recipe resource

General Homebrew Discussion
1

Does anyone know of a resource where I can input my on-hand ingredients and a list of suggested recipes will be generated?

I have 10 lbs of Briess 2 row, 2 lbs of Munton’s Munich, 1 lb of Munton’s Chocolate, 1 lb of Briess Caramel 40L, and 1 lb of Munton’s Amber as well as a few other less than full pounds of odds and end malts.

I also have a pack of US-05, and a pack of W-34/70, 3 oz of Mt Rainier, and 2 oz of Cascade hop pellets again, along with a few other less than a full oz of odds and ends hops.

I only get opportunities for Lagers during the winter where my basement ambient air temps allow cooler fermentation (even if high 50(s)*F is the best I can do) so I am thinking something like a Hybrid or Amber Lager. However, I’d like to have a recipe to follow or a commercial example to shoot for. Something along the lines of Jamil’s Uncommonly Lucky - except I don’t have a Cali Common yeast - or European Amber Lager - except I don’t have Vienna Malt.

Any recommendations?

2

I’m not going to be of any help.  You just caused a flashback to my youth when, toward the end of the month my mom would rummage through the fridge & pantry and throw whatever she had into a pot to make a stew.

Not pleasant memories.  :o

3

I’m not a recipe expert but the first thing I thought of is a Porter.

4

+1.  Or an American Brown, dry hopped with the 2 oz of Cascade.  Or an APA if you picked up a few more hops.

5

I hear ya.  I am thinking a lager.  Dunkels kinda brew.

6

you could do a dark lager with the 2 row, munich, and some of the chocolate. Hop with the mt ranier and maybe a touch of some other noble hop if you have any laying around. ferment with the 34/70 which I’ve heard is just fine in the high 50’s.

7

Thank you sir! I found a recipe in BYO’s 250 Classic Clone Recipes doing just that.  It’s an Eastside Dark clone from Lakefront Brewery Wisconsin.  I plugged it into BeerSmith and I think it’s gonna work out great.

I am also going to try my hand at malt conditioning and a thinner mash as well.

8

Don’t forget the recipe database here…Site Not Found

9

This is the one I started with.  http://brewery.org/cm3/CatsMeow3.html

10

Me, too.  I remember a good many of them as…ummm…spotty at best.  Cool at the time, though !

11

So did you brew the recipe there that’s 20 lb. of crystal malt (or something like that).  Cat’s Meow is the worst recipe database I’ve ever seen and I encourage people to avoid it.  Sure, not 100% bad, but bad enough you have ot be able to klnow what’s good and what’s not.

12

Yeah, I thought some of the lame recipe books I bought were bad, but that’s comically bad.  :D      Shows how far things have come.

13

Well, I went with the Eastside Dark (Munich Dunkel) recipe.  All was well until I got up this AM to find my yeast was staging a rebellion.  Nothing was happening.  Nada.  Zilch.

…so for the first time in ~40 batches of homebrew, I opened my fermenter to have a look see.  It looked anemic.  Just laying there.  Kinda ugly.

I took emergency measures.  I sanitized my large brewing strainer and removed the offensive yeast pooper scooper fashion.  I then hydrated and inoculated with my emergency backup pack of US-05.

Instead of a Lager I now have an Ale.  Shame.  Oh well, it wasn’t in the cards.

I can only dream of what could have been as I drink the Ale with a smile on my face.  LOL

Now back to the original question:  Is there a resource where you can input ingredients and a list of suggested recipes is generated?

14

When did you pitch? Lager yeast can take a long time to show signs of active fermentation.

As far as a site that lets you search based on an ingredient list (like Supercook.com does for recipes - love that site), I’m not familiar with one. For something like that to be successful, it would need some good fuzzy logic on the malt side. Otherwise if you had something like Maris Otter on hand, it might not return recipes that use “UK Pale Ale malt”, etc.

15

Beer alchemy (Mac and ios) will recommend beers based on the recipes entered and inventory on hand. Considering the amount of ingredients I keep on hand, it’s not very good. An example is the all grain starter wort recipe I have in there. It always pops to the top since it is a single ingredient and I almost always have 2-row around. The others tend to be SMaSH beers. It would certainly benefit from improvements including seasons and recently brewed batches.

16

That’s a shame. How cool would it be if there was a more reliable resource like supercook.

17

I just saw that the new search function in Brewer’s Friend lets you include “Fermentables”, “Hops”, “Yeast” and “Other” in your search criteria. I’m not generally a big fan of public recipe sites like that, because there’s a large signal-to-noise ratio in finding a good recipe. But it’s certainly a good way to go idea-mining.

For example, entering Midnight Wheat and Centennial gives a lot of Black IPA recipes. If you’re looking to see what others are doing with a certain ingredient this is a decent way to search.

18

Perfect. Thank You!

19

This forum.

20

You might have reacted a bit too quickly on the lager yeast, but the U.S.-05 should work out fine for a tossed together brew. For what it is worth, you can stress the US-05 by fermenting really low - it threw off clove when I tried a cream ale in the 40’s…I did not believe it at first, so I re-brewed and it did it again.  Only 2 data points, but stay in the 50’s and you should not have a problem.