…How do you all figure out your recipes? …
1. I try to select a base or combination of base plus one each per category of the other grains (only if needed) from the ‘mash required’ or ‘no mash required’ categories below. Some beers just have a combination of base malts such as my version of Festbier: 60% Pils, 25% Vienna and 15% Munich.
**Mash:
Base: Pilsner, Brewer’s Malt, Pale (‘2-Row’, Maris Otter, Golden Promise, etc), Pale Ale, Vienna, Munich, etc.
Special: aromatic, melanoidin, biscuit, Victory, Special Roast, honey malt, amber malt, and brown malt, etc.
Unmalted adjuncts: Barley, Wheat, Rye, Oats, Corn, Rice, etc
**Mash out/Vorlauf + Sparge:
Light C malt: C#, Cara-, Crystal, etc
Dark C malt: C#, Cara-, Crystal, Special B, DRC, etc
Chocolate: Light, Dark, Carafa, etc
Roasted malt: Roasted Barley, Black Patent, Blackprinze, etc
**Boil:
Sugar: Demerara, Lactose, Brown, Table, Turbinado, Candi Syrup, Invert, etc
2. Think in percents.
3. Have you seen this:
John Palmer’s template found in his book How to Brew, Chapter 20 Experiment! — Developing your own Recipes:
“To help get your creative juices flowing, here is a rough approximation of the recipes for the common ale styles:
Pale Ale - base malt plus a half pound of caramel malt,
Amber Ale - pale ale plus a half pound of dark caramel malt,
Brown Ale - pale ale plus a half pound of chocolate malt
Porter - amber ale plus a half pound of chocolate malt,
Stout - porter plus a half pound of roast barley.
Yes, those recipes are pretty crude, but I want you to realize how little effort it takes to produce a different beer.”
4. Combining these thoughts you can end up with something like this Amber Ale (combination of base malt and one specialty malt added to Palmer’s framework):
Mash
75% Pale Malt
10% Munich
5% Victory
Add at Mash Out
5% C40
5% C120
…then substitute hops and yeast in/out as desired, as well as water adjustments.
5. Understanding styles can help. For example an American Pale Ale fits between a Blonde Ale and an American IPA in hoppiness and strength. Back off on the hops (and maybe the strength) and you have a Blonde Ale. Increase the strength (and maybe the hops) and you have an IPA. Tweak the malt-hop balance to favor the malt a bit more, and you have either an American Amber Ale or an American Brown Ale (add more crystal malt for an amber, add some chocolate malt for a brown).
6. …but don’t let the perceived ‘rules’ dictate your creativity. “The style nazi [wants] to define something as "English" or "British" is by the use of UK malt and hops. Even though beers actually brewed in Britain over the last 150 [years] have almost always contained some non-British ingredients.” — Ron Pattinson