Building your own recipes

Hi folks,

At this point I'd firstly like to mention that I'm still a beginner, so posting about creating my own recipes may seem a bit of a step too far at this stage.

However...I'm really keen to start experimenting, or at least learning.

I tend to only brew all-grain, and am used to what hops serve what purpose etc., but as far as yeast and malts go I have no idea really.

Anyone have any advice of where to go to learn? Everywhere I've searched so far go off on one and aren't in layman's terms for the likes of me.

My intention is to continue brewing recipes already thought of but as I say, I'm keen to learn.

Cheers!
Ben.

We have a forum glossary here https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/forum-abbreviations-and-glossary.80863/ which should help

A good way to learn how to formulate recipes (which is the way I learned) is to look at style guidelines and go from there

So think of a style of beer you may be interested in. Lets say Best Bitter (if your not aware there are officially three types of bitter, ordinary, best and extra special). So I would then google, 'Best Bitter style guidelines' which gives me this

https://www.google.co.uk/search?cli...le+guidlines&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

So the BYO.com article for best bitter https://byo.com/article/british-bitter-style-of-the-month/

Beer&Brewing also do good style guideline articles https://beerandbrewing.com/make-your-best-bitter/

What your particularly looking out for in these articles is what grains are used in what percentages. E.g. an article may say 'this particular styles can use this particular grain but in no more than X percentage of the total grist (grain).

Once you learn the basic guidlines for any particular style your interested in you can then tweek it to you own tastes.

I dont claim to be a master recipe builder but thats how I basically learned how to build recipes.

You'll also need some brewing soft ware (I use brewmate as its free). Just come back to the forum as much as you need and ask for help and criticism on your recipes. The forumites are very knowledgeable and helpful

I've only been brewing 9 months or so - i have some idea what hops i like but like you malts are still quite a mystery.

I can thoroughly recommend getting hold of the Greg Hughes book and getting a few different styles, e.g. bitter, lager, IPA, porter or stout, witbier and other wheat beers.

You'll end up playing with lots of different malts and also yeasts so you'll see the variety and start to get an idea what you like. And you can also make a user-upper beer from the odd leftovers!

It's also worth nibbling a few grains of your different malts to get an idea how they taste.

If you try a beer you like you can also try looking up the style - i find beerandbrewing.com helpful for generic styles.

One other thing to try is a split batch: i recently did a split batch of the Greg Hughes American wheat beer using two different yeasts (WY1010 as per the recipe, and WY1056 suggested in a beerandbrewing article i read) - I'm stunned what a difference this makes - one isn't really hoppy at all and like a slightly toned down hefeweizen, the other is like a hoppy pale ale!

MyQul said:

Just come back to the forum as much as you need and ask for help and criticism on your recipes. The forumites are very knowledgeable and helpful

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+1 on this - I've had loads of helpful suggestions and recipe tweaks from the forum

All of what @MyQul mentions. Look at recipes and style guidelines and try to absorb as much info as possible. There's two books that I found useful. Randy Mosher Mastering Homebrew as it gives a good description of grain types, what they do and typical rates of uses. And Ray Daniels designing great beer, a bit of an odd book that collates data from competition winning homebrew recipes to give guidelines on ingredient uses.

What really worked for me, right from my first brew was starting from a simple, three ingredient recipe and making one or two identifiable changes with the following brews, not trying to nail the perfect recipe. For example, the first brew was only bittered at the start of the boil, the second brew I added a sizable addition of crystal (10%) and added some hops at the end of the boil. I found it easier to judge additions to later recipes and bring in the info picked up from looking at recipes. If I know what 10% of an ingredient does, it is then easier to judge what effect 3 or 6% will have, if that makes any sense.

I hated Designing Great beers because it's basically a collection of spreadsheets and I didn't learn anything about what ingredients were supposed to bring to the table. The Weyerman flavour wheels you get for malts are 1000 times more informative that that book. Maybe it's good to come back to when you know enough not to need it.

Get a couple of books. Find recipes for beers you can buy and try and pick out the flavours etc and see what you like

Drunkula said:

I hated Designing Great beers because it's basically a collection of spreadsheets and I didn't learn anything about what ingredients were supposed to bring to the table. The Weyerman flavour wheels you get for malts are 1000 times more informative that that book. Maybe it's good to come back to when you know enough not to need it.

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....But when you combine both sources of information, that's when it comes together. Like in cooking, you may know what cinnamon tastes like, but without knowing how much is typically used in a dish, some very drastic results can occur.

Sadfield said:

All of what @MyQul mentions. Look at recipes and style guidelines and try to absorb as much info as possible. There's two books that I found useful. Randy Mosher Mastering Homebrew as it gives a good description of grain types, what they do and typical rates of uses. And Ray Daniels designing great beer, a bit of an odd book that collates data from competition winning homebrew recipes to give guidelines on ingredient uses.

What really worked for me, right from my first brew was starting from a simple, three ingredient recipe and making one or two identifiable changes with the following brews, not trying to nail the perfect recipe. For example, the first brew was only bittered at the start of the boil, the second brew I added a sizable addition of crystal (10%) and added some hops at the end of the boil. I found it easier to judge additions to later recipes and bring in the info picked up from looking at recipes. If I know what 10% of an ingredient does, it is then easier to judge what effect 3 or 6% will have, if that makes any sense.

