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Author Topic: Basic Recipes help  (Read 4109 times)

Offline dmtaylor

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Re: Basic Recipes help
« Reply #15 on: January 20, 2014, 06:40:48 pm »
Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels is still a great book to get you started in designing your own recipes.  Sure there are more malts and hops available nowadays, but it will get you headed in the right direction.  Use software to get your numbers in the right place, but use the book to help select the right ingredients for the styles.
Dave

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Offline In The Sand

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Re: Basic Recipes help
« Reply #16 on: January 20, 2014, 06:51:42 pm »
There was an article a few months back in Zymurgy that talked about doing a nanomash to determine percentages of malts to use. I use this method effectively especially when brewing something new and it works quite well. The only thing you don't get from it is what the hops are going to add. But you can get a general idea of what taste you want in a recipe while adhering to the style guidelines.
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Offline flbrewer

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Re: Basic Recipes help
« Reply #17 on: January 21, 2014, 04:50:52 pm »
When you design a recipe, the most important thing in many instances is to choose a base malt and a yeast. These will be your building blocks. So, say, you want to brew a dry stout. Do you want a very clean yeast character or would you like a little English character going on. English? Choose an English style yeast like wlp002. Maybe you want a little drier? Go with wlp007. Or clean and super easy? Go with US-05. Then basemalt. You want some buscuitty malt character or are you looking for malt charcter to hide a bit behind the yeast? Buscuit? Go with a good floor malted Maris Otter. Then you will need to look at the supporting malts that go with a dry stout. Bing! Litte research and ... There they are! Flaked Barley and Roasted Barley.

Now, do you want hop aroma? Maybe a little hop spiceiness but not any citrus character? Choose a good English hop like East Kent Golding - or, if you decide you just want the roast to shine through use a bittering addition only.

Or, say you want to brew a simple American pale ale. You probably want a nice clean ale yeast and maybe you want some buscuit malt but not too much. Go with a clean US ale yeast and maybe cut your basemalt 50/50 Maris Otter and an American 2-row. Hops: You want clean bittering? Go with Magnum. You want a little more aggressive hop bittering flavor? Chinook or Columbus. You then might decide if you want really clean hop flavors/aromas and how much citrus flavors/aromas. A good blend of Centennial and Amarillo might be just that. Or, maybe you want some magno like character? Citra. Or some funky cat pee? Simcoe.

The most important thing in building recipes is to start simple. Get an idea about how your ingredients change the flavor of your beer. And make the same recipes over and over again, but change a little here or there.

Brewing is a craft. And the "craft" part of brewing take a little bit of time to develop. But it is not really all that hard once you get a bit of experience under your belt.

The great thing is that you can never have too much experience. I'm constantly learning about brewing. Going on 20 years of designing my own recipes and playing with ingredients. Tons of fun!  :D

Thank you...makes sense! My confusion so far has been with quantities of the malt and hops.

Offline flbrewer

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Re: Basic Recipes help
« Reply #18 on: January 21, 2014, 06:00:13 pm »
If I'm still doing extract brews at this point, can purchase milled malts in place of DME or LME? Is there a way to avoid buying the DME/LME while doing extract brews?

Offline dannyjed

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Re: Basic Recipes help
« Reply #19 on: January 21, 2014, 08:40:13 pm »
If I'm still doing extract brews at this point, can purchase milled malts in place of DME or LME? Is there a way to avoid buying the DME/LME while doing extract brews?
No, that is called all-grain brewing. You can check out dennybrew.com or try BIAB. WARNING - Brewing obsession could get turned up to 11.
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Offline fmader

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Re: Basic Recipes help
« Reply #20 on: January 22, 2014, 05:59:11 am »
WARNING - Brewing obsession could get turned up to 11.

+11
Frank

Offline Joe Sr.

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Re: Basic Recipes help
« Reply #21 on: January 22, 2014, 08:30:53 am »
Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels is still a great book to get you started in designing your own recipes.  Sure there are more malts and hops available nowadays, but it will get you headed in the right direction.  Use software to get your numbers in the right place, but use the book to help select the right ingredients for the styles.

