brewstev
Well-Known Member
I was just thinking about this the other day...if I had to choose what beer to drink for the rest of my life what would it be. Any of you guys have a homebrew recipe you would choose as the one and only from here on?
One recipe for the rest of your life
- Thread starter brewstev
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I absolutely love variations on the DFH 60 minute recipe I've posted. If I could drink only one beer forever, that would be the one.
FromZwolle
I don't want to be cremated, I want to be malted.
yup. same here. i think it would come and go in cycles, but i'd rarely drink at all.
Ãlbart
Well-Known Member
I could probably survive on IPA, but I'm not sure which exact recipe.
JetSmooth
Well-Known Member
I would make my beer the way I make my chili. No recipe.
Grain (whatever is on hand)
Hops (adjust to taste)
Water
Yeast (whatever is on hand)
Seriously, that's a tough one. Something like an English mild or something malty but sessionable.
Grain (whatever is on hand)
Hops (adjust to taste)
Water
Yeast (whatever is on hand)
Seriously, that's a tough one. Something like an English mild or something malty but sessionable.
iijakii
Well-Known Member
I took Yoopers' Dead Guy Ale clone and upped the hops and some other bastardations, and that's definitely my favorite beer.
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A Pale Ale. No idea of recipe though.
burnunit
Active Member
How do you approach the term "recipe," you know? If it's the combination of ingredients + technique, this question is virtually impossible to answer, yes. I'd probably have to pick a pale ale with two row, in the 1.048-1.055 range, 30-35 ibu, american hops, and a california common yeast strain.
And since you didn't specify, and it's the rest of MY life, I get to answer accordingly: I am seriously casual in some of my techniques. Not sloppy, but fairly imprecise: I don't have a RIMS, I batch sparge, I don't calibrate my thermometers, if I get distracted I can leave a mash going for 75 minutes instead of 60, I weigh my hops but sometimes I'm splitting boiling kettles and I boil one less time than the other.
Suddenly, because of my imprecision, even with a very set and strict ingredients formulation, let's say...
10 # two row
.5 # 90L crystal
.25 # dextrine malt
summit, cascade, and willamette hops
Wyeast 2112
tap water
My lack of concern about certain factors (particularly efficiency, and timing) makes it harder for every one of my beers to be exactly the same. I don't have the gear to hold a mash at exactly the same temperature for exactly the same rests. I don't have the gear to extract exactly the same amount of fermentables. I don't have the stuff to make exactly the same size boils to utilize the same amount of AAs. I don't have the attention span to remember which bowl has the .25 oz. of summits for bittering and the .33 of the other ones for part of a flavor addition. I keep my brewhouse temperature up in the winter with a space heater! Which means that over a lifetime, I will make thousands of different brews with the above recipe, even if I'm trying to be rigidly consistent.
If you said "you have to make the same recipe using the same techniques," then yeah, I'd eventually only brew about twice a year because that wouldn't be my hobby anymore, it'd be a chore. Spring and fall cleaning of the equipment.
But because I know just enough to be dangerous not only do I get to fiddle with the factors, I won't be able to be consistent, and thus create infinite variety. 155F mash one time, 149F the next, 153 for seven brews in a row. Steep a portion of the grains instead of mashing. Do some decoctions. Cook some of the barley in the oven. Bittering with the cascades, flavoring with the summits, aroma with the willamettes. Reverse it. Maybe that year I got some unusually low alpha summits--hell maybe I grew my own hops and I have no idea what the AA values are. Accidentally leave the primary open, standing in a cornfield one time. Turn up the heat in the brewhouse one time, take it to 59F the next. Throw out my thermometers and approximate everything using crude math, knowing that water boils at 212 and having some room temperature water on hand to balance. My "seriously casual" approach to brewing makes it impossible for one recipe to straightjacket me.
