Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher is a great source for base recipes. They get you in the ballpark without the frills.
I’ve been meaning to pick this book up. There’s some great ideas in this thread…thanks guys.
Mix it up. Not much of a recipe creator…don’t know enough yet. Do a lot of Jamil recipes from Brewing Classic Styles and clones from Can You Brew it.
I make my own but pay attention to how others have constructed good recipes, e.g., Brewing Classic Styles. Even when I am being strongly influenced by another’s recipe, I invariably make hop or grain switches due to availability, impulse, and/or sheer laziness.
I’m just starting to look to other recipes, online and in books, for inspirations. I just started brewing about a month ago and am totally hooked. I am still extract brewing, havent bought the equipment yet for all grain. Hopefully soon though.
I mix it up. I do mostly recipes I’ve found here or others that I’ve tweaked somewhat. But I still do kits occasionally, just being lazy.
Definitely pick it up. In addition to tons of recipes (to include obscure and “extinct” styles), he also explains beer history and good explanation of styles and methods of brewing different brews. Great read! John Palmer’s How to Brew may be the definitive how-to book, but IMO Radical Brewing is the #2 must have.
I don’t like to brew another’s recipe verbatum, but don’t know enough to stray too far either. I like to read the Classic Beer Style Book for the particular style (currently it is Porter), and then read the section in the Brewing Classic Styles, and finally I go searching through Zymergy and BYO back issues for a recipie to tweak with my new found knowledge on a particular style.
the first few years I brewed it was kits exclusively. Nowadays, I mix it up and brew recipes that are real popular on the forums (Denny’s RIPA and BVIP, some others), ones that I make up myself. I use Jamil’s book when I want to try a category I’ve never done before, just to get a good baseline.
I’m no chemist, and I only have the basic knowledge I need to make beer. I got into this hobby to create recipes, same reason I love to cook. I started creating my own recipes about 5 batches in, with a few misses along the way I believe I really know now how to build a recipe from scratch and the ingredients I am working with. I say “keep it simple”, as big complicated recipes don’t usually translate into a complex beer, but simple well calculated recipe formulation always works well.
Same here. After that first batch, it was “roll your own” from there on out.
Here’s an online store:
http://www.brewmasterswarehouse.com/brew-builder
That will allow you to create your own “kit.”
I’m surprised no one has voted for “clones”.
As a rookie - I use kits but this last batch I took the recipe from the first kit and played with the hops variety and yeast strain. It’s in secondary now an all fuggles English Bitter with Wyeast “Whitbread Ale”.
i’d think b/c that sort of overlaps the other categories - kits can be clones and recipes in books can be clones.
That’s pretty much my story too…when I started brewing there really were no kits per se (in 1971 I bought my malt syrup…Blue Ribbon hopped… in an Iowa supermarket…right there on the shelf with baking goods) and flew from there with the help of my biology major friend who insisted on overseeing the yeast health, as well as insisting on using 2 cans of extract for the batch.
He was fairly prescient, I guess…the common wisdom at the time was to use nearly 50% table sugar).
I’m guessing that if it weren’t for that surprisingly decent first batch, I would have lost interest and moved on.
For years after that it was combinations of different malt syrups (as I discovered them…John Bull, Edme, and especially M&F “Old Ale”) and hop additions, then finally all grain. Charlie’s book set me on the right path as far as the grain handling goes and after doing it for so many years, I pretty much know what to expect, even given the margin of error from swapping grain brands and sources.
Right now there are probably 5 or 6 beers all formulas of my own making, that I make on a regular basis and and which are pretty consistent from batch to batch with excellent repeatability.
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As a side note (and I know it goes against the common wisdom of the boards) , I’ve found that freely substituting malts and in most cases, even hop varieties for the beers I make seems to make little difference in the end results if the right adjustments are made.
That said, I do have my favorites among the hop varieties though (they are mostly old time, traditional varieties like CLuster, Bullion, and Brewer’s Gold) and try to keep enough on hand at all times and sub out only when I need . But I don’t fret about substitutions…with very few subtle exceptions it almost always makes the same recognizable beers.
My first brew was a kit recipe. My second and third brews were recipes from other brewers. The vast majority of the 80+ batches that have followed have been my own creations. I used to consult Ray Daniels’ “Designing Great Beers” pretty frequently when approaching new styles. Now I have a pretty regular rotation of well-tested/tweaked recipes. Occasionally, I’ll brew a style I’ve never brewed before and I generally look to a few different sources for recipes (mostly forum members’ creations). But what I end up brewing is usually pretty much my own.
I started with kits like most people. Now I mostly make my own recipes. I like to take a commercial beer as an inspiration, research it, and try to approximate it. I think this is different than cloning, as I don’t necessarily want to recreate the beer exactly, just capture the flavors that interested me… My favorite beers to brew this way are things I can’t get locally, like some beers I had in the Lake District in England or American beers that I can get while traveling but not at home.
I’ve actually never brewed a kit - I was fortunate in that my first two batches, I was assisting a (more) experienced brewer. The only beer I’ve ever “borrowed” directly from someone else’s recipe is Denny’s BVIP, and even that I think I made some minor tweaks. For me, the recipe design is one of the most fun parts.
I don’t care where the recipe comes from, when I get good results.
You should have a NO PANTS! option in your poll.
I’m surprised and dissappointed that this has not come up before page 3