One of the cornerstones of my enthusiasm for brewing comes from the fact that I have brewed for years, though I am on a break from it now that I am a happy apartment dweller. One of the best ways to pick up some of the information that the homebrewer gets through hands on experience with the zymurgistic is to find a copy of J.S. Hough's short book The Biotechnology of Malting and Brewing a 1985 text by a University of Birmingham (England) professor. This is no laugh riot or a exciting romp but a lightish scientific work which tells you all you need to know to start understanding how a continuous fermentation brewery works, why one barley is better than or different from another, what happens when water is softened or hardened. Who can pass up a book with a figure 8.2 called "the tricarboxylic acid, or Krebs, cycle used for aerobic meabolism of the products of the glycolytic pathway". It's like Organic Chemistry for Dummies illustrated entirely in beer-related drawings, a crash course in that BSc nerd-world which you will again be assured was well worth skipping in favour of a drifter arts degree. It will make you smarter about your brew.