Perfecting one recipe or style

I think I am like a lot of homebrewers in that I normally make a different recipe or style of beer every time I make a brew. Not only that, but until now I don't even think I have made the same recipe more than once. If I have made the same style twice, the recipe was a little different than the first time.

I've got a fair number of batches under my belt now (looking at my expanding waste line I mean that both figuratively and literally ) and I am wondering if it is time to work on perfecting a recipe or style of beer by brewing more than one batch of it in a row. I guess, by saying perfecting a "style" I mean that I wouldn't necessarily brew the exact same recipe each time, as I may want to try tweaking the recipe a bit based on how the previous batches turned out.

I know that EdWort has his "Haus Pale." Does anyone else tend to brew the same recipe on a regular basis?

I've been doing this with my hefeweizen... but yea, that's it. I make a different beer everytime now. I still haven't found any other recipe that I want to get down solid. I'm really hoping to find it in one of my belgians I've started brewing.

I have been home brewing since Feb/March 2006. I started all grain about 8 months ago and the first all grain recipe was a Mirror pond clone pale ale. Every since I drank that batch I have tried to make it every other batch of beer. Lets just say that in 4 or 5 years of trying to find the perfect apa, I found it in my first all grain batch of beer. I find myself being very anxious waiting on the next batch. As far as perfecting goes, I think the recipe is perfect, but I try to change my process to help get more consistent ( i.e. mash efficiency does fluctuate requiring adjustments on the fly).

Now that I am back into brewing after a 10 year hiatus, I have taken the approach of perfecting an amber, a pale ale, and an ESB. This also requires a fair amount of experimentation within the style to find a recipe that I can start perfecting. But yeah, I think it is fun to improve by tweaking one part of the recipe at a time. For example, the grain bill may be just right but I need to adjust the hop schedule, or perhaps I only want to change the yeast I am using for a different look.

I did this for years with a porter recipe, then I purchased AHS Rogue Mocha Porter clone.

So, now I'm working on the Bent Rod Rye, which is a moderately hoppy rye session ale.

I've got 2 or 3 recipes that I am working on perfecting. Rather than brew them exclusively, I've worked them into my regular rotation.

I've made my Airedale Tail Pale Ale every second batch, in between wheat and stouts. It's great when you can get consistency in a recipe.

Get into the habit of taking careful notes. Tweaking a recipe is where brew software such as Beersmith and Pro Mash come in handy.

Decide what you'd like to change and research your hops grains and adjuncts to see what they do to flavor, aroma, body

I have just recently started taking good notes. I take my notes and put in top of the fermenter. When I bottle the beer, the notes go in the 12 pack. I have 3 stacks of beer and when I bottle I write the name of the beer and the bottling date on the box and then it is placed at the bottom of the stack.

That way six or seven weeks from brew date when I start that 2nd 12 pack I can update my notes and decide if I want to make it again.

I make the Mirror Pond Pale Ale clone regular and call it my house ale.
I seldom vary from my recipie now I have it nailed down, so to speak.

My Dutch lagers are going through the tweaking phase, as are most of the other styles I clone.

Ó Flannagáin said:

I've been doing this with my hefeweizen... but yea, that's it. I make a different beer everytime now. I still haven't found any other recipe that I want to get down solid. I'm really hoping to find it in one of my belgians I've started brewing.

Click to expand...

Hefe +1

I brew hefe regularly and have fine tuned it after not all that many batches. I'm not to AG yet, though. Will need to do the whole process again when I switch. But I like it, you learn what works/doesn't within the style and you also learn that very subtle changes can make big improvements to (or detractions from) the overall flavor of the beer.

Don't think I could bring myself to do this, love variety too much. Its all I can do to get myself to not try strange experimental things that probably won't work every batch

I've found myself working on my amber recipe. It's in V3.0 right now as I'm still trying to nail down the recipe flat. Then I'll stick with it and work on consistency. For the most part I try to brew whatever I think I'll want to drink in 2-3 months, which usually isn't very seasonal making it a tough job. Like right now I feel a hop phase coming on so it'll be Rye beers and IPA (perhaps, a RyePA?) for the next epoch.

Prost!

I make 3 beers repeatedly and have "guest" every 3rd or 4th batch.

I've got the 3 beers to my liking so I'll introduce a guest as an house now and stick with that.

Currently my "House" Ales are Hob Goblin, Boddington's and OSH.
I'll introduce a porter next, then an IPA then a Blonde.

I brew what I like and never clone. This has led me to two FINE beers that are really hard to find commercial (good ones anyway) examples of: dusseldorf altbier and munich helles.

Both are malty and delicious ... the altbier is a pain sometimes (you have to keep that wyeast 1007 at 60 degrees for 7-10 days) but the payoff is sensational.

I am constantly making these 2 beers just to keep up with monthly beer meetings.

The rest of the stuff I make is all for fun ... I tinker with pale ales, vienna lagers, stouts, belgians (awful beers), wheats, etc.

the fun is in the discovery.

I'm just over a year into brewing now and the first 9 months or so was all over the place. Except for hefeweizen (which I made a ton of during the summer) I don't think I made a single recipe twice. I also felt myself succumbing to the 'kitchen sink' recipe syndrome.

Lately I've been concentrating on perfecting my ordinary bitter, dry stout, oatmeal stout and my Rye Ale. All very simple recipes that taste great and everyone seems to love them.

I have 2 regular house beers, my SNPA clone and my Wit Beer. I recently changed the wit beer recipe after getting feedback from a competition, but I really can't taste the difference by much. I try to keep a couple of these on hand at all times (though I'm out of one right now and on the last keg of the other). I'll brew them back to back sometimes to reuse the yeast cake and I think it helps me keep my process down. I find that my efficiencies on these beers are fairly consistent. I'll brew new recipes and styles about every 2-3 brews though to keep a little variety down. Over the years, I have several recipes that I'll go back to and make again and again, just not very frequently.

I'm thinking of adding 3 more regulars into the line up but not until I build a bigger kegerator and pick up some more cornies.

I'm working on nailing down a house recipe pale ale also. Once I get some good consistency on it, I plan to start experimenting with different hops.

I figure that will be a good way to learn the intricacies of different varieties, since the hops will be the only variation between batches.

I need to reclaim the family name, I make Irish Red Ales every few brews. I finally made it almost perfectly and my notes could have used some more detail a few batches ago. So Im starting to think better notes make better beer.