Creating a balanced beer

I'm trying to come up with a porter recipe using Beersmith. I'm going to be doing an extract with specialty grains (I haven't ventured into the partial mash/AG arena yet). How do I know what makes a balanced beer? In Beersmith, you can adjust IBUs, ABV, etc, via sliders based on the style. Is that a good measure? Should I be looking at some other factors?

I'd start by listening to the Jamil Show episode on the style you're wanting to brew.
http://thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/The-Jamil-Show/search/porter
The early ones, not necessarily the CYBI shows.

Beersmith is great help to create a balanced beer. First, when you choose the style, read over the "details" of it. It'll tell you what flavors to look for, what malts to use, and so on.

And balance is a bit tricky. In Beersmith, look at the right information under your OG. The SG/IBU ratio will be there. Very few beers, even those that are balanced, are .500! A beer like an IPA will be .800-1.100 for example, while a cream ale will be more like .335. A porter will be .400 to about .660 or so.

Also, when you choose your "style", you get the OG, color, IBUs, etc, to make the beer to style. That really helps!

+1 to what yooper said.

I'd like to add though that sometimes a beer can fit in the style guidelines and still be a little unbalanced. for malty beers like porters, don't use too many finishing or flavor addition hops, stick mostly to bittering

edb23 said:

+1 to what yooper said.

I'd like to add though that sometimes a beer can fit in the style guidelines and still be a little unbalanced. for malty beers like porters, don't use too many finishing or flavor addition hops, stick mostly to bittering

Click to expand...

The last point, about finishing and flavoring hops is excellent. With porters and stouts, the character of the malts used in it are what generally should shine through in both flavor and aroma, and late hop additions can really hinder that (of course unless you're part of the hop head beer craze here in Cali. They go nuts with the hops even with a lot of porters and other dark beers).

I also like to refer to this chart as a very loose guide when determining how hoppy I want my brew:
Of course, the IBUs can vary greatly based on the formula for obtaining them (rager vs tinseth) so like I said, a very loose guide.

Awesome tips everyone! Thank you!

Thanks everyone.. useful thread for me.

The guide is good for ideas. I like to look at my bu:gu ratio

Also, look at a lot of different recipes for the style you are brewing. You will notice a lot of similarity. Just like when I cook, I look at a lot of recipes and then do my own take on them. Once you have a general idea, then use brewing software to put the recipe together and see how the numbers turn out.