A sonnet has 14 lines. But no one can even agree on a standard rhyme scheme! Hell even if you keep the rhyme scheme the same, Shakespeare and Petrarch wrote hundreds within their specific variations on the form (the homebrew equivalents would be Jamil and Palmer maybe). I may not be Shakespeare, but I've written some sonnets in my day.
And since you didn't specify, and it's the rest of MY life, I get to answer accordingly: I am seriously casual in some of my techniques. Not sloppy, but fairly imprecise: I don't have a RIMS, I batch sparge, I don't calibrate my thermometers, if I get distracted I can leave a mash going for 75 minutes instead of 60, I weigh my hops but sometimes I'm splitting boiling kettles and I boil one less time than the other.
Suddenly, because of my imprecision, even with a very set and strict ingredients formulation, let's say...
10 # two row
.5 # 90L crystal
.25 # dextrine malt
summit, cascade, and willamette hops
Wyeast 2112
tap water
My lack of concern about certain factors (particularly efficiency, and timing) makes it harder for every one of my beers to be exactly the same. I don't have the gear to hold a mash at exactly the same temperature for exactly the same rests. I don't have the gear to extract exactly the same amount of fermentables. I don't have the stuff to make exactly the same size boils to utilize the same amount of AAs. I don't have the attention span to remember which bowl has the .25 oz. of summits for bittering and the .33 of the other ones for part of a flavor addition. I keep my brewhouse temperature up in the winter with a space heater! Which means that over a lifetime, I will make thousands of different brews with the above recipe, even if I'm trying to be rigidly consistent.
If you said "you have to make the same recipe using the same techniques," then yeah, I'd eventually only brew about twice a year because that wouldn't be my hobby anymore, it'd be a chore. Spring and fall cleaning of the equipment.
But because I know just enough to be dangerous not only do I get to fiddle with the factors, I won't be able to be consistent, and thus create infinite variety. 155F mash one time, 149F the next, 153 for seven brews in a row. Steep a portion of the grains instead of mashing. Do some decoctions. Cook some of the barley in the oven. Bittering with the cascades, flavoring with the summits, aroma with the willamettes. Reverse it. Maybe that year I got some unusually low alpha summits--hell maybe I grew my own hops and I have no idea what the AA values are. Accidentally leave the primary open, standing in a cornfield one time. Turn up the heat in the brewhouse one time, take it to 59F the next. Throw out my thermometers and approximate everything using crude math, knowing that water boils at 212 and having some room temperature water on hand to balance. My "seriously casual" approach to brewing makes it impossible for one recipe to straightjacket me.
A sonnet has 14 lines. But no one can even agree on a standard rhyme scheme! Hell even if you keep the rhyme scheme the same, Shakespeare and Petrarch wrote hundreds within their specific variations on the form (the homebrew equivalents would be Jamil and Palmer maybe). I may not be Shakespeare, but I've written some sonnets in my day.
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A soured white wheat.
OP
OP
brewstev
Well-Known Member
haha alright my bad, ill try to be more specific next time. I'm still pretty new to homebrewing and hadnt even considered any of those factors. nice reply tho
obviously it would be tough to drink just one beer at all times. Its a tough questions to answer, thats why i was interested in hearing what others could come up with
mychalg9
Well-Known Member
Can we all just agree that burnunit wins this thread?!
I'm a fan of IPAs, but I always seem to have to have a wit on hand. I think it's go with Wit. I'd really hate to have just one flavor though.
burnunit
Active Member
Ha ha! Thanks.
But seriously, I also must admit I'm pushing the boundaries of "taking the question on its merits." Straight up, I'd probably just drink pale ale as described, but I haven't nailed my recipe yet, so it's a risk.
Tangentially relevant is this item that I would ALSO take the "dodge the question approach" to if it were me. This guy's only eating potatoes for 60 days. I think I'd be making potato beer within about 6 seconds of accepting such a ludicrous challenge, rather than just accepting I have to eat plain potatoes for god's sake!
DrinkNoH2O
Well-Known Member
It would be a medium sized IPA for sure. As for the recipe, well, I haven't perfected it quite yet.
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