How to make your own recipes

[drat]

There is a lot of knowledge on this system and I've really found there to be great help and advice. Could anyone advise how one can learn how to start making one's own recipes? I'm still a noob all grain guy, but looking for sources for making my own recipes. This could be books, websites, etc.

Thanks in advance!

 

[traviswalken]

Ray Daniels Book designing great beers

 

[Kozzer]

Ray Daniels Book designing great beers

+1 - this is a great book!

 

[badlee]

Just look at other people's recipes, read up on what the individual ingredients bring to the brew, and then have a go. What's the worst that could happen? You make a bad beer and learn something.
The people on this forum are so amazingly cool, you just come up with something, post it and people will give you advice to the best of their ability.
That's how I did it
Cheers

 

[smccarter]

Just look at other people's recipes, read up on what the individual ingredients bring to the brew, and then have a go. What's the worst that could happen? You make a bad beer and learn something.
The people on this forum are so amazingly cool, you just come up with something, post it and people will give you advice to the best of their ability.
That's how I did it
Cheers

Is there really such a thing as a bad beer?

I've used books, the Internet, software, and have just come up with recipes. I've always been wrong with the style (label) I decide to label my recipes with... when I post here, I get torn apart.... "This is certainly not..." or "How can you say this is a ..."... kind of thing. But it's always drinkable beer.

I'm still learning myself and hope to get a few recipes together at some point. The problem is, I like to brew differently each time I do - add a pound of this grain, another oz of hops... dry hop a beer that I didn't dry hop the last time I brewed it. That kind of thing.

Personally - personally... meaning my opinion about what I do individually... I've gotten to the point that I just want to taste the difference in grain and hops, and I think I'm going to start using flavor additives like oak chips, spices, etc... in my next few beers just to see how they turn out.

I got to the point that I was very concerned with style guidelines. I just didn't (don't) have the experience yet to start worrying about style guidelines. I'll leave that for the brewmasters here on HBT. I just want to learn the art. It may take years and years.. and years... but I'm prepared to drink the beer as I go, so...

 

[SpeedYellow]

Here's my advice for learning grains:

1) Daniels is a good book. Doing searches here on HBT isn't useful because of the wide range of talent, taste, and descriptive abilities.
2) Try some SMASH brews.
3) Limit your malt bill to 3 grains unless you already understand exactly what the 4th will do for you.
4) Pick a style each year (Saison, German lager, stout, etc.) and brew mostly that style for the year.
5) Be very careful with non-base malts. IME, poor recipe formulation has been the cause of most bad batches.

 

[kh54s10]

Here's my advice for learning grains:

1) Daniels is a good book. Doing searches here on HBT isn't useful because of the wide range of talent, taste, and descriptive abilities.
2) Try some SMASH brews.
3) Limit your malt bill to 3 grains unless you already understand exactly what the 4th will do for you.
4) Pick a style each year (Saison, German lager, stout, etc.) and brew mostly that style for the year.
5) Be very careful with non-base malts. IME, poor recipe formulation has been the cause of most bad batches.

I like this, except for #4. I have brewed for 2 1/2 years and have made my own recipes for almost 2 years. If you are trying to perfect a style, yes. But why limit yourself so much.

I like to take a recipe that looks good then make some relatively small tweaks. I don't often know how the changes compare to the original because I often have never done the original, but I have made great beers this way.

Northern Brewer is a good place for ideas. Look at the descriptions, open the page then go to the additional information tab and you can see the recipe.

I use Beersmith to tweak them.

 

[Nomad]

This is all great advice so far. The key for me is learning your ingredients. In cooking, to learn an ingredient takes cooking a meal, which takes an hour or two. With beer, fermentation changes all the flavors, so learning ingredients takes three to four weeks(!) . Do some SMASH beers and add one other grain in one gallon batches with low hops.

I'd also emphasize thinking of balance: if you want big hop character, then you have to gave a big big malt backbone. If you are looking to have a flavor shine through, like Belgian yeast character or eye malt, then you can't cover it up with a soup of many malts or outrageous hopping.

Last thing-- no matter the recipe, make sure the beer attenuates out. A thick, syrupy, cloying beer just isn't good. Pay attention to pitching rates and fermentation temps.

I always base a recipe off others-- not confident enough, even after ten years, to start from scratch.

 

[ajf]

Designing Great Beers is a wonderful book.
Brewing Classic Styles is also great (but totally different to DGB) It gives you recipes for each of the major styles which can be used as a sanity check for your own recipes, or a starting point when you have never made that style before.
Take detailed notes, and only make small changes while trying to improve a previously brewed recipe. On about my 6th brew, I made wholesale substitutions to a recipe I had made before, but didn't take notes. The beer came out fantastic (more by luck than good judgement), but by the time I got around to drinking it, I couldn't remember what substitutions I had made. I spent several years trying to replicate that recipe but without success.

