Steps to coming up with new recipes

I am looking to do my first AG brew and want to make my own recipe to start with and play with flavorings. Where do I start to get blend of grains to mash and pair that with hops and yeast? Should I use one grain and yeast to get flavors individually?

unionrdr said:

Look at the AG recipes in the recipe forum link in the red strip at the top of the page. It'll give you some ideas as to what grains & yeast are used to brew various styles.

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+1 to perusing existing recipes but you can also go through the BJCP style guidelines for what you want to brew. These guidelines will point out typical ingredients that are used in the style for grain to hops, typical gravity as well as descriptions of the beer, all which can assist in recipe creation.

I would also recommend the books Brewing Classic Styles and Designing Great Beers

Might check out Brewing Classic Styles for some guidelines. A resource I like to use is Brewmasters Warehouse. First pick a style like American Pale or Amber, then spend some time browsing all their on-line recipes. Many recipes posted there are from members of this forum.

You'll start to get a feel for what others do within the style. Then you can use their brew builder to build a recipe of your own. When you are done you can also click buy now to get your exact recipe bundled and shipped. Be sure to set and save the style so you can see the guidelines and common ingredients from the BJCP style guide.

Can also see the BJCP guidelines here: http://www.bjcp.org/styles04/

GL

duboman said:

I would also recommend the books Brewing Classic Styles and Designing Great Beers

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Second the recommendation for "Designing Great Beers". It's an absolutely awesome book and resource for understanding what goes in to each style. It contains a ton of information on how to develop a recipe, including details on grains, hops, yeast, and processes. It does have one fairly massive omission - there is zero mention of Belgian beers anywhere in the book. But otherwise, it covers all the major styles.

$13.50 on Amazon: Designing Great Beers. Worth every penny.

Brewing software like Beesmith can also help since they calculate all the number like OG,IBU, ect for you and also give you the style guidlines.

Me personally? I'm like a beer chef. I just throw grains and hops together in BeerSmith that sound like they would go well together. Then I choose a yeast that I feel like might add an extra dimension of complexity to the beer. Sometimes I like to stick to style, but mostly I shoot from the hip and don't care what the style guidelines say. For example, I haven't done it yet, but I've been toying around with fermenting a stout grain bill with hefeweizen yeast and adding chocolate to secondary and see if I can't make something that's reminiscent of a banana split.

Two things got me going:

1: Beersmith/some kind of brewing softwear. I personally love beersmith and it helps immensely not having to do all that math.

2: Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels: It's boring at times but super easy to understand with each style broken up into sections with helpful little charts to work off of when determining how much of a certain grain to use.

nukebrewer said:

Me personally? I'm like a beer chef. I just throw grains and hops together in BeerSmith that sound like they would go well together. Then I choose a yeast that I feel like might add an extra dimension of complexity to the beer. Sometimes I like to stick to style, but mostly I shoot from the hip and don't care what the style guidelines say. For example, I haven't done it yet, but I've been toying around with fermenting a stout grain bill with hefeweizen yeast and adding chocolate to secondary and see if I can't make something that's reminiscent of a banana split.

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How did you know I was a chef? Where did you start when testing your blends? Just pick out of the blue with ratios in mind? What research did you do in picking your yeasts?

chefrand15 said:

How did you know I was a chef? Where did you start when testing your blends? Just pick out of the blue with ratios in mind? What research did you do in picking your yeasts?

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Well, before I started beer chefin' it, I mostly stuck to style, so I knew approximate ratios to make a beer to style. Then I tarted tweaking those ratios, adding other things (chocolate, vanilla, cinnamon, to name a few). After that is when I started toying with the idea of using stylistically unorthodox yeast. I think one of my next few brews is going to be the banana split stout. For me it's just a matter of experimentation and seeing what happens. 9 times out of 10, even if it's not what you're going for it's still good beer.

First thing you need to figure out is what you want the end beer to taste like. Go from there.

nukebrewer said:

Well, before I started beer chefin' it, I mostly stuck to style, so I knew approximate ratios to make a beer to style. Then I tarted tweaking those ratios, adding other things (chocolate, vanilla, cinnamon, to name a few). After that is when I started toying with the idea of using stylistically unorthodox yeast. I think one of my next few brews is going to be the banana split stout. For me it's just a matter of experimentation and seeing what happens. 9 times out of 10, even if it's not what you're going for it's still good beer.

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So you found a recipe you liked and then tweaked it? I guess I am looking for a place or book that lists the grains and yeasts along with flavor characteristics.

I have brewed a few Northern Brewer kits and I like that you can access the recipes online. I have a copy of Beersmith 2 and do some experimenting by looking at a recipe, checking my inventory and deciding what might make something I like. Sometimes I can alter the recipe to what I have on hand and sometimes I have to order grains, hops or yeast etc.

