I have a few years under my belt so I thought I would just ask - what is your favorite ale and lager recipe? I have a few and I tend to fall back on my favotites… But rather than starting a debate, I thought I would just ask and see what folks think.
I heart my Scottish and with a minor tweak its also a northern english brown and a decent bitter. I still hunting for my favorite lager, but this winter I’ll be chasing after a good Helles. You left out favorite sour…
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American pale ale
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German Kolsch
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German weizens-hefe,dunkel
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german pils
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munich helles
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vienna
ok now im thirsty 
My favorite ale recipe is here. http://forum.northernbrewer.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=77133&p=722621&hilit=+honey+rye#p722621
Actually this recipe can be improved even further by substituting a little chocolate wheat or chocolate rye malt for part of the wheat, or use all rye instead of wheat. Play around with it. I’ve really never brewed it exactly the same way twice yet, but it turns out excellent every time. It was based on a concept of, hmm, what might the Germans in Wisconsin in the 1880s have done with local ingredients to make a more interesting altbier?
My best lager was a very simple German helles with German Pilsner malt, a dash of wheat, and a dash of Carapils (not sure I even needed that as I usually don’t use Carapils at all). Custom built my water from distilled, double decocted, eventually shooting for about 150 F for 40 minutes, boiled 90 minutes with just a simple Hallertau bittering addition and no late additions, pitch W-34/70 dry lager yeast, ferment at 50 F for 2 weeks, lager in the 30s for 3 weeks, done.
This is a hard question because I have quite a few favorites! Here is one of my favorite original ale recipes:
Yellowjacket Hefeweizen - 5.5 Gallons
5lbs German Wheat Malt
4lbs German Pilsner Malt
1lb Crystal Malt 20L
1/2lb Rice Hulls
1oz Hallertauer Hops (60 minutes)
1oz Hallertauer Hops (5 minutes)
1oz Bitter Orange Peel (5 minutes)
1.0L stirplate starter WLP300 Hefeweizen Yeast
75 minute mash at 150° / Batch Sparge
75 minute boil
Ferment for 21 days in primary (no secondary)
4.1oz corn sugar for priming in bottling bucket.
OG: 1.055
FG: 1.012
ABV: 5.6%
This recipe won a silver medal in my local Pro-Am competition several years ago.
This is one of them for sure, props to brulosopher:
while i was buying the grains for it i was thinking it was looking like a kitchen sink type brew, but man, the complexity is off the charts. nutty, vanilla, toffee, chocolate, etc. etc. everything you could ask for in a brown.
In case your interested…
For ales, the Holtrop Rochefort clone and Skotrat Wee Heavy are pretty high on my list. Brewed both several times and I always come back :
https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=7099.msg217853#msg217853
http://www.skotrat.com/skotrat/recipes/ale/scottish/recipes/10.html
I’ve worked on AIPA and APA recipes for many years, but the grists are fairly standard and are more a measure of hop experimenting (techniques and varieties).
As for lagers, I love brewing the Pils styles, Dort and Helles among others , but the recipes are fairly simple, a good thing usually. For example I make German pils from 100% German pils malt. Good ingredients, lots of yeast, and technique are the big things in lager brewing (to me).
EDIT - As for the Skotrat recipe, I’ve been bumping the OG up to ~ 1.100 lately, with the percentages and IBUs intact.
So simple, it must be good.
I see 3 yeasts listed, but only one has a quantity… you go with one of the three, not mixing, correct?
I’ve only done two lagers, a marzen and a CAP. both placed in the National Organic Brewing challenge this year. My wife loves the Marzen and I’ve brewed that three times now.
Favorite Ale recipe is a toss up between my session strength (~3.8% abv) rye stout and my farmhouse ale.
it’s interesting. the lager recipes are super simple. I think the CAP is just 70% pale malt and 30% polenta and hallertaur and the the marzen is 70-30 pils and munich II and hallertaur while the ale recipes each have at least four grains/sugars and a handful of hop varieties.
Yes correct. The Munich helles is seasonal …spring time and so I use any of the above depending on availability.
My favorite ale recipe is my mesquite smoked saison although my hatch chile pale is a fan favorite. I have limited lager experience but I really enjoyed my pilsner recipe from this summer.
Tough call
I think my fav Ale recipe has to be the Regal Pale Ale from this years Big Brew. Man, that’s a delicious beer.
The Lager has to be California Common because I don’t have true lagering capability so ferment at Ale temps. In other words it’s the only lager I’ve done. LOL
Ordinarily, I’d say “IPA” for my ale, but I never brew the same recipe twice. So I’ll have to go with my ESB, which is based on Fullers. 93% MO, 7% Dark UK Crystal, hopped with Challenger, EKG and Caliente.
For lagers, it’s definitely my “Erocktoberfest”, which is a Maerzen with some added Aromatic to kick up the maltiness.
So I have to ask - “never the same recipe twice”. What’s behind that? Haven’t you just found that magic brew that lit you up and you found yourself crying and wanting more when it was gone? Just curious.
I’m in the same wagon here. I’ve never brewed the exact recipe twice. Only three brews have been rebrewed with a variation of the original recipe. For me, my favorite part of the hobby is to create a recipe and have the anticipation to see how it turned out. I’d been bored and probably would have moved on from brewing if I brewed the same beers over and again. If I’m bored in the evening, I’ll create a new recipe. I probably have 20 recipes that I’ve never brewed… I want to get to them all.
Yeah I get that thrill of the new conquest. But I’m also very fond of recipes I’ve dialed in and just love. I have a handful of repeats I like to cycle in amongst the new brews or variations of old brews.
The “never the same recipe twice” is specifically regarding IPA’s. There are just too many hops out there to play with. Plus, I spent a few years chasing the level of hop flavor that I wanted in my IPA’s. I have my process close to dialed in, but the hop selection changes and I’m still tweaking the malt bill. I’ve also locked onto some other styles that I have been dialing in recently, so the past year or so hasn’t seen too much IPA activity in my brewery.