Best References for Building Recipes

[lpstudio18]

So I've brewed several batches, the last few being all-grain, and I'm wanting to get into formulating my own recipes. Unfortunately, I just don't have the confidence or knowledge about grain types, hop varieties, etc, to do this well. I was considering buying "Designing Great Beers" by Ray Daniels and "Brewing Classic Styles" by Jamil, but have heard mixed things (which seems to always be the case with brewing-related info). Before I drop 30 bucks on books, is there somewhere else I should be looking for concise info on building recipes from scratch?

 

[aeviaanah]

I use BJCP guidelines to see what the style calls for. I then take note of things like English malt, caramel toffee notes and banana esters. The key words help determine which malts, hops and yeast to use. When exploring your ingredients you will see these kinds of words in the description. Once you get a feel of what style you want to brew head over to brewtoad.com and create a recipe. This will give you preset parameters per style and probably correlate with BJCP. Add your ingredients and be aware of the values such as OG/FG, IBU and color.

Another useful tool is to look at others recipes and see what they have in common. Pick and choose what you like from several different recipes. Fluctuate the ingredients to suite your desires and to make your recipe unique.

 

[aeviaanah]

You can google search any hop or malt to get more information including which styles they are commonly used in, how much to use and what flavors they will impart in your recipe.