Formulating a recipe

Hi there...
Iv'e got a question a just cant seem to figure out:
When formulating a new recipe, regardless if its a smash or
some complicated beer that needs lavender from the Himalayas.
You base your beer around you gravity bitterness and color right?
You need to know what your OG should be and then work your grains around that right?
So my question...how do I work out all those variables?

Not quite sure what you are asking, do you mean how would you know what your OG, bitterness, and color should be? If that's the question you need to have an idea what style of beer you want to brew. Here is the list of style guidelines for the recognized styles, although part of the beauty of homebrewing is that you don't have to be bound by these (unless entering competition). There's a lot more to recipe formulation than just the numbers, though. You could brew a beer that fits the specs perfectly in terms of OG, IBU, and color but have all the wrong ingredients or character.

If you want to get into recipes there are lots of good resources for this. Designing Great Beers and Brewing Classic Styles are some of the more popular books for it. Brewing software like Beersmith or others can then help with calculating and hitting the numbers.

So its all based on style guidelines?
And with smash brews? What do you base it on?

I use beersmith so I set it to the style that fits most closely to what I want to make. Nobody is forcing you to comply with any style though.

I start by choosing a base malt and getting it a little shy of my target OG. Then I add specialty grains for taste and color. Usually only after that do I add in the hops. I usually know pretty much how many ibu's I want from the bittering hops and then I just add flavor/aroma/dry hop additions to get what I think I need for the flavor that I'm looking for. It actually is very easy, just give it a try.


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Also, beersmith (and others) have a free trial period if you want to play around with it.


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No it's not all based on style guidelines, but you need to have an idea what you want the beer to taste like and learning the styles and what goes into them is a way to start learning ingredients. Smash brews may or may not fit well into a particular style. My point with the numbers is that there is a lot more that goes into making a beer taste balanced or "right" than just the specs. There are a lot of different ways to hit the same color, OG, and bitterness but you could have a completely inappropriate ratio/combination of ingredients that would taste terrible. I have a recipe for an American stout and one for a black IPA that have almost identical specs. If I was going only by Beersmith with no other knowledge I might think my black IPA recipe was going to come out as a perfectly good stout.

Beer smith is an awesome program but the free online software like brew toad work fine for basic recipe calculations.

I formulate my recipes based on the kind of beer I hope to produce. Sometimes I'm aiming for a specific style, other times I'm aiming for some unique specific characteristics. Color is usually the least of my worries - with the exception of styles like Irish Reds, Stouts, etc.

Imagine thinking that you want to create a new dinner course. You decide what kind of course it will be. Then you decide what flavor characteristics and textures you'd like. Then you decide on complimentary spices for the course whether extravagant and flashy, or reserved and subtle. It's the same when formulating a beer recipe.

Thanx for all the input.
I want to see if I can stick with
with a pen, paper and a calculator haha.
But if it gets o tricky I'll definitely
check out beersmith's calculators.
Think I'm going to try and make a smash bitter...if that's even possible.

Another great tool to gauge how your beer is balanced is the ibu/sg ratio. This is just a calculation of how many bittering units you have per point of OG. It's certainly not a complete summary of what your beer will end up like, but you'll know what the general balance of hop bitterness to maltiness is. The calculation is super easy, just divide your predicted IBUs with your predicted OG. You can make determinations about the resulting number as you gain experience with recipe formulation, but for now, here's a link to a useful chart that gives an idea of what ratios work for what styles: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/ibu-sg-ratios-style-129765/

That's a very cool chart.
But is it IBU/OG, or IBU/(OG-FG)?

Starchild said:

Thanx for all the input.
I want to see if I can stick with
with a pen, paper and a calculator haha.
But if it gets o tricky I'll definitely
check out beersmith's calculators.
Think I'm going to try and make a smash bitter...if that's even possible.

Click to expand...

A bitter seems like an excellent style to try to SMaSH. In the realm of ales, the most common SMaSH brews tend to be pales ales or IPAs, and a bitter is a type of pale ale. Maris Otter and a UK hop like EKG or Challenger would be a good place to start for something like that, fermented with an English yeast for a bit more authenticity.

Starchild said:

That's a very cool chart.
But is it IBU/OG, or IBU/(OG-FG)?

Click to expand...

It's IBU/OG in gravity pts.
Here is another page with a chart and lots of links on the subject.

