Creating New Recipes

I am relatively new to brewing, and just recently did an all grain blonde ale. I created my recipe on beersmith. Having minimal experience I just tried to stay within the style guidelines on beersmith. Does anyone have any tips or methods to creating your own recipes??

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0937381500/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
and look at other recipes that have worked well...there are a lot here!

Don't over do it on the first few brews and then you'll have your system dialed in to your tastes. You'll soon learn what you like and don't like.

Keeping to style guidelines is a good idea to start with. You can always tweek it later

The style guidelines are great, and they generally keep you pretty honest with regard to balance and color. What they don't provide is a list of style-appropriate ingredients. Do some research on the style you want to brew in order to get a feel for what would make a good ingredient list for your custom recipe.

According to the BeerSmith numbers alone, you can make a perfect American IPA using 100% British 2-row and a big 60 minute addition of Goldings hops, but you'd miss the mark completely for an AIPA with regard to flavor, aroma, and feel.

ONce you make enough beers you will really pick up on the characteristics of the different malts. You will know what you like, what you don't like so much and what you would like to see together. I tried a little biscuit in my IIPA yesterday because I have really grown fond of biscuit and I wanted to see what just a hint of it would do in this hoppy beer. It could be a horrible choice, but the only way to know is to try.

I don't know if I can call them my own recipes, but I evolve beers rather than make new recipes. I brew according to recipe, and then once I taste it I add or subtract things to my taste. I am on my 5th batch of porter, it started out as a recipe in a book, and over the next 4 generations I added changed or took away ingredients. I just put it in the kegerator to carbonate on Sunday, and I think it is going to be the best one to date.

At this point I guess I could call it my own recipe, but it is not something I came up with from scratch.

What Beerrific recommended (Get a copy of Designing Great Beers). Also keep it simple. Mixing ingredients is like mixing paint, too many colors and it all turns gray.

I also recommend after reading Designing Great Beers you do a few recipes by hand to better understand how the quantities and calculations of each ingredient influences the properties of the beer.

Oh yea, have fun!!

Dr Malt