I have not done anything outrageous so I have liked them all.

One of my best was a brown ale that was made from left over grains and hops. I used Beersmith to make sure it was in range and balanced.

I have also used other recipes and made minor changes to suit what I thought would make it more to my tastes.

chefrand15 said:

So you found a recipe you liked and then tweaked it? I guess I am looking for a place or book that lists the grains and yeasts along with flavor characteristics.

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Most of my ingredient choices came from the BJCP guidelines. They don't list much for ingredients, but between that and the flavor, appearance and taste profile descriptions, it's enough to make educated decisions about ingredient choices. It's hard to explain what it is I'm doing, but I guess the easiest way to put is that based on input from HBT, personal experience and the BJCP guidelines, I feel like I have kind of an auto tune when it comes to recipe design. If it sounds yummy and it wont be way too sweet or way too hoppy or what have you, I'll brew it. One thing I will say is that if it's my first time brewing a particular style, I always stick to style guidelines. The only time I ever used someone else's recipe was for my very first batch. As a chef, I'm sure it will come natural in time for you to put together a recipe based on whim. As far as books, the only one I've ever owned is How to Brew by John Palmer. I'm sure the the books that others have been mentioning in this thread are excellent resources. Good luck with your recipe design adventures. Cheers!

Look at recipes that are from brew shops, as those are solid, and not all recipes on the forum are good ones. Research what the different grains add, compare the amounts to clones of beers you know so you understand how much is used for certain effects. Hops comes down to IBU rating and the aroma/flavor, and that you can find descriptions for. Again, use a recipe as a comparison. Yeast is same for looking up profiles.

Big thing to do is to play. Take a recipe you know, tweak it with a change in mind, and see if it worked or not. Learn by doing. May lead to a lot of hit and miss, but it worked really good for me.

Kaotica said:

Might check out Brewing Classic Styles for some guidelines. A resource I like to use is Brewmasters Warehouse. First pick a style like American Pale or Amber, then spend some time browsing all their on-line recipes. Many recipes posted there are from members of this forum.

You'll start to get a feel for what others do within the style. Then you can use their brew builder to build a recipe of your own. When you are done you can also click buy now to get your exact recipe bundled and shipped. Be sure to set and save the style so you can see the guidelines and common ingredients from the BJCP style guide.

Can also see the BJCP guidelines here: http://www.bjcp.org/styles04/

GL

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What ways can we keep the temps down does little heaters work I was told they do from my local Homebrew supplier

chefrand15 said:

I am looking to do my first AG brew and want to make my own recipe to start with and play with flavorings. Where do I start to get blend of grains to mash and pair that with hops and yeast? Should I use one grain and yeast to get flavors individually?

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For my first AG recipe, I did a simple pale ale using one base malt and one hop so I could get used to the process. Now that I have most of my brew day regimen worked out, I refer to the recipes on Zymurgy, BYO, and HBT. I tweak them where I see fit.

The two things that helped me the most were listening to podcasts about beer brewing and buying beer smith.

The podcasts, specifically Beer Smith Home Brewing and The Brewing Network presents The Jamil Show, taught me a lot about what goes into building a beer recipe. I based a lot of my early AG brews on Jamil's recipes, and then started changing things up to get what I wanted. Books are great, but reading them on your commute can be a challenge .

Once I had the baseline there, I used beer smith to make sure my grain bill an hops met the gravity, color, IBU ratios for the style I wanted. Beer Smith has slider bars for these, so it's really easy to figure out your targets (oops, not enough wheat/too much wheat for that 5 gal batch of Hefeweizen).

Finally, it seems like you're still a little nervous after reading some of the other comments - especially related to yeast and hop choices. If that's the case, try a smaller batch your first time with a recipe, or split your wort into multiple fermenters so you can try two different yeasts. If you are really ambitious and have two boil kettles, split your wort and do separate boils with different hops. I've done this a lot, because I do 10 gallon batches and own 6 gallon carboys.

At the end of the day, beginning AG brewing is all about experimentation and personal preference. The key is to figure out what you love to drink (E.g. Your favorite commercial beers) and then try to make something similar. You dial in your recipes after a few brews And then you have a beer that you love!

One final comment - figure out your equipment layout early. I don't have a fixed place to brew, and I always burn extra hours on setup and breakdown because of it.

Happy brewing!

Another thing you can try as part of the learning curve and developing an understanding of ingredients is to try simple SMaSH Recipes (single malt, single hop)

For example for a pale ale you may mash simple 2 row or Maris and then hop with only cascade. This type of brewing focuses your flavors and palette to learn how specific ingredients effect flavor. You can brew these as smaller batches as well.

