I want to make my own recipe

[6footbrewery]

I am looking to make my own recipe. With nearly 20 brews under my belt I want to start building my own. I call my brewery 6footbrewery. It's a long story of how I got that. I want to make a beer just one that I can call my own. I have never done this and I need a little help. I would love to use BeerSmith but I have a Google Chromebook and I can't download it. I did find a website that I can use called Brewers Friend. I have been playing with it for the past few days now. I am just not sure what goes together. I can add any hops or malts but how do I know they will work. I mean I dont expect the beer to come out perfect the first time but I want it to be drinkable.
I need your guys help please.

Thanks,

6foot

 

[mhurst111]

i have not used Brewers Friend, but i'm typing this on a chromebook and use this site for creating recipies / documenting my brew days. http://www.brewers-assistant.com/Account/LogOn?ReturnUrl=/

They have 'style guidelines' to help you create a recipe. Pick the style and it gives a good guide on color, IBU, OG, FG, etc.

That being said, creating a good recipe is like cooking. Know what flavors you like and what play well together takes time, practice and research.

A good place to start is a simple SMASH recipe (single malt and single hop). Pick a base malt (marris otter, 2-row, pale, - they are all slightly different and will give different tasting beer) and a single hop you like and play with boil time to see what you get.

Another option is take a known recipe and tweak it to more your style.

good luck

 

[6footbrewery]

Thank you I will try that site out right now.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[ong]

Do you brew all-grain or extract? Good advice on the SMaSH. Another good starting point is a pale ale, where you just start with 10-12 lbs of base malt, .5-1 lbs of crystal, and then you play with the recipe from there. You can vary the base malt from 2-row to Maris Otter to Golden Promise. You can use Crystal 15, or darker, if you like. You can try replacing some of the crystal with honey malt, or adding in a half lb. of some other specialty malts.

Then there's the hop schedule to play with. If you know you want 40 IBUs, you can experiment with different ways of getting there, using more late hops for added flavor without added bitterness, using a single British hop or a mixture of citrusy American hops...

I tend to think of experimenting with yeast as a more advanced technique, but there's another whole world to play with.

 

[chickypad]

I think trying to create a recipe with just the specs (IBU, color, OG and FG) is tough. You can put together a combo of ingredients that will fit perfectly within the specs but be a horrid recipe. I'd recommend some additional reading, such as Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels (dated but still a good resource), Brewing Classic Styles by Zainasheff and Palmer, even reading through the BJCP guidelines, and looking over recipes online either in the database here or from the online vendors. I'm certainly not suggesting you need to stick within style guidelines, but it helps to have some frame of reference to begin. At least that's what I found helpful when first starting with my own recipes. Good luck, it's certainly one of the most enjoyable parts of brewing IMO!

 

[rlonardo]

Definitely start by reading up on the style that you want to brew. Keep it simple for your first brew, if you complicate things and you end up not liking it it may be difficult to pinpoint what exactly isn't mixing well.

Read up on the BJCP description of the style you're trying to brew, look up some recipes on this site or elsewhere to get an idea of what has worked for other people, then start formulation your own recipe.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Well, we really can't help you unless we know what you're going for.

A few general suggestions:

-If you want the beer nice and dry, don't be afraid to substitute grains or extract for sugar. For most styles, up to maybe 10% sugar is good for a nice dry finish. If you want something in the Belgian sphere, you could go up to 20% sugar, but in that quantity I would wait to add it until after fermentation.

-When designing your recipe, focus on the BU:GU (bitterness to gravity) ratio more than the IBUs, since that will give you a better approximation of "balance" than just IBUs. A "balanced" beer will have a BU:GU maybe in the 0.5 range. Malty beers will be lower (down to maybe 0.2 is as low as I would go for something like a Bock or Scottish Ale). Something 0.75-1.0 would be decidedly bitter (English Bitters, APAs, etc), and above 1.0 you're getting into IPA realms of bitter impression.

-What is your fermentation set up like? Can you ferment at any temperature you want (ie both heatable and coolable controlled chamber)? Is colder easier? Can you only ferment warm? I'd go with a style best suited to your equipment.

-Like these folks have said, if you have a certain style in mind, look through the database on here, Designing Great Beers is a must read if you want to continue building your own recipes, Brewing Classic Styles will help you get started with any style you can think of.

-With any ingredient your adding, ask yourself why you're adding it. If you can't come up with a reason why it needs to be there, it probably doesn't need to be there. Too complicated a grain bill or hop bill, and everything gets muddied down.

A SMaSH is a good place to start, but don't expect to be blown away by it, but rather use it to learn the character of various ingredients to find what you like and what you don't. SMaSH beers can have a surprising amount of complexity, but by the very nature using one malt and one hop isn't going to have as much depth as other beers. Of course, some styles are well suited to SMaSH brewing but most are not. And then once you find a grain and hop combo you like, you can then experiment by adding a single specialty malt, or a second hop varietal, and go from there. If you really want a "house" recipe it'll take time, but that's probably the best way to go about it. Try it with different yeasts, at different temps, and so on.