Im just getting into this and I have used a couple of kits and really enjoy it so far; but the kits take any kind of thinking out of this. How can i get into making my own recipes? Is there any kind of foundation to any brew that I have to start with and build from? And how do you determine how much of what and when or is it all experimental one month at a time?
how to make your own recipe
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urbanmyth
Well-Known Member
Pick up some literature on brewing and formulating recipes. How To Brew, Designing Great Beers, and countless others give a good starting point. A lot of it is brewing using other people's recipes and figuring out what malts contribute what flavor, etc, and picking out what you like and want your beer to end up tasting like.
Pie_Man
Well-Known Member
Good question and welcome to the forum.
As a fairly new brewer, I'm in the early stages of recipe formulation myself. I'll give you a few resources that I've found useful in understanding what makes a good recipe and a good style.
Of course experience will probably be the most useful, but these resources should help you get a good of idea of where to start your recipe. From there you can use trial and error with your past experiences to make improvements. Hope this helps.
As a fairly new brewer, I'm in the early stages of recipe formulation myself. I'll give you a few resources that I've found useful in understanding what makes a good recipe and a good style.
- The Brewing Network's - The Jamil Show podcast
- Ray Daniels' book, Designing Great Beers. I'm about half way through and I think it's a great book.
- The 2008 BJCP Style Guidelines, http://www.bjcp.org/docs/2008_stylebook.pdf. This stylebook lists flavor characteristics and common ingredients to give you a good starting point for a beer.
- Brewing software, like beersmith, is also useful.
- Good note taking to learn from your past brews.
- This forum has a wealth of info, pursue the recipe section.
- NHC winning recipes, http://wiki.homebrewersassociation.org/2011NHCGoldMedalRecipes.
Of course experience will probably be the most useful, but these resources should help you get a good of idea of where to start your recipe. From there you can use trial and error with your past experiences to make improvements. Hope this helps.
amandabab
Well-Known Member
Its all experimentation and record keeping 1 month at a time.
You can read all the books, use all the software buts its all just kits (even it it didn't come in the same box)until you know what the ingredients and process changes actually do.
You have to get to the point where you can make beer that you cant tell the difference between batches of the same recipe before you can have any idea what changes to the recipe actually did.
sure its fun to hop around like a chihuahua on amphetamines trying different recipes and styles, but to really make your own recipes you have to go back to your baseline that you know and that's repeatable and make changes.
You can read all the books, use all the software buts its all just kits (even it it didn't come in the same box)until you know what the ingredients and process changes actually do.
You have to get to the point where you can make beer that you cant tell the difference between batches of the same recipe before you can have any idea what changes to the recipe actually did.
sure its fun to hop around like a chihuahua on amphetamines trying different recipes and styles, but to really make your own recipes you have to go back to your baseline that you know and that's repeatable and make changes.
Stauffbier
Well-Known Member
You've seen my dog?!?!
peterson82
Active Member
This can be done in many ways. Some people will say you need to start with a final gravity and work backwards. Final gravity can be affected by mash temperatures, grain bill (use of dextrins, etc), yeast attenuation, and some mallard reactions during the boil. So it gets you thinking, how dry do I want my final beer? This can be based on style or personal preference.
If you want a dryer beer you can add cane sugar, corn sugar, brown sugar- any simple sugar that any yeast strain can easily metabolize. The ratio or sugars will lean towards simple sugars. This is important because yeast strains have different attenuation. This means yeast with high attenuation will more easily metabolize complex sugars, and hence, eat away more of the sugar mass in the wort. While lower attenuating yeast have genes that make it harder to eat those complex sugars leaving a higher final gravity.
