Recipe Forumlation

[PirateBrewer]

I have several ideas for recipes that I want to make but I'm at a point where I'm not sure how to calculate the proper amount/type of extract, grains, hops, etc. to use when making my own recipes.

My question to everyone is at what point in time did you all actually figure out how to formulate your own recipes? Was it just a matter of experimenting or did it come with experience?

I've been doing extract with specialty grain brews from kits for the most part but I don't want to become too dependent on them. I want to go above that and be able to understand how to put my own recipes together. Any tips/help you can provide is much appreciated!!

 

[prosper]

Experience, research and practice. There are a lot of variables to consider, and constructing a well-balanced recipe is more difficult than it seems.

Buy a few recipe books - clone brews, jamil's book, etc - and look at the recipes there. Brew lots of beer, and make small changes to one element at a time.

There are a few good guidelines to follow - see Ray Daniel's book, Designing Great Beers - but that's just a starting point. You (or at least I) really have to learn by doing. Hearing or reading something sometimes doesn't really make complete sense until after you've done it a few times. It's easy to follow some general guidelines and make a good beer, or even a great beer with a little luck, but making consistently *great* beer recipes, or creating a beer that's *exactly* the way you envisioned it to be - that takes a lot more finesse.

If you're serious about learning how to construct your own recipes, start brewing a lot of batches. I used to brew a TON of one-gallon mini batches to play with ingredients, process, balance, etc. Try a bunch of different styles, then start focussing on one style at a time - build a recipe, and brew it over and over and over again, making small tweaks to it as to home in on what you want. Only change one thing at a time, to keep things controlled.

 

[Oldsock]

"There are a few good guidelines to follow - see Ray Daniel's book, Designing Great Beers - but that's just a starting point."

That is the best book to start with (some of the ingredients are getting a bit outdated, but the concepts are still solid).

Brewing SMaSH beers, or split batches to see the effects of different ingredients is also a good way to go. Drinking other people's homebrew and talking to them about their recipe is another great way to learn. (Come out to a DC homebrewers meeting!)

 

[cruckin78]

Yeah I have been looking at brewing 1-2.5gal batches for experimental brews, and sticking to known clones, recipes for drinking beer!

 

[Revvy]

When someone posts a "what's my next step" thread, I usually post about my progression, not that I think it's the "right way" but it kind of overlaps both technique and knowledge.

If anything it will give you an overview of different methodolgies in brewing.

The next step many make for cooper's style kits is to using an extract with steeping grains kit/ They are better quality and the steeping grains give the beer bigger depth of flavor than a straight extract beer.

After I did some of those, I started playing around with non kit recipes from this site, and I also started playing around with recipe formulations....I started using free online recipe calculators like this one, Beer Calculus . homebrew recipe calculator which helped me understand how the different ingredients affect each other. FIrst I started typing in these recipes and playinig with them to see what a pound of such and such grain did to the SG of the beer, or how this hop made the beer more or less bitter.

At the same time I started reading more and more about the different ingredients I was using....I found that googling the names helped get me a lot of info on them, plus reading articles and catalogs and books about it.

The BJCP style guide was a big help too, learning the numbers, OG, FG, IBU, SRM's ranges for different styles. BJCP Style Guidelines

Next I formulated a couple of my own recipes and played around with that, making them better or different.

My next step after that was transfering some of my recipes from extract to partial mashes, where I would get the largest amount of my fermentables from mashing my own grains, and then adding some extract.

Around this time I also played with harvest my own yeast, both washing and bottle harvesting.

After that I made a cooler and started doing 2.5 gallon All grain brews, converting those Partial Mashes to All grain, and brewing them on my stove top...

After that I got a turkey fryer and wort chiller so I can do full volume boils and started brewing all grain, brewing some of the recipes on here, and creating my own...

I also still do some extract with grain recipes, Partial Mashes, and 2.5 gallon stove top brewing, depending on my mood.

This winter I tried my hand at brewing lagers instead of ales, since I discovered a few that I like and was able to have some form of temp control....

I also tried my hand at brewing some strong ales, and playing with different yeasts, then my usually clean ones, trying yeast that added their own character to the beers.

A good thing to do is to try brewing Single Malt and Hop Beers where you brew very simple beers to get an idea of how different hops work with them, or different yeasts...it's a really good way to again get an idea how, like cooking, diffeent ingredients play off of each other.

As you can see, I didn't just jump from one technique like extract to all grain, I also tried to learn as much as I could about ingredients and recipe creations as well.....An I also tried to perfect my processes, like bottling, yeast harvesting, things like that...

I still have a long way to go, there's a ton of stuff to learn, different ways to brew to explore, and new styles to try and brew as well...

There's a huge amount of things you can do in this hobby.

The biggest thing that helped me was like I said using software and tyoing established recipes even the ones of the kits I brewed into Beer calculus. Also introduction in the byo 150 clone recipe special edition helped me understand immensely. Also books like radical brewing and Designing great beers help as well.

I hope this helps

 

[PirateBrewer]

Thanks for the tips all! I think my next step is going to be backing away from kits and starting to do more of the recipes on here and some clone brews. I'll probably do some SMaSH brews to get a better understanding of various characteristics of different ingredients. I think I'll also pick up Designing Great Beers!

"There are a few good guidelines to follow - see Ray Daniel's book, Designing Great Beers - but that's just a starting point."

That is the best book to start with (some of the ingredients are getting a bit outdated, but the concepts are still solid).

Brewing SMaSH beers, or split batches to see the effects of different ingredients is also a good way to go. Drinking other people's homebrew and talking to them about their recipe is another great way to learn. (Come out to a DC homebrewers meeting!)

I went to the last DC Homebrewers meeting in Ballston...I'll be at the one next Tuesday in Columbia Heights...will you be there? I'm bringing my first brew, an imperial pale ale!