If you are friendly with your LHBS you can also ask to simply sample some grain-chew on it, get a feel for the taste it imparts, you'll be amazed at how much flavor you can derive from chomping on a couple pieces of grain!

Try the following link for more info about grain. You can find yeast info at the White Labs and Wyeast web sites.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Grain

nukebrewer said:

For example, I haven't done it yet, but I've been toying around with fermenting a stout grain bill with hefeweizen yeast and adding chocolate to secondary and see if I can't make something that's reminiscent of a banana split.

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I highly recommend you try this recipe! Fullsteam, a local brewery, has made almost this exact beer and bills it as a moonpie stout called Working Man's Lunch. The original is pretty good, but the imperial version, Overtime, is delicious.

/End thread jack.

wan2ride said:

I highly recommend you try this recipe! Fullsteam, a local brewery, has made almost this exact beer and bills it as a moonpie stout called Working Man's Lunch. The original is pretty good, but the imperial version, Overtime, is delicious.

/End thread jack.

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Awesome! I am even more excited to try this now. Thanks for letting me know.

jman80 said:

What ways can we keep the temps down does little heaters work I was told they do from my local Homebrew supplier

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Yes, just reverse the polarity...and run.

Search for swamp cooler & fermentation chamber. One is a big tub that you put your fermenter in and fill with water then ice to desired temp. The other is a modified refrigerator.

Bithead said:

Search for swamp cooler & fermentation chamber. One is a big tub that you put your fermenter in and fill with water then ice to desired temp. The other is a modified refrigerator.

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Bithead, you are too kind.

I've never made my own recipes, and the reason is that I don't know what combinations will work to get what flavors. I don't understand that, because I don't know the ingredients. I think that is the first step to being able to make a recipe- to know the ingredients. I plan on doing a number of small batch SMaSH brews so I can explore what the different kinds of grain and hops will do when made into beer. Basically, I've decided I need to do a systematic exploration of the ingredients involved so I can do my own mix-and-match.

If you want some straight forward descriptions of ingredients, try these links.

Malt characteristics: http://www.beercolor.com/malt_descriptions.htm
Hop chart (among others on this site): http://byo.com/resources/hops

I recommend picking something basic. It might sound boring, but I'm a case in point. I tried a complex Belgian as my first beer (ie I thought pale ale was too easy and boring). The Belgian was a mess, awful, almost undrinkable, and to this day I have no idea why.

Since then I have managed several excellent Pale and Brown ales by keeping the grain bill basic (3 or 4 malts), one or two hops that I know I like, and basic yeasts like nottingham, s-05, wlp001, and wyeast 1028.

Several were right off this site with very minor tweaks to make them my own. Yoopers House Pale and MysticMead's Raging Red are two of my favorites.

Im new to recipes and have been basically brewing the pre packaged stuff i.e coopers muntons etc....
Can anybody tell me the steps and basic rules to follow. I ve checked the recipes forum and noticed people talking about IBU'S and what not.

evrose said:

Second the recommendation for "Designing Great Beers". It's an absolutely awesome book and resource for understanding what goes in to each style. $13.50 on Amazon: Designing Great Beers. Worth every penny.

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^^^^^^

iceman1988 said:

Im new to recipes and have been basically brewing the pre packaged stuff i.e coopers muntons etc....
Can anybody tell me the steps and basic rules to follow. I ve checked the recipes forum and noticed people talking about IBU'S and what not.

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Hey there. Sounds like you are incredibly new to this. If you are working with pre-packaged beers as you call it (extract with infused hops), then creating recipes is not where you should be focusing. You should look into extract brews that use hops additions and steeping grains to furtehr your brewing abilities with established recipes.

Trying not to sound insulting, it is not the intent. If you are uncertain of what "IBU" is (measurement on bitterness in beers) then you should do some basic beer research and get familiar with all of the lingo.

Get a copy of "Designing Great Beers". Great resource and not a bad primer into things like IBUs. The only thing is that it tends towards all-grain brewing.

Cheers!

Sometimes your beer is dictated by the product you have on hand.

I've never done a bad beer. Sometimes a little weak, a little strong, a little sweet, a little hoppy, but never bad (except for the time I used rice)

My standard ale came from one of these experiances - hey, got 5 pounds of pale malt, pound of 60L Crystal, 2 pounds of DME, pound of flaked wheat, couple ounce of Northern brewer, and a 1/2 ounce of not-sure-what hops, but think its cascades or fuggles. Let's see what this makes.

Sweet nectar of the Gods!

Thanks for your sugestions. I picked up a homebrew book today-"brewing beers like those you buy-by dave line". Its pretty decent and very helpful. It has detailed recipes for some of the worlds most popular beers.I'll have a stab at one of the Pilsners.How wrong could it go