New to home-brewing. Finally after a year of contemplating, got an actually kit from Northern Brewer. I’m pretty excited to get the ball rolling and start with a couple extract kits. I got the Deluxe 2-stage fermentation kit from NB and the kit was pretty well stacked with equipment. I’m pretty satisfied with the customer service and the speed they completed everything with.
So I have a ton of free time on Monday and there is the marked FIRST brew day here at the house.
My question is this:
The kits are fantastic and all but I’d like to learn how to build my own flavor profiles etc. Are there any resources which help someone starting out figure out malts, hops, yeast to use etc.
Thanks a ton for any help, I’m really digging all the info on here.
Shawn
Download the free version of BrewSmith software and play around with creating recipes. It also comes with–if you purchase it–a data-base of recipes that you can use as a guide. You may also want to look at the BJCP (Beer Judge Certification Program) style guidelines which will outline flavor, aroma, mouthfeel, and ingredients that are traditionally used–or not used–in each style. Check out Jamil Zainasheff’s “Brewing Classic Styles” and Ray Daniel’s “Designing Great Beers” books.
Good luck! And welcome to the forum and to the obsession.
The only way to build your flavor palate is by experience. I’d recommend taking a proven/known recipe (Brewing Classic Styles is great for this), and brewing it a few times making one change at a time (like swapping out 1 hop or malt variety) and seeing how that changes the recipe.
Also, the ingredients section of How To Brew is a decent primer to at least understand what the various ingredients are.
Welcome to the hobby and the forum! Don’t hesitate to ask questions here. You will get a lot of helpful replies.
Thanks, I checked out the Beer Smith program. Pretty sweet! I’ll have to look into a bit more, I also liked how you can convert All-Grain recipes.
I’m also going to check out a local group next week. I just moved down to Hyannis MA and Cape Cod Beer is within a bike ride away. I checked out the brewery a few weeks ago, they had a cool vibe there.
It’s kind of a hike, but if you can get up to Middleboro, check out our homebrew club. You’ll be immediately plugged into a world of knowledge and expertise, oh, and great beer, good guys, and fun. PM me if you’re interested.
Designing Great Beers is an excellent resource. It’s one I refer back to often, whether I’m trying a new style or trying to improve one I’ve brewed before.
But, no amount of reading can compensate for actually brewing. Brewing the same beer and tweaking something each time as erockrph suggests is a great way to learn.
Take good notes when you brew. Refer back to them.
Also, something that helped me early on was to get a copy of one of the clone brews recipe books. Even if they are not exact, you can relate those recipes to commercial beers that you have already probably tasted. As you read more recipes, you can get some ideas of what the ingredients can contribute to your finished beers. As they said above, there is no substitute for actually brewing the beers yourself, but having a bit of a basis for comparison can help at least point you in the right general direction.
Oh, and Designing Great Beers is showing its age but is still good. Hopefully someday Ray will update it but I think he’s just too busy with the Cicerone thing to actually do it. Too bad.
+1 totally agree… When I first started i got the same recipes 2 or 3 times in a row and would make small changes- its inevitable that you will have a beer get infected. Dump it, sanitize better next time and keep on keepin on!
I think a really godd method to build your knowledge of flavors is to download a copy of the BJCP style guidelines. Look through them for a beer you like and read about what goes into it. Or do it the way I did…read the guidelines until you read about a beer that sounds good to you, then go get a bottle. Pour yourself a glass of the beer and sit down with the guidelines again. As you drink the berr, read the description in the guidelines and look at the ingredients that go into the beer. Try to imagine what each one of them brings to the flavor party. Then try to formulate a recipe for that beer based on what you read and your “taste imagination”.
I agree about reading about clone brews, except I’d caution you not to buy the book “Clone Brews”, or " Beer Captured". Total crap. Instead, listen to the Can You Brew It podcast or check out the discussions about commercial beer recipes in the forums.
+2, especially for comp beers. And I agree with using BCS as a reference to brew a style for the first time. It’s by no means the ‘be all end all’ for recipes but the recipes are solid and give a base to sub in/out ingredients one at a time and learn about them.
In addition to much of the great advice here, I find reviewing the NHC winning recipes posted by the AHA (one of the many great perks of being a card carrying member) helps when developing a recipe. I look at multiple winning examples of the same style and look for similarities. In particular, I look at things like grain %'s, hop schedules, yeast used, fermentation profiles, and mash profiles. The similarities as well as the differences you find can help you get a good starting point.
It’s a bit daunting at first, but once I started learning more about various ingredients, it has helped me out. I’ve also received great advice on specific recipes I’m planning from this forum.
For my first brew I found a great clone recipe and brewed that. That way I stood a better chance of coming up with something that I knew I would like. I’ve known on or two guys who went wild with their first brew and made a very complicated beer that ended up undrinkable. Turned them off of brewing. A cherry bourbon vanilla imperial porter, may sound good, but it’s not easy to nail something like that and can get nasty if you overdo things.
My advice is start simple with basic and proven recipes until you get your process down. Also seek out a few good commercial examples of any style you’re interested in. You might find that it sounds better than it tastes to you. 5 gallons is a lot to go through if you don’t really like the beer.
People know how I feel about brewing software, and, that is, use it as a tool, not as a crutch. Becoming a true-blue brewer is more than being able to parrot the calculations given to you by brewing software. It is about learning the underlying processes in gory detail, including the mathematics encountered in brewing. That way, one is positioning oneself to be leader, not just a follower. You should work hard to transform what appears to be magic on the surface into little more than a craft-oriented application of science and engineering. You will find yourself relying on software less and less as your knowledge base grows.
By the way, converting a recipe from all-grain to extract or partial-mash is a trivial exercise if you learn how to use points per pound per gallon.
This is the reason I made my own Excel sheet. It got my hands dirty with calculations and much of what I now know was a direct result of the time spent putting it together.