Next, mash temperatures will affect the enzymes that rip apart the starch found in the malt. Higher temperatures will be favorable for enzymes that produce dextrins and some of the more complex sugars. Depending on the yeast, there could be more of those complex sugars left after fermentation and add to the residual sweetness. The dextrins are never metabolized by the yeast and serves as less of a sweetness and more as mouthfeel. So, if you want nice mouthfeel and a dry finish: mash at high temps and get a high attenuating yeast strain (preferably to style). If you want mouthfeel and residual sugars use a high mash temp and a low-medium attenuating yeast. Of course, a dry finish can be obtained by a low mash temp (148-150) and to add mouth feel you can add malt like cara-pils.
Next think about the necessary grains that you want. If you were to brew a stout or a porter there are dark grains that will affect final gravity and mash ph. There needs to be a balance between how much specialty malts in you grain bill to the final gravity you desire. Programs like beer smith helps with this a lot.
Next you can think about alcohol you want in the beer. This can be determined by base grains in addition to the specialty grains determined previously.
Finally, depending on boil, you can increase the malliard reactions with a more vicarious boil which will affect the final gravity. You could remove a portion of the wort and boil it separately that will lower the water volume and increase melanoidins. (used in scotch ales, as example)
The hops you can use based on style. Really just decided what flavor you want based on the region the beer style originated. Do a bitter hopping, flavor hopping and if necessary one or more different aroma hopping schedules. (knockout, hopback, and/or dry hop)
Make a nice yeast starter right before you brew and aerate your wort. Control temps. After the first trial is complete submit it into competitions and get in-biased opinions, but also make sure you decided what you would want to change to improve the beer. Make the beer again only changing one thing (the main "problem") you determined was holding it back. Keep doing this and you will find out how everything is affected by small individual changes in the process. Eventually, you will get a beer you are happy and proud of, and you will have gained a ton of information for future recipes and hopefully it will become more intuitive to design future beers.
Cheers!
If you want a dryer beer you can add cane sugar, corn sugar, brown sugar- any simple sugar that any yeast strain can easily metabolize. The ratio or sugars will lean towards simple sugars. This is important because yeast strains have different attenuation. This means yeast with high attenuation will more easily metabolize complex sugars, and hence, eat away more of the sugar mass in the wort. While lower attenuating yeast have genes that make it harder to eat those complex sugars leaving a higher final gravity.
Next, mash temperatures will affect the enzymes that rip apart the starch found in the malt. Higher temperatures will be favorable for enzymes that produce dextrins and some of the more complex sugars. Depending on the yeast, there could be more of those complex sugars left after fermentation and add to the residual sweetness. The dextrins are never metabolized by the yeast and serves as less of a sweetness and more as mouthfeel. So, if you want nice mouthfeel and a dry finish: mash at high temps and get a high attenuating yeast strain (preferably to style). If you want mouthfeel and residual sugars use a high mash temp and a low-medium attenuating yeast. Of course, a dry finish can be obtained by a low mash temp (148-150) and to add mouth feel you can add malt like cara-pils.
Next think about the necessary grains that you want. If you were to brew a stout or a porter there are dark grains that will affect final gravity and mash ph. There needs to be a balance between how much specialty malts in you grain bill to the final gravity you desire. Programs like beer smith helps with this a lot.
Next you can think about alcohol you want in the beer. This can be determined by base grains in addition to the specialty grains determined previously.
Finally, depending on boil, you can increase the malliard reactions with a more vicarious boil which will affect the final gravity. You could remove a portion of the wort and boil it separately that will lower the water volume and increase melanoidins. (used in scotch ales, as example)
The hops you can use based on style. Really just decided what flavor you want based on the region the beer style originated. Do a bitter hopping, flavor hopping and if necessary one or more different aroma hopping schedules. (knockout, hopback, and/or dry hop)
Make a nice yeast starter right before you brew and aerate your wort. Control temps. After the first trial is complete submit it into competitions and get in-biased opinions, but also make sure you decided what you would want to change to improve the beer. Make the beer again only changing one thing (the main "problem") you determined was holding it back. Keep doing this and you will find out how everything is affected by small individual changes in the process. Eventually, you will get a beer you are happy and proud of, and you will have gained a ton of information for future recipes and hopefully it will become more intuitive to design future beers.
