Question for seasoned brewer

just wondering how you know what ingredients go well together, such as hops and other items you might add to your recipe. Is it just a trial and error thing or what? Thanks

Go to the recipes part of this site and look for 5 stars.
Your best chance to find an awesome recipe right there. Duplicate, clone, add, subtract.... its hard to go wrong.

How to Brew - By John Palmer - Formulating Recipes and Solutions

Actually maybe you should begin here....http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html

Ok I was just wondering if you guys came up with recipes right off the top of your head or if you did go by recipes and alter in little ways

Well if you don't understand about the ingrediants and how they work together, then slopping things together is a bit of a waste of time and money.

It's like cooking, you need to have an understanding of the indrients. Otherwise you end up doing some like throwing a cup of salt into your recipe..That comes with brewing experience...just like cooking experience...reading about the ingredients in your recipe...looking at other recipes especially ones of the same style to see why one person choose to use one malt over another...

I started with kits, and reading, and learning how to use brewing software, which I learned by plugging the ingredients from the kits into. And reading about the different ones in it...then I started brewing set recipes from here, or books..then I started formulateing my own recipes...

THere's some great books on the subject such as Amazon.com: Brewing Classic Styles: 80 Winning Recipes Anyone Can Brew: Jamil Zainasheff, John Palmer: Books

Amazon.com: Designing Great Beers: The Ultimate Guide to Brewing Classic Beer Styles: Ray Daniels: Books

Seriously considering the typical extract recipe costs around 40-50 bucks you sort of wanna know what you are doing before you start slopping ingredients together willy nilly....

I think you need to brew a few recipes to get to know the ingredients better and once you do that you'll figure out which ones provide you with your favorite blends to make great beer.I just did my first recipe off the top of my head in a HBS. I learned what to use by doing different kits and learning about the different ingredients.

I don't consider myself very seasoned with only eight years brewing. I started with proven recipes and made sure I could make them exactly as they were supposed to be made. While I was making these recipes I studied the categories of beer and the styles within each category. Then you can figure out what you can alter and still keep the recipe in the same category. The Palmer book is a must, and I'm currently enjoying "Designing Great Beers" by Ray Daniels. Brewing can get pretty technical, but I'm trying to keep it fun while learning as much as possible.

velotech said:

I don't consider myself very seasoned with only eight years brewing. I started with proven recipes and made sure I could make them exactly as they were supposed to be made. While I was making these recipes I studied the categories of beer and the styles within each category. Then you can figure out what you can alter and still keep the recipe in the same category. The Palmer book is a must, and I'm currently enjoying "Designing Great Beers" by Ray Daniels. Brewing can get pretty technical, but I'm trying to keep it fun while learning as much as possible.

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Oh yeah, that was another thing I did, read the style guide info for the beers I was drinking and studying...

http://www.bjcp.org/2008styles/catdex.php

Good point!

Lots of reading. Drinking different styles and see what they are made of. Study recipes for those styles. Sometimes software can help, but I think most people first understand how beer tastes, and then they decide what they want THEIRS to taste like, and figure out how to get that flavor from all of the studying they have done.

Of course you could always just throw some apricots into your wort and see what happens, but unless you got more money than you know what to do with, you are asking for 5 gallons of toilet rinse.

Remember, that most everything has been done before, or at least similar. Last spring I was wanting to make a Spruce beer, with spruce tips. Something I caught in a brewing book. Turns out some people here actually have done it, and they gave advice on how much, etc., that likely could have saved me from making crap beer (if I'd actually brewed it).

Did you have a specific idea? I'm curious to know what it is.

mania83 said:

just wondering how you know what ingredients go well together, such as hops and other items you might add to your recipe. Is it just a trial and error thing or what? Thanks

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There is no substitute for experience. Reading helps, and sitting at the feet of a veteran mentor is a first-rate method ("You have much to learn, grassHOPper..."), but you don't really know until you experience each ingredient.

Some stuff is easy. Most malts are listed with recommended grist percentages. You can get some, taste it (very important!), and guesstimate how much would be appropriate in a given beer. Books like Designing Great Beers are invaluable for starting points.

But really, find a local brew club and join yourself at the hip to an experienced brewer. You can learn a lot by quietly watching a master at work.

Bob

The best way to learn is to brew other people's recipes and do variations. You can also read a bunch of recipes and compare the ingredient lists. Each beer in a style will have similar ingredients, that's what makes the style.

Where you see a great deal of variation (such as hopping for IPAs), you'll know there is room for experimentation.

When no recipe uses, say 2 pounds of peat-smoked malt, there is a good reason.