How do I get started creating a recipe?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

jetmac

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 16, 2010
Messages
1,110
Reaction score
38
Location
Mcdonough
There are thousands of recipes to be found in print and on the web. How does one learn to create a recipe? Formal school, informal school, books, video, online? Anything specific?
 
What I'm doing is incremental stages. I started out with kits. Now I am buying kits and add what I think might be good in them, as well as reading, and learning about the different effects that all the ingredients you want to use will have on your beer. Eventually I will start trying different thing with all the left over grains and ingredients that I have from all the experiments with kits.
 
Read books (Designing Great Beers), brew, ask lots of questions (Club, HBT, and/or LHBS), and take good notes.

You should develop your pallet as well. Trying as many different beers from around the world.

I'm making only SMaSH Marris Otter/EKG, and Castle Pilsen/Saaz, until I learn them and my system.
 
It's easy. Try this:

Look over these charts (and other you may find):
http://***********/resources/grains (hops and yeast are on left nav bar)

Look over style guidelines:
http://www.bjcp.org/2008styles/catdex.php

Look around at other recipes to see what people are doing - however, just because people are doing it a certain way doesn't mean it's good. Do what you think may be good.

Also, I highly recommend brewing software. I like BeerSmith personally. It also has good info in it, and makes it much easier to make a recipe. Just clicking buttons to change amounts and adding things, the estimated gravity, abv, ibu, all change. It also tells you percentages for the grain bill. Very helpful.

This way has served me very well. The only recipe that hasn't been my own was my first brew ever - only because I wanted something that was proven incase I screwed anything up. Good luck.
 
I like using beersmith. I took a blonde ale from Radical Brewing and put that in beersmith. I then changed the recipe to an American Pale Ale and made everything but the colour fit the new style.

For that particular brew I also mixed it up a bit. German style beer, with American level hops, so naturally I used German hops!

Even small things such as changing hops is a good place to start, but at the end of the day the worst that can happen is the beer won't be great (I've yet to have a homebrew that taste awful, even kits that are mostly sugar).

Ask yourself this question though: You make beer and strangers on the internet make beer (that you have never tasted), who do you trust.
 
Hex said:
Read books (Designing Great Beers).

I'd also recommend this book. It does a good job of explaining what ingredients provide what characteristics and what is often found in certain styles.

Choose a style and make one then tweak from there.
 
I don't understand the point of SMaSH. It's pretty easy to figure out what base malts and munich or vienna are, as well as differences between hops.

Just read a lot of recipes, read descriptions of malts and adjuncts, and brew lots of beer.
 
AnOldUR said:
For me, brewing a bunch of SMaSH (single malt and single hop) beers to learn what the different ingredients contributed and then adding speciality grains into the mix.

Agreed. Its the same as composing a Sonata or other classical piece. First you create your bass line (base malts... Get it?) Then you add your tenor section (specialty grains), alto (hops), and soprano (yeast) until you're a drunk Chopin.

Gotta learn the basics before you can create a masterpiece. Sure you could read about brewing (in fact I encourage it), but it's no excuse for experiencing a fermented base malt firsthand.
 
I use tastybrew.com's calculator to figure out rough numbers for OG, color, and IBU. Use ingredients that sound right, and I brew the beer. It really isn't the rocket science it's cracked up to be.
 
I forgot to mention beersmith. Beersmith is one of the best investment I have made since I started brewing. I'm still learning it but it is fun to use, and the potential in what I could create is limitless.
 
I forgot to mention beersmith. Beersmith is one of the best investment I have made since I started brewing. I'm still learning it but it is fun to use, and the potential in what I could create is limitless.


Cool. I have this
 
Besides Beersmith and Designing Great Beers, my best tip is to do two things. One, go to the homebrew store and sample all the grains they have in bins. (Ask them first, and tell them what you're doing!). Taste how the base grains taste. Once you "know" two-row, you can really taste the difference in different grains. Chocolate malt is burnt, Vienna is sort of sweet, maris otter is "warm", etc. That really helps.

The next thing is to look at the recipes of some of your favorite beers. See what they have in common- maybe that's why you like them. I noticed that many of the beers I loved early on had willamette hops in them and crystal 40l. That was sort of an "Aha!" moment for me. Then, I looked at other recipes and noticed that I really liked Munich malt.

If you know you like Munich malt's "malty" flavor in a beer, then it's easy to craft a recipe showcasing that. If you know you love the citrusy goodness of cascade, that is another great place to start. Knowing what you like in a recipe can help you craft new recipes, while taking out what you don't like.

I now can make recipes based on Bob's input. He has a great palate, and he'll say, "I like this beer, but I wish it had a bit more bready-ness and a bit of a red color" and I'll make the next batch with those changes. It's really helpful if you can get some critique like that instead of "your beer is good. I like it". Constructive criticism helps!
 
Besides Beersmith and Designing Great Beers, my best tip is to do two things. One, go to the homebrew store and sample all the grains they have in bins. (Ask them first, and tell them what you're doing!). Taste how the base grains taste. Once you "know" two-row, you can really taste the difference in different grains. Chocolate malt is burnt, Vienna is sort of sweet, maris otter is "warm", etc. That really helps.

The next thing is to look at the recipes of some of your favorite beers. See what they have in common- maybe that's why you like them. I noticed that many of the beers I loved early on had willamette hops in them and crystal 40l. That was sort of an "Aha!" moment for me. Then, I looked at other recipes and noticed that I really liked Munich malt.

If you know you like Munich malt's "malty" flavor in a beer, then it's easy to craft a recipe showcasing that. If you know you love the citrusy goodness of cascade, that is another great place to start. Knowing what you like in a recipe can help you craft new recipes, while taking out what you don't like.

I now can make recipes based on Bob's input. He has a great palate, and he'll say, "I like this beer, but I wish it had a bit more bready-ness and a bit of a red color" and I'll make the next batch with those changes. It's really helpful if you can get some critique like that instead of "your beer is good. I like it". Constructive criticism helps!

Very helpful.

Who is Bob?
 
Back
Top