Recipies,your own or not!

C

chub1

Active Member
Trial Member
Joined
Aug 17, 2015
Messages
393
Reaction score
137
Points
43
Location
Surrey UK
Out of interest,do you concoct your very own recipies,follow known/released recipies to the letter or loosley base a brew on known recipies?
I do like to knock up my own recipies using brewers friend but have also been loosley following published recipies from the net or from books.
Have brewed one or two batches from a list available online which includes many recipies from as far back as the 1800's.
Did a Mackeson clone which went down very well with those who tried it and have a double stout on the go which was from a famous british brewery called Trumans.
A link here if anyone is interested-
Let’s Brew Listing | half a cat
 
Many of my regular brews are rewrites of my favorite extract lots I used to brew. I've done my best to convert them to all grain recipes for BIAB brewing. I have a few SMaSH recipes I like, where I wanted to see what a particular grain and/or hop tastes like. My wife just dyed one green, drinking it now. It's a Golden Promise/Lemon Drop SMaSH beer. Good for summer drinking.
 
jeffpn said:
Many of my regular brews are rewrites of my favorite extract lots I used to brew. I've done my best to convert them to all grain recipes for BIAB brewing. I have a few SMaSH recipes I like, where I wanted to see what a particular grain and/or hop tastes like. My wife just dyed one green, drinking it now. It's a Golden Promise/Lemon Drop SMaSH beer. Good for summer drinking.
Click to expand...
Ha ha
called into a pub last year in April and lo and behold they were serving green beer:D
 
All of the above.

A typical workflow for me on a new style is:
  • Brew recipe as found (unless it has a particular ingredient I really don't like)
  • Brew again with a few modifications
  • Brew yet again using an all new recipe of my own, learning from what I liked or didn't.
For instance, the Marzen currently in primary is my own recipe now (4th year), while the Wee Heavy carbing up in the keg is loosely based on a recipe I found a while back in BYO. My "House" IPA, due to be brewed in a couple of weeks, will also be from scratch mine.
 
Most of my fave recipes are 'loosely' based on published recipes from various sources. They have developed from brew to brew depending on what ingredients I have at the time.
Most of my pale ales use the same grain bill, I just vary the hops.
 
Make my own, but with a lot of research. The longer I go, the more I am brewing repeats of my own recipes with maybe some minor tweaks. The years schedule has 7 brews that will be completely new. The other 15 are "regulars" or ongoing development. (Yes, I actually have the whole year planned in detail; actually through February of next year).
 
I usually find a recipe Im interested in and change it based on what i have here
but I also create my own , most I make are very simple
 
I'll usually read up on different ingredients rather than starting from a known recipe. More fun for me that way and I feel more involved in the process (same reason why I don't like homebrew shops that don't let you get your own grain)
No way am I that planned out like MrBIP, although I'd love to be. It's all them damn metric squirrels running about
 
But if I do use a known one, I'll most likely tweak something because I don't have access to an ingredient or from what I've learned in other brews
 
yeah after years of experimentation, you only need really one base grain maybe one or 2 flavors, one extra just for color and at the most two hops sometimes even one
 
I just look through @Ozarks Mountain Brew 's shared recipes. :)

Seriously, there are a few brewers here that have some very good proven recipes and I often do a search through the BF data base to get a handle on a type of recipe. Sometimes, I'll make it up from scratch, but usually there's a recipe to use as a template or a starting point, along with some research into BJCP guidelines and ingredients typically associated with a particular style.
One of the better grain bills I've come up with so far was a result of running out of my local pale ale malt and wanting to come up with a recipe using Pilsner malt that would approximate it, so sometimes it's a process of figuring out what to do with available ingredients.
 
Basically brew my own recipes but started with attempted clones. I like to,listen to style based podcasts to get a handle on what parameters are for the style I'm aiming for an go frome there.
 
  • Like
Reactions: J A
I like to create my own mostly. Some are copied from books then tweeked to fit my tastes and system. I try to stay near a style but find it varies to fit my tastes sometimes. Did 4 or 5 extract kits when getting started and have designed almost all my beers since then, even when still doing extract. Got carried away with lots of different malts and hop additions for a while but seldom have more than 5 grain or adjunct ingredients or no more than 3 hops in most of my beers now. Staying simple it is easier to make a larger variety of beers if that makes any sense.
 
To me, recipes are overrated. Sure, they are a factor in how the beer comes out but all the process steps, sanitation, how you ferment all have a bigger role in the outcome of the beer than how many ounces of Crystal 120 you put in. Yet it seems to me that the first thing someone does as soon as the extract kit comes out the way they want is to start "formulating recipes." They could be well on their way to becoming better brewers but they're stuck on the recipe. Okay, end rant and on to how I formulate a recipe. First, I find a reliable source and sorry, most of the "Make Awesome Homebrew" books out there and any non-curated website, this one included, aren't reputable starting points. Zymurgy, BYO are good references but today, my go-to is Craft Beer and Brewing. They generally don't give precise recipes but guidelines and suggestions which I use to brew the beer in my mind. If I'm really confident or the recipe is very easy, I can go ahead and brew but if not, I'll brew a half-batch to see if it's something I'd want to drink five gallons of. After tweaks, the recipe is tested against my process and ready to use. The important take away is it has to be tested against your process before you can say a recipe is good or not. And it might not be for someone else with a different process.
 
I'd agree with most of what @Nosybear has to say there, with the exception of the Crystal 120...Knowing how much is too much of some ingredients is almost profoundly important...too much dark crystal and roasted malt is why my first "Amber Ale" was damn near a porter. :rolleyes::)

I do agree that there seems to be a tendency toward unbridled enthusiasm to make big, complicated, high ABV beers after successfully bottling kit extract beer. The notion that your first all-grain beer should be a coconut cocoa nib coffee vanilla oatmeal dry-hopped Imperial Stout is a little preposterous.
I brewed a half dozen HME kits that were drinkable at best. My friends' gushing compliments notwithstanding, I knew I was nowhere near a proper brewer. I formulated a couple of very, very simple extract recipes and turned out the first beers that I knew were in most ways actually quite good beers, if a little lackluster in character. It was a huge confidence booster and I started following up with some steeped grains and slightly more complex recipes and figuring out what actually worked and then moving on to all-grain.
Even now, I have to fight the impulse to overdo a recipe the first time around and I've found time after time, that the more straight forward the recipe, the cleaner and more defined the beer turns out.
 
Nosybear said:
First, I find a reliable source and sorry, most of the "Make Awesome Homebrew" books out there and any non-curated website, this one included, aren't reputable starting points. Zymurgy, BYO are good references but today, my go-to is Craft Beer and Brewing.
Click to expand...

^ That, yes. I find myself in the habit of adding BYO often to google searches for that exact reason. There's a lot of goofy BS out there on the interweb.
 
I third BYO you can get some conflicting information out there that can leave you confused o_O.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Copyright © 2007-2024 Brewer's Friend, Inc. - Send Feedback - Terms - RSS Feed - Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

Back
Top