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JoeDokes

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I am ready to do my first brew without a kit but I want to have a list of grains and malts and what flavors they impart plus a yeast chart would be awesome aswell... As you all know there is an unlimited ingredient list for brewing I just don't want to fly blind
 
Look for a recipe of a beer style you like, with good feedback, right here on HBT (recipe section). No need at this point to compound your own recipe from scratch.
 
I agree that you shouldn't be writing recipes until you've made enough kits or other people's recipes that you understand what different malts do to the finished beer. Then, rather than going completely off on your own, tweak existing recipes by increasing or taking out this or that malt and see what the differences are.
 
Look for a recipe of a beer style you like, with good feedback, right here on HBT (recipe section). No need at this point to compound your own recipe from scratch.

There's really no beer I don't like lol but I will look so far it looks like they are all grain brews and I don't have the equipment to do all grain so is there a page that has extract brewing recipes?
 
I agree that you shouldn't be writing recipes until you've made enough kits or other people's recipes that you understand what different malts do to the finished beer. Then, rather than going completely off on your own, tweak existing recipes by increasing or taking out this or that malt and see what the differences are.

Meh, I started with recipes of my own creation(Ive never made kits or used other peoples recipes). There were a few duds here and there but frankly my first beer I ever created is still one of my favorites. Ive tweaked it here and there as I have become more knowledgeable and experienced but its still basically the same.

I just looked at a few recipes of the a style I was looking for to get a feel of what was supposed to be there and then created my own.
 
I use the book Designing Great Beers.
That, and a spreadsheet.
 
Not all recipes in the recipe section are all-grain. Although the majority is, there are really good extract recipes in there (check column 1 for the type). Anyway, enough material there to start out as a base, upon which you can build or tailor and tweak to your heart's content. Some of the all-grain ones can be easily converted to extract with specialty grain steep or mini mash. You really should check into doing mini mashes using a large pot in a pre-heated oven. Lauter (strain) through a colander or strainer. 90% of the beers (probably more) can be made well with mini mashes.

Lots of the recipes on Brew Toad and similar sites are "mutt" recipes, so beware for those. Once you see a few recipes for a similar beer you will see which are real and which are "mutt" concoctions. Mutt meaning (wrongly) converted, (wrongly) implemented, etc.

I typically don't brew many recipes as they are, either. I started tweaking and buying loose (specialty) grains after my first kit. There's always something I want to change, be it the yeast, hops, some specialty malts, or even the base malts. That's what makes homebrewing so wonderful!
 
If you aren't certain what to brew, consider what would do well for the season. Assuming you are in a temperate zone North of the equator, and don't have a fermentation chamber set up, I would recommend something easily brewed with heat tolerant yeast - which pretty much means either a weizen or a saison. Fortunately saisons are both flexible and dominated by yeast character, so if it is a style that appeals to you, it should be no problem to find an extract based recipe for one.

On the other hand, if you are in the Southern hemisphere, or have good temperature control, your options open up considerably. In the former case, something suited for late winter or early spring should be considered. In the latter, you can choose more or less anything, though a summer or early fall beer would make the most sense.

Of course, there are some things which are suited for any time of year (if you have the right temperature control for fermenting it). A pale ale or brown ale is pretty much general-purpose, if they are styles you enjoy.

Beyond that, I would say, browse the recipes here and at similar sites until you find something that catches your interest. If all else fails, you can try the following (all measurements in US measures, convert as convenient):

Flemique Pale (Belgian Pale Ale)

6.5 lbs pale LME
1 lb. 45L crystal malt
1/2 lb. Vienna malt
1/2 lb. Victory malt
2.5 oz. Hallertau (4.5% AAU) pellets, First Wort Hopping
your choice of Belgian ale yeast - I recommend either Belgian Golden Ale yeast (White Labs liquid yeast WLP570) , Mangrove Jack Dry Belgian Ale Yeast M27, or Belgian Abbey Yeast (Wyeast 1214)
expected OG - 1.050, FG - 1.013, ABV 4.8%, bitterness - 26 IBU, color - 12 SRM


Heat 2.5 gallons of water to 165F. Add crushed speciality grains and hops in mesh bags to water, steep for 20 minutes. Remove grain and hop bags, bring water to boiling and stir in LME. Boil wort for one hour. Top up water to 5 gallons. Cool 75F or cooler, pitch yeast.
 
