How to build your own recipe

[kproudfoot]

I have brew several extract kits and 2 AG batches that I used recipes (that I tweeked slightly) from Brew Smith. I want to make my own recipes and I have no idea how to start. Any suggestion? I know there is the beer style guides but not sure how that helps.

 

[Morrey]

Beer Smith excels in helping me design my own recipes. It helps to have some of your equipment parameters and typical efficiency figured out beforehand so you'll have good numbers. If you report 55% efficiency the recipe may call for 12 pounds of grains, whereas if you input 75% efficiency, the recipe may only call for 10.5 pounds of grains...just an arbitrary example.

By selecting the style of beer you want to create, the program gives you parameters such as OG, ABV, IBU and such to stay within the guidelines of that style.

It helps to kind of know some basic information of grains and hops to get started. I started by reading a book "Designing Great Beers" by Daniels. A program such as BeerSmith will help you dial in parameters, but no program will be a magic bullet w/o good input from the user.

The other option is to look up AG recipes from other users here on HBT and tweak them to suit your needs.

 

[Jimbodaman]

Many people start with single malt and single hop beers, aka SMaSH beers. What I did was pick my favorite base malt and favorite hop ie. Maris Otter malt, Cascade hop. I used beersmith to get to a moderate SG 1.060 and a moderate IBU range 35, as for yeast I went with wlp 001... Now that's about the least imaginative recipe around but it is a fan favorite.

Some tips: Most Pro brewers use 4 or less malts, and 3 or less hops, I forgot where I read this but it makes sense. Many start off using 6 different malts and 6 different hops for " complexity" but honestly they usually just taste like 'brown' beer.

Here's my "recipe" for any two malt, 2 hop beer, 5 gallon batch.
Malts
10# favorite base malt e.g. Golden Promise
1# specialty malt e.g. Dark Munich
(Optional .5# carapils, crystal 20 .....etc)
Hops
60 min High alpha hops just for bittering I prefer Galena say 25 IBU from this addition
20 min Flavor Hop e.g. Simcoe 15 IBU
5 min Aroma- Simcoe 5 IBU
0 min Simcoe 1 oz
dry hop 1 oz simcoe 7 days

Yeast I would start with clean american yeast us-05, wlp001, or wy 1056.
Nottingham works great. S-04 has more esters and to some is tart, but I like it.

You could get very creative with just the 2 malt and 2 hop 'formula'. I learned the hard way don't use very much roasted grain with fruity american hops, I'm sure there are other no-go's. It'd be interesting to see what people think about what 2 malts and 2 hops DO NOT or cannot go together. I'd say 10#Vienna 1# Honey malt would be sickly sweet.

Bottom line keep it simple, if you want to brew to a style, read some characteristics on the bjcp guidelines and see what some of the recommended ingredients are as well as reading up on the flavor/aroma profiles. Cheers.

 

[Whatsgoodmiley]

There are tons of resources on how to start making your own recipes. You can check out articles on magazines (BYO), books (Radical Brewing), podcasts are great for tips and tricks, blogs (brulosophy, The Mad Fermentationist), or forums like this.

My experience: I started making my own recipes about a year ago. I would choose a style, then throw in a lot of research. I’d find different recipes on the same style, compare the grain bills, yeast, and hops, research different similar ingredients to add and research if they are true to style or not, them just plug them into some free brewing software such as brewersfriend, and tinker with it for a few days as I research more about the style and find what I like.

Another great thing to do while forming a recipe is find a commercial example of your desired style and see if there is a clone of it somewhere online. That way, you are learning what the flavors and characteristics of different ingredients are. Learn all about the ingredients at your disposal, then figure out which ones you like.

Or just throw things together and experiment. One of my better beers was made that way.

 

[kproudfoot]

Thanks. I was trying to figure out the beer Smith recipe builder (haven’t tried real hard) but it didn’t make much sense.

 

[LarMoeCur]

I'm a huge fan of not reinventing the wheel. There is nothing wrong with taking a good recipe as a base and tweeking it to be your own. There are a ton of award winning brewers who have done exactly that. Is your grandma's chocolate cake the best? I'll bet she got the recipe from her Mother and made small changes to it over the years. Does she not take the credit as if it was her own? I'll bet if someone thinks they have a great recipe that no one has ever brewed but them; one quick search on anyone of the dozen beer recipe search sites will reveal a very smimilar recipe if not multiple recipes.

