Looking for advice -- First time designing a recipe!

[karizu]

Hello experienced brewers!!

I posted this originally on the beersmith forums but I'm hoping to cover more surface area by posting it here as well. Please note that the recipes in question for this post are attached as a beersmith file for your viewing pleasure.

That having been said, I am looking to begin the journey to designing my own recipes (beginning with an IPA). I purchased Beersmith and have been doing quite a bit of research into recipe design and SMaSH brewing, hop techniques, etc, and have arrived at the attached 5 recipes. They are smash recipes to test out 5 different hops for aroma and taste, which all use late hopping techniques to really ramp up the aromas and flavors so that I can make a decision on my hops.

My idea is to use my large mash tun to mash all the grains at once, and then split the wort into 5 different boil kettles (each with different hops) to arrive at five 2-gallon batches in five separate fermenters. The goal is to ensure that all 5 batches are created with as close to perfectly equal conditions as possible. Now, if you look at the recipes I've attached, you'll notice the amounts of hops I've chosen were chosen with 2 goals in mind: to keep the IBU's as close to the other recipes as possible, and also to make splitting 1oz bags up as easy as possible. Please feel free to comment on this if you think that keeping IBU's the same (or close) across the recipes is not the best method to comparing hops side by side. Also, my hop amount ratios for each addition are open to critique as well! (At first I had all the ratios perfect across the board, and then I adjusted some of the amounts to make splitting 1oz bags up easier.)

Lastly, just in case it matters, for these recipes I used the 3 gallon equipment profile built into Beersmith and adjusted the size of the mash tun, otherwise it is based off the default 3 gallon set up. I then set the batch size to 2 gallons.

Basically I'm just looking for any advice anyone might have about the way I've gone about designing these smash recipes and/or designing beer recipes as a whole.

Thanks!!
Chris

View attachment SMaSH Recipes (Hops).bsmx

 

[skunkfunk]

Sounds reasonable to me, but I can't review the recipes as I use a different program. Can you attach them as a PDF?

 

[Calder]

Asking us to review 5 recipes is too much work. I did try to open the file, (and I have BeerSmith), but it wouldn't open.

Sounds like a good idea, but don't know how much hops you are using per brew. If the AAs are not the same, you will use more for some beers than others, which might bias the taste test. You might want to keep the hop amounts the same for each beer, additions at the same times, and use something like Magnum as a bittering hop to get equal IBUs.

You are going to mash everything at the same time and then split the mash volume. I would suggest you bring the mash volume to a boil (to kill the enzymes) before you split the wort. You could use a couple of pots if necessary. Doing it this way will ensure the worts are equally fermentable.

 

[RonPopeil]

i'm not a beersmith user. just try to understand what each ingredient does. making a black IPA with roasted barley is going to be a bad idea. etc. it's not that difficult really.