I started out in the bad old days when a brewer usually took the long route to all-grain because he/she was more often than not plowing undisturbed ground within his/her community (i.e., kit beer -> extract with steeped specialty grains -> 50% dry or liquid extract/50% extract from freshly mashed grain partial mashing -> all-grain). I burned through the kit beer and extract plus specialty grains phase in a month. I spent seven months as a 50/50 partial masher before moving to all-grain. At that point in time, one had to build all of one's brewing gear. Unlike today, one had to learn how to source parts as well as fabricate gear because the commercialization of the Internet was still several years off (I still remember receiving my first McMaster-Carr catalog). The relative newness of amateur brewing as a non-underground activity (think small and usually poorly stocked home brewing supply stores), lack of well-dispersed knowledge, and there being no such thing as an all-grain kit beer prevented one from starting out as an all-grain brewer.
Anyway, I originally designed a large number of the recipes that I still brew today when I was a 50/50 partial masher, which is probably why I still work in points per pound per gallon instead of weighted extraction efficiencies. A helpful strategy when designing beer recipes is to look at ingredients as percentages of a total. A lot of new brewers make the fatal mistake of looking at recipes as collections of dry measures. Dry measures do not scale with respect to extraction efficiency, percentages do! Scaling hops is even more difficult to do because hops, like spices, do not scale linearly with respect to batch size.
If you take the time to analyze the grists found in popular recipes, you will discover that a large number of recipes fall into what I refer to as the 90% pale base malt/10% specialty/darker base malt category. One can formulate an amazing number of recipes using a grist that is composed of 90% pale base malt and 10% specialty/darker base malts. The breakdown that I used most frequently in my first year of all-grain brewing was 90% domestic 2-Row, 5% domestic dextrine malt (a.k.a. carapils malt), and 5% other, which was more often than not 20L or 40L crystal. I used dextrine malt because my early years as a brewer were dominated by BRY 96 (in my case, slanted yeast that was plated from a bottle of SNPA), and BRY 96 plus domestic 2-row can lead to a dry/thin beer. Dextrine malt improves the body of a beer. It also improves mouthfeel. I still use dextrine malt to this day when working with domestic 2-row.
Like Keith's straightforward approach to mastering ingredients, the basic grist outlined above became the basis for hop and yeast strain experimentation. Because the base grist remained relatively static, any large difference in the finished product had to be the result of different hops, yeast strains, and/or process modifications. I was able to leapfrog over my friends who were brewing other people's recipes using this method.
You want to avoid changing too many variables at once when attempting to build a catalog of brewing flavors. I recommend starting with a simple grist, a clean kettle (bittering) hop such as Galena or Magnum and a clean ale strain such as BRY 96 (a.k.a. Ballantine "beer," "Chico," Wy1056, WLP001, and US-05). BRY 96 is a good yeast to use when learning how to design beers because it is incredibly forgiving and fairly neutral in flavor. This grist/yeast/base hop combination will give you a platform for experimenting with finishing hops, which are a big part of modern craft brewing.
After you develop a firm grasp of finishing hops, pick a balanced recipe (i.e., one with a bitterness unit-to-gravity unit ratio of around 1:2) that you developed using the approach outlined above, and start experimenting with different yeast strains. If you are like most amateur brewers, you will rapidly identify a handful of yeast strains you that you prefer.
With this new found knowledge, you will be able to start to modify your grist to match that of other styles. While modifications to the grist can and often do change how the yeast and hops affect the flavor of the finished product, the yeast strain and hop varieties employed in a recipe will maintain their basic flavor/aroma envelopes.
In the end, you are going to have to find a way to learn how to formulate recipes that fits your learning style. While deviating from the basic styles outlined in the BJCP Style Guidelines can be enlightening, more often than not, doing so results in a "What was I thinking?" moment. Any brewer who has brewed for any length of time has experienced at least one of these moments. I would also personally avoid brewing a bunch of recipes to find one that you like if you are serious about learning how to build recipes from scratch. Brewing other people's recipes teaches you how to brew other people's recipes. Systematic experimentation will teach you more about brewing than copying another brewer's work. At first, you will more than likely end up with a lot of not so great beers, but you will quickly learn what to avoid doing, which is often more important than learning what to do (stealing a little of Denny and Drew's experimental work, do not attempt to brew a bratwurst flavored beer by putting bratwurst in the beer
).
One last thing: it's helpful to approach brewing as a life-long marathon, not a sprint. There's always something new to learn.
Topic: Creating recipes (Read 3641 times)