I agree that you shouldn't be writing recipes until you've made enough kits or other people's recipes that you understand what different malts do to the finished beer. Then, rather than going completely off on your own, tweak existing recipes by increasing or taking out this or that malt and see what the differences are.

Meh, I started with recipes of my own creation(Ive never made kits or used other peoples recipes). There were a few duds here and there but frankly my first beer I ever created is still one of my favorites. Ive tweaked it here and there as I have become more knowledgeable and experienced but its still basically the same.

I just looked at a few recipes of the a style I was looking for to get a feel of what was supposed to be there and then created my own.

The idea of talking beginners away from making recipes it that without some knowledge a beginner might think it a good idea to make a Chocolate Brown ale using 5 pounds of Chocolate malt. Or decide they want a malty flavor and make a beer with 75% crystal malt. Not everyone will take baby steps like taking a proven recipe and make small tweaks to it.
 
Like I've said I've done a few kits four total and I'm ready to start working on my first from scratch extract brew but I'm unsure what brew has what's is there a chart the kinda explains what brew types have what to define the kinda brew it is
 
No charts, per se, but the BJCP style guide gives a good deal of advice on what ingredients are used in a given style. Needless to say, any general exposition on the subject is going to be broad rather than prescriptive, as there are as many approaches to brewing as there are brewers, but certain styles are defined as much by their ingredients as anything. For example, a Munich or Vienna lager can be expected to have a high-kilned/toasted base malt appropriate for the style; a dry stout will almost always have a significant amount of roasted barley as an adjunct; Belgian ales will have a Belgian yeast strain; a Bohemian Pilsener will have considerable hop character, usually European noble hops (especially Saaz); and so forth. These are definitive qualities of the styles, and while exceptions do exist, it is rare to try and brew those styles in other ways.

On the other hand, some styles are almost equally defined by their experimental qualities. IIPAs are a wide open field for mixing different combinations of hops. Brown ales, especially American browns, can have a wide variety of flavor profiles. Belgian ales are famed for their combinations of unusual malts, adjuncts and yeasts. If you aren't trying specifically to follow a particular traditional style, there is always room for the unconventional.

(I will make one caveat about the BJCP style guides: the 2015 edition, while considerably expanded, is a bit unwieldy for a casual reader, as it is a lot more formal than the 2008 edition, and changes a lot of the nomenclature. I would stick to the webified 2008 edition for the time being unless you intend to actually get your judging cert.)
 
The way I found what different ingredients contribute was to start by brewing SMaSH recipes and building on them.

Single Malt and Single Hop
 
Heat 2.5 gallons of water to 165F. Add crushed specialty grains and hops in mesh bags to water, steep for 20 minutes. Remove grain and hop bags, bring water to boiling and stir in LME. Boil wort for one hour. Top up water to 5 gallons. Cool 75F or cooler, pitch yeast.

Just to clarify the point: I gave this suggestion on the assumption that you don't have a 5+ gallon BK. If you can do a full boil, you'll get better results. Alternately, if you can only do a half boil, you can boil half the ME for fifty minutes, and add the remainder for the last 10 minutes.
 
I agree that you shouldn't be writing recipes until you've made enough kits or other people's recipes that you understand what different malts do to the finished beer. Then, rather than going completely off on your own, tweak existing recipes by increasing or taking out this or that malt and see what the differences are.

The idea of talking beginners away from making recipes it that without some knowledge a beginner might think it a good idea to make a Chocolate Brown ale using 5 pounds of Chocolate malt. Or decide they want a malty flavor and make a beer with 75% crystal malt. Not everyone will take baby steps like taking a proven recipe and make small tweaks to it.

While true, having to dump and learn from experience is a great tool. You can tell somebody no all you want, but sometimes unless they do it they don't learn.


Frankly, some people don't even learn then.
 
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