Thanx a lot everybody I will be brewing my smash bitter next weekend.

So I'm ready to brew this weekend and would love some input on my recipe
I'm using metric so please bear with me...
I decided on an OG of 1.044 (don't really know why)
IBU of 35 (My IBU/OG ratio is 7.9)
L should be 8 but my predicted color is about 5.5L, I cant really correct it because it's a smash
Batch size 12l
Boil time: 1hour
2.7kg Weyermann pale ale malt (to difficult to get hold of Maris otter where I live)
29g Fuggles @ 60min
10g Fuggles @ 15min
10g Fuggles @ 5min
And its a US Fuggles, will that make a difference?
Yeast: Windsor Ale Yeast, Low-Medium attenuation (73-77%) (again best I can find around where I live)

One question I still have: How do I work out my predicted FG, cant seem to find a solid formula.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

I use brewtarget, open source and giving my great accuracy after initial trial and error setup

I would guess that Windsor has an approximate 68-72% AA at average mash temperatures. If you mash low you might attenuate more than that, while if you mash high you will attenuate less than that. I'm learning my lesson on mashing high when using low-moderate attenuating yeast (i.e. be careful) and am erring on the side of "lower is better".

Anyway, to figure your FG:
1.044 * (1 - 0.68) = 1.014 to
1.044 * (1 - 0.72) = 1.012

Your FG will probably be in the range of 1.012-1.014 for an average mash temp (e.g. 151-154).

Is that the whole formula?
1.044 x 0.32 = 0.334...what am I missing?

Starchild said:

Is that the whole formula?
1.044 x 0.32 = 0.334...what am I missing?

Click to expand...

Sorry, just use the gravity points (i.e. 44 points in 1.044).
44 x 0.32 = 14.08
This yields your final gravity points (i.e. 14 points)
1.01408

O sorry didn't even think of that thanks.
How does the recipe look? Will it yield an ok beer?
Should I change some things?
One other thing how do you work out you hop profile,
I kind of just grabbed it out of the air...
how do you decide what % of the hops to put in on 60min
and rather putting in on 15min than on 20min...is that just experience
or is there some method behind it?

Don't make it too hard.

After a couple extract kits, I make all my own recipes. I assume you have some beers that you like and know styles of beer. Now go to the BJCP standards and get a feel for what makes a beer meet those standards.

From that point, you should have an idea of what it takes to make a beer that you like. Work backwards and you have a recipe.

Take 10# base, a little crystal - mash it around 150*F. Boil it for an hour with some hops. Pitch enough yeast and ferment in the happy temp range for the yeast for 2 weeks. It will make beer. Adjust as necessary.

Starchild said:

O sorry didn't even think of that thanks.
How does the recipe look? Will it yield an ok beer?
Should I change some things?
One other thing how do you work out you hop profile,
I kind of just grabbed it out of the air...
how do you decide what % of the hops to put in on 60min
and rather putting in on 15min than on 20min...is that just experience
or is there some method behind it?

Click to expand...

It looks very sessionable, easy going, and quick to drink several. I had to learn how to use Fuggles to my liking. I use them in reserved amounts and generally earlier than about 20 minutes, but that's just MY tastebuds. If you're a fuggle-head then load em up. I did the 'Befuggled' recipe on here by AnOldUR which used a little more than your recipe and it turned out really good - for a fuggles beer . Nothing at all wrong with fuggles, just preference for me.

The hop schedule thing is as complicated as you want to make it. Basically it boils down to: bittering units to gravity points ratio for the style of beer you're going for. The ratio helps get you in the ballpark and the addition timing is usually somewhat stylistic. I generally think of the timings as fwh, 60, 30, 20, 15, 10, 5, 0, steep; and I'll pick my timings based on the beer I'm brewing and it's intended hop profile. Rarely is these timings a make-or-break decision; they tend to be fairly flexible. 20-10 minutes additions are considered flavor additions, while 10-steep additions are considered aroma additions - BUT THERE IS HUGE VARIANCE IN THIS.

Thanks for the reply, yeah think to know when to add the hops will probably only come with experience!
And about the Fuggles...have never brewed with them, the majority of recipes are just insist it has to be a uk hop and fuggles is the way to go!! so I will know by the end of this if I'm a Fuggles head haha