Truely designing a recipe from scratch takes a huge understanding of how different malts interact with each other. And there are hundreds of different malts from a hundred different maltsters that's a lot of trial and error brewing. Now add in a hundred different types of hops growning in a hundred different areas. Now add in adjuncts and other ingredients. You can get overwelmed easily.

 

[FloppyKnockers]

I think the secret is not overthinking, over-hopping, or trying to out do other recipes. Start simple - a base malt and your favorite hop. Try it. Adjust things as you see fit. I have my house staples; Brown, IPA, & Alt. All took several attempts to get them the way I want them. I'm not even sure if I'm done tweaking them.

Know what you're going for an slowly build on it. If you aim for nothing, that's what you're going to hit.

 

[Vandulus]

I'd suggest getting to know your ingredients first and keeping your recipes simple. Try holding the malt in your mouth for 30 seconds and then slowly chewing it and see what flavor emerges. Pick one or two base grains based on what you like and maybe four or five specialty grains. Select an all purpose yeast strain and maybe three or four hop varieties. Sometimes the easy way to "test" hops is to find commercial examples that list what hops they use. Flying Dog and New Holland are two that I know of that list their ingredients.

Brewing software helps at this point as you can model a batch without actually doing any brewing. This will give you a good idea about bitterness, ABV and color, but not so much about flavor.

Next make small batches of the same style beer with a limited number of ingredients in each. Try to keep the IBUs and ABV similar between each batch. I'd limit yourself to no more than:
1 Base grain
1-2 Specialty grains
1-2 Hops
1 Yeast

You'll start to understand how each ingredient interacts with the others and begin to fine tune your recipes. Also reading magazines like Zymurgy and Brew Your Own plus books on hops and malts will help further your understanding. Good luck!

 

[Kharnynb]

Start by making a few basic smashes, grab a hop that isn't too strong and something you like, northern brewer works really well, as do most german hallertau variations or any noble variation.
Now just start brewing with every "special" base malt that doesn't break the bank, vienna, munich, marris otter etc.
this will give you a base idea where to go and what you like.
then just start with adding specialty malts you like, start experimenting with bittering and dryhopping other hops once you get a base profile.

or just grab a clone of what you like and modify it toward something of your own, though that requires researching all the ingredients and how they interact.

 

[beermanpete]

A good book on the subject is "Designing Great Beers" by Ray Daniels.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0937381500/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

[chickypad]

A couple people mentioned Designing Great Beers, Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil is another good one. Linked below are the BJCP guidelines which describe various styles and list typical ingredients. Software and calculators are good to help you hit the specs (OG, IBU, color, etc.) but you kind of need to use those at the end of the process to do final tweaking. You can easily have 2 beers with exactly the same specs that are wildly different in character and taste. That is where researching the style or ingredients comes in to play - by using these other resources and looking through lots of recipes to compare and contrast.

2015 BJCP guidelines

 

[kevin58]

There are so many recipes available online that there is no need to re-invent the wheel. Find a recipe in a style you like. Brew it. Identify what you like and what you want to improve upon and make those changes. Now you have your own recipe.

 

[jtratcliff]

My first self-built recipe came about because I couldn't find what I was looking for here on HBT. A rhubarb rye ale . Looked at several rye ales, looked at several fruit beers, and came up with something that seemed like a good mix of my favorite parts of both.... It came out alright. I've brewed it several times since.

But usually I tweak a known and proven recipe.... Yooper's Haus ale, BierMunchers Centennial Blonde, and Bier Munchers's Cream of 3 Crops are particular favorites. My Variation on Jamil's Chocolate Hazelnut Porter has come out quite tasty, as has my variation on Sam Calagione's Blood Orange Hefeweizen...

I'd say start with tweaking proven recipes. They'll give you an idea what different things bring to the table as well as how to balance a recipe. Then when you can't find what you're looking for, invent it based on experience....

 

[ba-brewer]

I have brew several extract kits and 2 AG batches that I used recipes (that I tweeked slightly) from Brew Smith. I want to make my own recipes and I have no idea how to start. Any suggestion? I know there is the beer style guides but not sure how that helps.

If you are already tweaking recipes with the help of beersmith you are already on the path to designing your own recipe. Brew often and take note of what you like and don't like and tweak future batches accordingly. No substitutes for hands on experience.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

I read through a bunch of recipes and got a feel for what typical grain bills looked like. Then I researched what I wanted, which told me what aspects of the recipes I'd seen applied to what I was doing. Finally, I used Brewer'sFriend to create the recipe, targeting my desired ABV.

I came in under because I didn't know what efficiency to expect, but the beer was very good and pretty much nailed what I wanted.