Books on recipe creation

[tbayav8er]

Hi Everyone,

I've only done extract brewing so far, but now I'm planning to get a brewzilla and get into all-grain. I don't particularly want to follow other recipes, but instead, I'd like to make my own. Are there any books you'd recommend for recipe creation for different styles of beer? I'd like to enter some beer competitions, so I'll have to stick to certain guidelines of whichever types of beer I'm entering into competitions. Thanks!

 

[grampamark]

“Designing Great Beers” by Ray Daniels and “Brewing Classic Styles” by John Palmer are good starting points for anyone wanting to create recipes.

The use of brewing software, such as Brewer’s Friend or Beersmith, will make creating recipes much easier. I use Beersmith, and the “new recipe” feature makes combining ingredients and comparing the resulting recipe with the current BJCP style guidelines very easy since the guidelines are just a click, or tap, away within the app.

Welcome to HBT and good luck with your venture into all grain brewing. You will find this board to be a great resource.

 

[3 Dawg Night]

Daniels' book is a great resource. "Brewing Classic Styles" by Palmer & Zainasheff will give you a good starting point for almost any style. I also recommend browsing the award-winning recipes on the AHA website. Some of them are uber-complicated, but you can survey several years' worth of recipes to pick up on general trends for a style.

 

[cmac62]

Radical brewing and brew like a monk are also great books when looking into recipe design.

 

[kevin58]

"Mastering Homebrew" by Randy Mosher is one of the best recipe creation books around. Just looking at someone elses award winning recipes tells you nothing. You want to know what all of the ingredients do and how they each react and interact with each other. Mosher lays this out in graphic detail.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

As a follow-up to the Mastering Homebrew recommendation, some of the graphics from the book can be found here: Randy Mosher.com - Mastering Homebrew .

There is also the idea of a "base recipe" for a style. A number of books talk about base recipes for APAs and/or IPAs. Simple Homebrewing has a similar idea with recipe templates (which cover more styles).

Here at Homebrew Talk, @Dgallo offered a base recipe for single hop pale ales. There's also this (base stout recipe). There's likely to be other base recipe ideas (either in print or in forums).

 

[CascadesBrewer]

As a follow-up to the Mastering Homebrew recommendation, some of the graphics from the book can be found here: Randy Mosher.com - Mastering Homebrew .

I think I need to pick up that book. I am a huge fan of Randy Mosher.

There is also the idea of a "base recipe" for a style. A number of books talk about base recipes for APAs and/or IPAs. Simple Homebrewing has a similar idea with recipe templates (which cover more styles).

I think this is a pretty powerful approach. It was one of the things that stuck out from me from "Simple Homebrewing" and I wish they expanded on it. Gordon Strong does something similar in his "Modern Homebrew Recipes" book where he offers options for recipes. I have it in my mind to write some articles based on this concept in the future.

It is generally how I brew many of my beers. I know that I can tweak a Saison a little by adding in some Munich, Aromatic or Rye, or I can get a little different character from a Pale Ale with a different yeast selection. While I have a general hop schedule for my house IPA, I almost always tweak up the hops I use.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

For those looking for an update to the data in Designing Great Beers ...

For updated data, there is an spreadsheet (over in /r/homebrewing [link]). Many of the older winning recipes can still be found via the "way back machine" [link]. AHA membership will get you access to newer styles as well as recent silver and bronze winner recipes.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

For those looking for an update to the data in Designing Great Beers ...

The Mean Brews channel has some interesting videos that follow a similar approach. He analyzes award winning recipes for a style looking at trends and core ingredients. Each video then ends with a sample recipe based off the data. https://www.youtube.com/c/MeanBrews/videos

Also, David Heath has several videos on creating recipes for styles that are quite good. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeY07JqsrXM9A_49FjwsR9QKOaq1cdAr5