I agree.  I hadn't realized how old that book is, though, until I picked it up recently to refresh myself on a couple of styles.  Regardless, what I think is great about it is the way he provides the commonalities and differences between a variety of beers of the same style.

When I first started designing my own recipes I used a similar approach of taking three or four recipes from quality sources (mostly BYO at that time) and looking at the similarities.  Which base grain is appropriate, which hops, etc.  Then, tweak it over time to get what you want.

Major's advice is solid, but I also think you need a guide - especially when you're starting out - to help you determine which base malt or hops or clean ale yeast you want to use in the American Pale Ale.  Particularly if you want to stay on style.

Of course, I've also done a bunch of crazy beers where I've just throw together whatever I had and they came out pretty good, too.
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Offline reverseapachemaster

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Re: Basic Recipes help
« Reply #22 on: January 22, 2014, 08:40:10 am »
Before you start trying to design recipes I would highly encourage you to learn more about the ingredients available to you and what characteristics they add to a beer. Either brew clone recipes of beers you like so you can see how each of the ingredients transform into a final product where you know what the final product should taste like and/or brew very simple recipes with one hop and extract or extract plus one specialty malt. You can also read as much as you can but you also want that sensory perception.

It's easy to want to get right into recipe building and it can be done but your future recipes will benefit from taking a few batches now and just keeping it simple to learn the ingredients. Otherwise you risk being another one of those people on some of the larger forums asking questions like:

"I want to brew this stout but I don't have any roasted barley. Will it be ok if I use this pound of honey malt instead?"

or making recipes that use every grain available in the LHBS because it was available. Your beer just doesn't need 15 different types of grain.
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Offline Stevie

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Re: Basic Recipes help
« Reply #23 on: January 22, 2014, 10:36:32 am »
Your beer just doesn't need 15 different types of grain.

Unless you are brewing a clone of Jewbelation 15. :)

Offline denny

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Re: Basic Recipes help
« Reply #24 on: January 22, 2014, 11:14:47 am »
Your beer just doesn't might not need 15 different types of grain.

I tried to make that more accurate based on my own experience.  You might only need one or 2 grains for what you want to make, but OTOH you may need many more. 
« Last Edit: January 22, 2014, 11:17:20 am by denny »
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Offline Jimmy K

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Re: Basic Recipes help
« Reply #25 on: January 22, 2014, 02:54:01 pm »
Your beer just doesn't need 15 different types of grain.

Unless you are brewing a clone of Jewbelation 15. :)
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Offline Jimmy K

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Re: Basic Recipes help
« Reply #26 on: January 22, 2014, 02:59:18 pm »
I almost always start by looking up the recipe in Brewing Classic Styles. The book also talks about what characteristics are important to get right. Then I look around at other sources. I'm skeptical of recipes off the internet. I use them, but I always look at who provided it. The recipes on some user-contributed sites are all over. I'm pretty sure there's a Kolsh recipe with chocolate malt out there somewhere.
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Offline HoosierBrew

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Re: Basic Recipes help
« Reply #27 on: January 22, 2014, 03:30:26 pm »
I almost always start by looking up the recipe in Brewing Classic Styles. The book also talks about what characteristics are important to get right. Then I look around at other sources. I'm skeptical of recipes off the internet. I use them, but I always look at who provided it. The recipes on some user-contributed sites are all over. I'm pretty sure there's a Kolsh recipe with chocolate malt out there somewhere.

My method for a style I haven't brewed as well. I like the chocolate malt in kolsch reference  - I don't doubt it. There was a time with the early internet "beer recipe databases" that that might have been the semi-norm.     :D
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Offline dmtaylor

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Re: Basic Recipes help
« Reply #28 on: January 22, 2014, 03:37:03 pm »
Hey, I used chocolate wheat malt in a Kolsch last year!  Only I didn't call it a Kolsch.  I called it an American brown ale.  But used WLP-whatever-it-is.  That 2565 yeast is too much of a pain.  But we digress...
Dave

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Offline Jeff M

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Re: Basic Recipes help
« Reply #29 on: January 22, 2014, 06:23:33 pm »
My process has been think of an idea and try and build a recipe via the suggestions in the BJCP Style Guidelines. Then ill refer to literature to check for accuracy and anything i missed. ill brew these and then refine from there.
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