Cheers!
uncommonsense
Well-Known Member
Ya know what making your own recipe is not that hard. almost all my beer have been woven from the darkest places of my mind. you kinda have to know what each piece of the puzzle with do, but to me that the fun of it all. Hell i never brewed a hefe before. So i looked at the style guidelines and put a recipe together. It turned out great, i even got a gold medal for it. I say go for it. Dont go overboard with any one thing and make sure you pitch good yeast. And maintain good fermentation temps. And it will probly turn out ok. I think I would go nuts or get board if all I did was brew kits.
BuddyWeiser
Well-Known Member
Brewskii
Well-Known Member
BuddyWeiser said:
+1 on tweaking existing recipes. It may sound like cheating but the base of whatever style you go to is based in the fundamentals. What you want it to taste like is where the creative part is and that is done by small tweaks, additions, and time/temp changes, etc.
Get the books to get started trying to understand what the flavors of different things are and then use that knowledge to tweak a base recipe that you find interesting.
ploppythesausage
Well-Known Member
I'm having a lot of fun making simple recipes - I made an extract IPA using only Fuggles to bitter and dry hop (now I know what fuggles does - given the sheer amount of boring British ales I won't be making it again, but it was tasty). Then I made a 'Belgian' brown using pale malt and special B (now I know why special B is used in smaller amounts than 500g - i do love the taste though). Now I have a half wheat, half pale, amarillo beer fermenting away nicely. All of them half been enjoyable to drink, pretty tasty and I can start working on tweaking them using other hops and malts if I make them again (I'm thinking some Orval dregs next time to cut the sweetness from the special B...mmm)
ReverseApacheMaster
Well-Known Member
I agree. No reason to reinvent the wheel. There are hundreds of recipes in every imaginable style online. A lot have good notes with the flavors. You can take a recipe that has some of the flavor components you want and tweak it. This is definitely a lot easier in the beginning than trying to put recipes together and having no idea what you're doing or what your beer will taste like.
That's cool. I just got my first batch into the primary fermenter. I'm not reinventing anything here, just feel comfortable with the process after a ton of reading and video watching. Hope it turns out good. I'll let ya know.
I like to choose a beer I like to drink and find a clone recipe online. I also use Beersmith and most of my LHBS use it to craft recipes for customers. Once you get the hang of it, it's a lot of fun to craft up recipes.
Since I'm doing extract, I start with Pilsner LME as my base (my LHBS gets this in bulk so I know its the freshest) - this allows me greater flexibility with the color. I then look up the grains typically used for that style and add it into Beersmith. I will focus on getting the SRM, ABV, and IBU's where I want them and then finalize it with the appropriate yeast. This gets me at least in the ballpark. I have known of some very experienced brewers who "roll their eyes" at Beersmith but until I can get to their level, it really helps me out.
Since I'm doing extract, I start with Pilsner LME as my base (my LHBS gets this in bulk so I know its the freshest) - this allows me greater flexibility with the color. I then look up the grains typically used for that style and add it into Beersmith. I will focus on getting the SRM, ABV, and IBU's where I want them and then finalize it with the appropriate yeast. This gets me at least in the ballpark. I have known of some very experienced brewers who "roll their eyes" at Beersmith but until I can get to their level, it really helps me out.
Start with an idea of what style you want, then read lots of recipes for that style and read the BJCP guidelines. Then combine the parts that appeal to you and give it a shot. I started with my own recipe on batch 1. The more you brew and tweak, the more you start relying on your own base to start a recipe from or to branch out further
drinkdrankpunk
Well-Known Member
I just watched an episode of brewing TV were they made an IPA using dice to determine when to do the hop additions, and both guys used the same ingredients for the most part but by doing things at different times they made two different beers. I cant wait to get home and me and a friend want to do this one day. I think the episode was called diced IPA or something like that.
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