-a.

 

[brew_ny]

Try some SMASH brews.

great way to see what base malts really taste like and hops

all the best

S_M

 

[guldalian]

Definitely read designing great beers. Besides that, for each batch I make, I:

1)Read through the bjcp guidelines for the style I'm brewing

2)Look online at commercial examples ingredients

3)Check out other recipes on here or other online home brewing sites

4)Think about how I want my beer to compare to the above mentioned.

Seems to have worked out fairly well thus far, though I'm not trying to break any molds. Just trying to brew some tasty examples of existing styles.

 

[BrewinBromanite]

Doing searches here on HBT isn't useful because of the wide range of talent, taste, and descriptive abilities.

I can see the point you're making, and understand that there are such a wide range of opinions, experience, taste, etc...

I have to respectfully disagree, however, with such an arbitrary statement that searching on HBT "isn't useful" - especially as a starting point. It is true that if you search for "what does X hop/grain taste like..." that you will likely get 20 completely different responses from 20 different people. However, I find a lot of it to be very useful to some degree, especially when the searcher knows absolutely nothing about the ingredient they are searching for info about.

And yes, a lot depends on the style, other ingredients in a recipe, process, experience, etc., of those providing feedback or opinions. But to say on one hand that a respected author/book is great as a point of reference, while opinions of fellow home-brewer's are not useful, is a little short-sighted, IMHO. That's actually one of my favorite things about this forum - that you can get such a wide variety of opinions and feedback. I don't mean this comment to be negative at all, and I think your other advice was well said, but I don't think it ever hurts to get all the info you can from other's past experiences.

 

[revelation]

There are also some interesting books out there on specific styles that can help you learn the roots of a style and provide recipe guidance. I have Markowski's book on Farmhouse Ales and Saisons and it is great.

 

[FatsSchindee]

Designing Great Beers is a wonderful book. Brewing Classic Styles is also great (but totally different to DGB) It gives you recipes for each of the major styles which can be used as a sanity check for your own recipes, or a starting point when you have never made that style before.

I agree with both these books, and supplement the BCS with the info gleaned from different episodes of the Jamil Show podcast on the Brewing Network. The early days of the show was Jamil and John Plise (and others) talking about each style, and then giving his/their recipes for that style (usually Jamils recipe from BCS). Then the show morphed into "Can you Brew it?", where they'd (along with Tasty McDole) try to clone a particular commercial beer, and taste them side by side, talk about recipe and style, etc. Now the show has become "Brewing with Style", where they get together a few commercial examples of each style, along with a listener-submitted homebrew sometimes, and talk about which best exemplifies the style and why, along with more style and recipe info.

For example, I'm working on an American Pale Ale recipe (I'm also new at the recipe formulations, and don't have the years of experience or knowledge yet to just "know" what should go into which style off the top of my head... So research, read, and play around with recipe software!). I read DGB, and saw what kind of ingredients Ray talked about and what went into the beers he surveyed for the style. I then read BCS and compared that to what Jamil used and recommended. I also would compare everything to the BJCP guidelines along the way (not that you have to brew "to style", but since I'm new, I follow the old adage that you have to learn the rules before you can break them). I have since been listening to the old episodes of the Jamil show - the original one about APA (along with the IPA, IIPA, and English PA ones for comparison/contrast), then the Sierra Nevada PA and Mirror Pond "Can you brew it?" episodes, then the newer "Brewing with style" APA episode. Those guys have tons of experience to pass on, and do it in an entertaining way, so I enjoy listening to the podcasts while commuting, working out, mowing the lawn, etc. And I did use this site to scour through all of your recipes for comparisons, as well...

In the end (which I haven't reached yet for my APA - still tweaking), you/I will just have to settle for what you think will be close to what you expect it to taste like based on the similar examples you've had or read about, and based on what you think your ingredient changes will do to it. Then brew it, sample it, and adjust the results if necessary next time! Cheers...

 

[Schol-R-LEA]

One thing I found tremendously helpful is brewing software, especially BeerSmith and Bru'n Water. These will not only do most of the calculations for you, they will show the results of a given set of ingredients in graphs and other visual means as well. Being able to manipulate a recipe while seeing the potential results is a huge benefit. Also, most if not all such programs, but on your local system and online, will give you an indication of whether you are within the style guidelines for a given style. Find a program or website that you find helpful and will magnify your results tenfold while doing most of the heavy lifting for you.

 

[Kozzer]

Yeah Beersmith is central to my brewing. I generally create my own recipes using DGB, then input into Beersmith and tinker from there. Haven't made a bad beer yet standing on the shoulders of those giants.