Click to expand...

I'm about to start BIAB and have the same problem of knowing how to combine grains.

I don't want to be following a recipie as I may as well stick to pimping kits.

Do you have recommendations of where to find simple 3 ingredient recipies I can play with?

gudders said:

I'm about to start BIAB and have the same problem of knowing how to combine grains.

I don't want to be following a recipie as I may as well stick to pimping kits.

Do you have recommendations of where to find simple 3 ingredient recipies I can play with?

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If you are trying to limit your basic ingredients I suggest you look for SMASH recipes and go from there and use dual purpose hops of your choice to get variability of outcome. Plus I find crystal malt is the easiest adjunct to change a beer.
My experience is there is no easy route in. You just have to try different things, use the Brewers Friend recipe calculator to design your beers for IBUs, ABV etc and sooner or later the experience you gain makes the decision making easier and the outcomes more predictable, enabling you to try new things confidently.

The best way to design a beer, is to start with a recipe (or recipes) of something similar to what you want to brew and tweak it towards what you really want, or for what ingredients you have available. Using brewing softare like Brewer's Friend, available from the 'RECIPES' button at the top of this page allows you to keep the ABV, bitterness, colour etc. under control.

Greg Hughes' Home Brew Beer is a great book to start with, it contains useful tables of hops, grains and yeasts, simple instructions and recipes for about 100 beer styles. Depending on what style of beer you prefer, there are many dedicated recipe books, Graham Wheeler's Brew Your Own British Real Ale, https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/top-50-commercial-clone-beer-recipes/ for American craft ales (online), DIY Dog for Brew Dog beers (also available online).

gudders said:

I'm about to start BIAB and have the same problem of knowing how to combine grains.

I don't want to be following a recipie as I may as well stick to pimping kits.

Do you have recommendations of where to find simple 3 ingredient recipies I can play with?

Click to expand...

To clarify, what I meant by three ingredients was a base malt, a hop and a yeast. The most simple recipe possible. It was Pilsner malt, Goldings, Saison Yeast, to make a Saison. You could however start with Maris Otter, Challenger and British Ale yeast to make a golden Ale. Then add crystal to make an ESB. Develop that and add some chocolate malt to make a Brown Ale. Or start with Pale malt, Cascade and US05. Add in another hops next time. Or swap half the malt for malted wheat or Rye malt. Play about with ingredients.

A few links that might be useful:

Some notes on malts: http://howtobrew.com/book/section-2/what-is-malted-grain/malt-types-and-usages

Comments on formulating recipes: http://howtobrew.com/book/section-4

A good resource for understanding about hops, how to use and what they bring to the party: http://www.hopslist.com/hops/

It might be worth reading through some recipes, even clone recipes, and comparing the ingredients to the links above to see if you can mentally build out how the end result is achieved (if you know the beer) or guess what the beer might taste like (if you only have the recipe).

Yeast is an extra variable that I haven't yet thought too much about - I simply match a yeast to the style I'm trying to brew. If I'm doing a "learning" brew, i.e. where I'm figuring out the effects of malt or hops, I'll use a clean fermenting yeast (S05 is a go-to) as that avoids the yeast confusing the answer.

There are resources online that can tell you more about yeast though:

https://www.beercraftr.com/beer-yeast-list/british-ale-yeast/

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0...68-8d16-673b5fb84f75.pdf?16489226078703376035

Think of it like cooking. Think of your ingredients, water, grain, hops, yeast and anything else you want to use and how you are going to choose and process them to get a desired outcome. Have a desired outcome, looking at the description of beer styles helps here, some ingredients and processes are complimentary to these outcomes and you can tailor all or some depending on the desired intensity of the result. Some processes will be easy, others difficult or outside of your control and then you are working to enhance the impact of the ones which you can control and reduce the influence or increase the likely hood of it being positive with the ones which are outside of your control. Think about the history of brewing, certain styles often are the way they are being of historical technology, access to ingredients, a tendency towards a certain method of production, packaging, storage and dispense. Some choices will go together very easily as a result because you are following an established pathway, others will break new ground for better or worse, but it depends upon your intent.

Sometimes working creatively is difficult without boundaries. With access to so many malts, hops, yeasts and styles to choose from it can be hard to build some boundaries, but style and historic accuracy at least give a structure to begin with. Using ingredients you have already or have easy access to again can be a source of inspiration as you work to make the very best with what you have.

Everything else is just a bit of maths. I'd advise working the hard way practically with pen and paper from the beginning because it becomes the easy way in the end and understanding the theory behind calculators gives you the freedom and confidence to throw things together, make substitutions and get on.

I would do some of the simple smash recipes so as to get a taste of what a individual hop is like. Too many brewers start doing multiple hop/grain combinations without knowing what each brings to the recipe( usually beginner hopheads) they may strike lucky with the beer but do not fully understand how that combination was achieved. It is the best way to learn how to combine hops and grains from there on and will stand you in good stead. I still as a so called experienced brewer still ask other forum members what a particular hop/grain is really like that they have brewed with as the descriptors put out by the growers is sometimes a little zealous in flavour profiles. My best advice ask people on here and do 3 or 4 simple brews or if you do want to do something more complicated follow a well documented recipe. Good luck