The Perfect Keg

Sowing, Scything, Malting and Brewing My Way to the Best Ever Pint of Beer

In an entertaining year-long devotion to the near-religious art of brewing beer, Ian Coutts sets out to make the perfect keg. This beer didn’t start with a beer-making kit, which is what most homebrewers use. And it didn’t rely on pre-roasted industrial malt, which is how commercial brewers do it. Coutts made his own malt, and he grew his own barley. Hops, too. Yeast, he went out and captured. And that’s it. With this beer, the only additives were knowledge and history.

There were plenty of adventures and misadventures along the way, but Coutts writes about them with humour and aplomb, proving it is possible to make the perfect keg of wholly natural beer in one year.