One thing i havent gotten much into as of yet is creating and testing new beer recipes. Personally I view this as the art side of Beer, The taking of ingredients and melding them into a wonderful melange of personal preference and experience. When people drink the beer you have created you are taking them on a journey as it where.
Anyway - Can you guys give an explanation of how you create recipes and the steps you go threw in reviewing and tweeking?
Here has been my process thus far. I took a brief look at the BJCP Guidelines and created 10 recipes profiles in beersmith that are Named per the style. I am now going through and creating Grain and Hop bills according to the descriptions used in the stylebook and staying close to the OG/FG/ABV/SRM/IBU range at the same time. My plan is to then brew a 5g batch of the .1 version and see if i can identify what i like and dont like about.
I start similarly to what you have described. I then read lot’s of other recipes and try to get a grasp on the commonalities.
The recipe wiki here on AHA is a good resource for that.
then I apply my own preferences; I tend to reduce bittering charges and crystal malts and tweak for ingredients I can get organically. Often I’ll add a little munich.
Designing Great beers by Ray Daniels is a really good resource when you are trying to do a new style. It has some great charts on which malts are used at what rate by how many people. I refer to it a lot when I am attempting a new style.
I am indeed looking at the recipe wiki here, it was just hard to find since the AHA website has changed over. I am also trying to source all local ingredients when possible as a good hook for my beers. i have about 8lbs of local whole leaf hops grown about an hour from here. there is also a maltster near the hop farm that i need to order some grain from and roadtrip out to pick up:)
I also have the Ray Daniels book next to me, ill refer to it after i have my initial notes from the BJCP style guideline to correct mistakes and hopefully refine as version .2 before brewing.
DGB and BJCP. And I almost always follow the same hop schedule regardless of style unless it requires no aroma. What helps is having an example. Preferably more than one. So drink up people.
I may not be the best brewer because I tend to brew what I think I will like instead of what are solid, proven styles.
I start by thinking about the finished product and going backward from there. A lot of my beers don’t necessarily fit into categories so I don’t worry about guidelines much. For example, I might want to brew a Kolsch but hop it up a bit with American style hops as late kettle and dry hop additions…
I am still learning on how to develop recipes over time and that is currently my personal emphasis. I think is about getting as close as you can with the first attempt and changing one thing at a time (if possible) so you can tell if that made the final product better or worse.
I do agree with this. If an alteration takes it outside of a Style Guideline i wont mind. But i am attempting to design beers to eventually sell. Needless to say people will buy unusual beers as long as they taste great, i just plan to start with usual and expand my portfolio from there:) it is after all about “knowing your flavor components”, right denny?
+1 to DGB and BJCP Style Guidelines. Designing Great Beers is a GREAT book with a great approach. You can create a recipe for a style and be able to see what ingredients (and % of each ingredient) are common in that style. It really helped me get a handle on things across a big range of styles. Learning the attributes of each malt, hop, and yeast will help dial in a recipe, and I learned by changing only one ingredient or variable at a time. Take really clear,thorough, legible notes (including water chemistry)that you can reference. Be sure to add detailed tasting notes - I might not make a style that I brewed last year for another year or two, depending on the style. What was great, good, mediocre, or sh#$$y about it, and what would I change next time? Easiest to assess while you’re drinking it than having to try to remember. Good luck.
+1 to this and I’ll add that I also will try to sample a few of the beers recommended to style as a means of comparison and what I like or dislike and tweak from there.
It’s a fun process To go through as well as brewing and tweaking to get just what you want.
Creating recipes is one of my favorite parts of the entire brewing process. It puts your stamp on the product and makes it more genuine to me. As Mort said, I look at the commonalities in distinct styles and go from there to find my medium… This hold especially true for me with the malt bill. As far as calculating the malt bill, I reference chapter 5 of Daniels book. I go here for reference more than any other books I have. I suppose if you have software, you wouldn’t need to, but I do mine on pen and paper. As far as hops go, I use my imagination. I have only rebrewed a few of my recipes with modifications. I’m not sure if this is best practice or not. But if I have spare time in the evening, I’ll throw a new recipe together… So then I need to get them brewed ASAP!
I have made made some following Gordon Strong’s Zen approach in Brewing Better Beer. Flavor goal, ingredients to get to the goal, don’t over think it (apologies to Gordon for understating the whole deal).
I made a rustic German lager that did not fit into the style guidelines. It turned out very tasty, and was like those around Bamberg when one orders a Lagerbier or Landbier.
I made an off the wall lager that was inspired by Bells Quianannon Falls lager. Got close, and it was well received by many at NHC in Philly on Club Night. This was winging it at its finest. The Bells folks liked it!
The first time I brew a style, I generally brew one of the recipes in Brewing Classic Styles. It is one of the best references out there for brewers who are starting to dabble in the recipe design process.
Basically, the key to designing good recipes is to know your ingredients. It’s hard to get from your initial idea to your endpoint if you don’t know how to get there. The best place to start is by taking a known recipe and making small tweaks to start. Look at some recipes you like and try to understand what each ingredient is doing, then adjust by changing amounts or swapping out/adding/subtracting an ingredient.
Once you have built up a decent toolkit of ingredients you feel comfortable with, then you can start to get a bit more adventurous and start working from scratch. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes or take chances - it’s just beer. Don’t be discouraged if a good percentage of your ideas don’t work out as well as you had hoped. There is a reason why there are so many established styles - those styles/recipes have been proven to work well. There is definitely a lot of great beer to be made in between and outside the styles, but there’s a lot more mediocre beer to be made out there as well.
Having said that, there are ways to approach beer outside of styles to increase your odds of brewing something tasty. Have a concrete goal for what you’re shooting for. Make sure it makes sense within the framework of beer (i.e., pickle beer, garlic beer, carpaccio beer are all probably real bad ideas). Then approach it with restraint, and using what you know about similar styles to your target as a guide.
A quick example. While I’ve had my share of misses, I really nailed one beer dead on a while ago. I had tried Caliente hops for the first time and I got an awesome fresh red plum aroma. I decided to take a bunch of ingredients that produce varying degrees of plumminess and use them together. I used Unibroue yeast, D-180 Candi Syrup, Special B and Caliente hops. The resulting brew was kind of in between a Dubbel and an ESB, but the sum of the ingredients was so much more than that. Everything just meshed perfectly. If only all my other experiments worked out so well.
i had a good brew day with a buddy today and the recipe i used was inspired by an arrogant bastard clone. i had so much fun brewing today i decided to to a 3.25 biab batch when i got home. it’s going on the stove right now.
i knew i wanted to try another pale ale with mosaic. i had 2 row, wheat malt and caravienne on hand so i just threw some numbers together in beersmith and got started.
i do this a lot. i like using things i have on hand and seeing what i get on the back end. most of my recipes are made in this way, though i do use a basic framework of the styles i like to brew(ipa, pale, porter being the most common).
however, i have only brewed a hand full of beers more than a few times in the 4 years I’ve been brewing. i’ve never been concerned about absolute consistency. i just like brewing different things. i’m probably in a small number of brewers but that’s how i like to brew.