What’s your first stop for recipe research?

[Jhedrick83]

Pretty self explanatory title. When you are looking to brew something new, assuming you don’t devise the recipe 100% from scratch, where you do prefer to start your recipe search? Here? An app like Brewer’s Friend or Beersmith? Books?

 

[DannyBoy270]

Books as of late. Been doing a lot of reading since quarantine. Actually debating on brewing each of the recipes from Mitch Steele's IPA book now that I've finished it.

 

[grampamark]

I use Beersmith. The “new recipe” function makes it easy to mix and match ingredients while watching the “sliders” on the bar graph at the top of the page which indicate predicted gravity, bitterness and color. There’s a highlighted section in the center of each bar that indicates the range, of each of those parameters for the selected style, which are in the style guidelines. It’s a pretty simple way to put together a recipe for a style that one hasn’t brewed before and have confidence that the first effort will at least be in the ballpark.

 

[3 Dawg Night]

I start with Brewing Classic Styles by Palmer & Zainasheff and Designing Great Beers by Daniels to get a good baseline recipe for the style. Then, I research the medal-winning recipes on the AHA website to get ideas for some tweaks.

 

[hottpeper13]

Otto's in Cederburg, they have an extensive beer selection and they refill my CO2.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

Books as of late. Been doing a lot of reading [recently]

You mentioned Mitch Steele's IPA book. Any other titles you found entertaining or helpful?

 

[DannyBoy270]

You mentioned Mitch Steele's IPA book. Any other titles you found entertaining or helpful?

Randy Mosher's Mastering Homebrew, and then Denny Conn & Drew Beechums Experimental Brewing are two that come to mind that I really enjoyed and refer back to on occasion.

 

[GilSwillBasementBrews]

I usually just pick a style, go to the recipe forum, select the filter for the style I’m interested in, then find a few recipes with a lot of reviews and compare ingredients and pick which sounds closest to what I’m looking for. ( or have ingeredients on hand for)

 

[Knightshade]

I usually pick from here if I can just because the amount of feedback, interaction, etc., gives me an idea of how difficult it might be, how much it was liked/disliked and even evolution of the recipe.

I’ve brewed a couple from Brewers Friend, but all have seemed like shots in the dark. Some pretty good, others not so much.

I just got an AHA membership recently, so I’ve started perusing their recipe database now as well.

 

[MaxStout]

Once I choose a style, I go looking. The recipes here (esp. the ones with lots of good feedback), AHA recipes, and maybe a few books by Mosher or Strong. Sometimes, I assemble ideas from a few sources. Often, it's based on what ingredients I have on hand.

 

[AlexKay]

I usually decide on the skeleton of a recipe after reading Josh Weikert's "Make Your Best...." article on the style. I like the way he writes, and in addition to listing out ingredients, he describes why each particular ingredient is being added. I almost never copy his recipes exactly, but that's my usual starting point.

 

[Dland]

After deciding roughly what I intend to brew, I look at all the grain on my shelves pick what fits the style, giving some weight to using older grains in interest of stock rotation.

 

[bwible]

Lot of good resources online. Here, for starters. Search threads. Other websites out there.

 

[NSMikeD]

I’ll start at BYO for a general understanding of the style techniques and a recipe. I’ll also have a copy of Clone Brews I’ll check. From time to time I’ll check here (like the NEIPA thread as it’s about the fastest evolving style). I’ll also check out some of the online recipe kits. I’ll start a recipe in Brewfather (I used to use BeerSmith) and take it from there. Prior to brewing I email the shopping list to my LHBS and when I show up we discuss any substitutions.

Just tapped a Belgian wit bier which I found too lemony citrus and lacking coriander. I had a Ommegomg last night to remind me of what the style should be and it confirmed that I missed the mark by a mile so I’ll go back to my recipe and batch details and do some research to make changes.

 

[Barbarossa]

First stop: My bookshelf.

 

[szap]

Since I am not confident in coming my own recipe, my order of sources is

1. Top 100 recipes on here
2. libraries on Brewfather and Beersmith
3. Google
4. BYO Clone book