initial Draft - 97k words. Final draft - 87k

I want a refund.  Obviously not "everything" if you took out 10k words. 

[klickitat jim]

Everything Hard Cider: Contract rate - 83k words. Initial Draft - 97k words. Final draft - 87k

I want a refund.  Obviously not "everything" if you took out 10k words. 

He did it on dictaphone so the missing ten thousand words are all "like", "er um", and "know what im sayin"