Designing a recipe

[Ducatiboy stu]

Over the years I have seen many ask about designing an AG/extract/whatever and the same mistakes get made.

I have designed a recipe with 500 grains and 100 hops....will it work?

Yes..well...maybe.

A good beer needs balance. A balance of grains and hops.

You need to look at the balance of grains in overall sweetness. Too much Crystal can make a beer too sweet. To much Choc Malt can make it bitter.

You need to balance your hop bitterness to suit the sweetness of your grain bill. SG:IBU is a ratio that I have not seen talked about for years on here with regard the overall recipe design. It is an essential ratio when designing a beer. Different beers have different ratios.

An example:

A Coopers Pale Ale is roughly 1055@35IBU.

Ratio of 55:35.

An IPA is obviuosly a higher SG:IBU

Another thing I have noticed is that brewers want to use heaps of different malts in the grain biill.

You don't need to. Select the right amount of grains in good ratios and you will get great beer.Try designing a beer with 3 malts. Most good beers only need 3. Sometimes 4.

Hops. There are so many hop varieties that your head can explode. But, keep your hop bill to 1 or 2. Dont overcomplicate a simple enjoyable beer. 3 hops are great if you balance the bitterness-flav-aroma. Look at your bitternes/flav/aroma. They all need to be balanced and the right hops need to be used for the right addition. POR is a great bittering hop if used up to 30ibu (at 55 SG) . Makes a less than ordinarry flavour and even worse aroma.

I hope this thread is about designing and how to balance your beers

My above comments will not suit everyone, and are what I have learnt. Some love their 10min ales, others like SMASH.

All styles have their place and all styles should be encouraged.

This thread is hopefully about designing and helping those design their own from scratch.

 

[Fat Bastard]

S' funny Stu, I've been thinking of making a similar thread for ages. I mostly try to do my own recipes from scratch, and have done since I did my first AG brew nearly 3 years ago. If I don't develop the recipe from scratch, I'll take a known recipe and modify it to what I have in stock or what I can easily get.

I think the important thing is to know your ingredients and to have a specific goal in mind. The other thing is to brew, and brew often, but keep records and don't change too much at any one time. I've been brewing AG for nearly three years now, and have been trying to come up with 4-5 recipes that are better than just good. But... Not just a good recipe, something that can be modified into something else. Currently I'm working on a saison, that can have various additions to make something outrageous. I did a beetroot saison recently based on a straight saison that is good on its own. My imperial porter has bourbon and vanilla in it, but would be good with US 05 and chipotle or just on its own. I've got a number of friends who think my first AG was my best when though it was under bitter for an IPA and had little aroma hops it was a fine malty dry ale.

Just brew, experiment, take notes and have fun!

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Records are important. You need a base line to go back to.

That's how I evolved my Pillar of Red & Pillar of Stout. My Pillar of Porter is lost...but it was based around Cararoma....1060:45Ibu

My 3x3x3 ale is shit simple. 3 malts , 3hops, 3 additions.

 

[idzy]

I lol when people type it recipie

Good write up Stu. Recipe formulation from scratch is not something I have done much of, because I am only new to brewing. I must say software like BeerSmith certainly helps me. To give you some constraints or guides for particular styles. It has helped me immensely.

Cheers,
Idzy

 

[Cocko]

Ok, I will try and add to this too..

Recipe building can be broken down to 3 simple parts; as crazy as it seems;

1. Grain Bill or grist
2. Hops used and when
3. yeast used

So, I spent about 3 years using the same grain bill and yeast ONLY ever changing hops - from this I learnt how the hops affect or more so flavoured my beer, also what they brought to the table - Bitterness quality etc.

I always used to start with 91% base and 9% crystal.... So that was the rule of thumb. THEN, change that up - so the 91% would change from JW ale or briess pale or MO or etc.. then then the 9-10% would alter from Crystal to dark crystal to caramunich to carrared etc..

I guess all I can share now is:

Never go more than 10% specialty malt - preferbably 7-8% - depending on your hopping.

The basic answer is: Brew it and LEARN what it does, than you can go from there... IMO.

5c.

 

[manticle]

Get to know ingredients.
Get to know process.
Get to know equipment
Relate all the above to results.

 

[Fat Bastard]

Hypothesis, theory, experiment, results, change and repeat as necessary.

 

[Cocko]

Hypothesis, theory, experiment, results, change and repeat as necessary.

Agree with that Fat *******:

Get naked, Let the wind blow, lift your arms up like an Eagle, BOOM beer.. Taste, and adjust.




Ok, bed.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Hops are important in how and when you use them.

Say you want 30IBU overall.

How many IBU do you want for bittering ?
How many IBU do you want for aroma ?
How many IBU do you want for flavour ?

A simple pale would be for me @30 IBU with SG1050

22 IBU bitternes
5 IBU aroma
3 IBU flavour

Now looking at that, the aroma & flavour seem rather small. But it will make a nicely balanced beer.

You need to remember that the less boil time, the more hops you need to make the same IBU. And if you use say POR for bittering @15AA and SAAz for the rest @5AA you are going to need A LOT more Saaz to get those last 8 IBU than you POR. Infact you may use more Saaz than POR.

The different hop oils give different qualities.

Beta Acids - lupulone,colupulone & adlupulone
Alpha Acids - humulone,cohumulone,adhumulone

Its the ratios of these oils that give a Hop its characteristic.

Most brewers look at AA%...but that is not the sum total of what the bitternes of a hop can provide

 

[Spiesy]

The other thing is to brew, and brew often, but keep records and don't change too much at any one time.

The nail has been well and truly hit on the head.

I get so excited about brewing, I used to change heaps of facets of the recipe… I'd analyse a brew and take notes of ALL the things I wanted to change: body, residual sweetness (or dryness), bitterness, alc%, colour, hop aroma and taste, grain aroma and taste - and make so many changes, I wouldn't learn about all the changes to process and ingredients I had made.

Now I force myself to generally make one critical adjustment per recipe. Evaluate. And proceed.

Stu, I'm also a fan of GU:BU ratio. I use it in my brewing software as a benchmark in all recipe formulations.

 

[lael]

This recipe was an epiphany for me regarding simplicity of grain bill. Drinking the beer I never would have guessed. Incredibly tasty and prob the next beer in the line up.

http://www.skotrat.com/skotrat/recipes/ale/scottish/recipes/10.html

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Yep. Thats a super simple one. Less can often be best.

 

[gap]

What about different mash temperatures and multiple step mashes at different temperatures?

How does GU:BU ratio equate when you have 2 brews both 55:35 but one has 5% Crystal and the other has 15% Crystal?

 

[warra48]

What about different mash temperatures and multiple step mashes at different temperatures?

How does GU:BU ratio equate when you have 2 brews both 55:35 but one has 5% Crystal and the other has 15% Crystal?

That's where your choice of yeast comes into play.

The 5% Crystal brew could be fermented with a relatively low attenuating yeast to leave some sweetness and body, or with a higher attenuating yeast if you want to ferment to a drier result.
There's no way I'd ever brew a 15% Crystal beer, but it would need a highly attenuative yeast to make it drinkable for me.
Same with a brew mashed at say 63ºC compared to one at 70ºC.

Again, it comes down to what several before have said, keep records and evaluate.

 

[Bizenya]

Its funny, and I know I'm still a kook in the HB world but when I tried to get 'fancy' after discovering that I could use grains and different hops into kits years ago is when I made my WORST beer- knocked all my confidence out of me. I was using better ingredients and getting worse beer from this compared with a can kit plus dex. Just got whhhaayyy to big for my boots, no idea of the combo, just that I could use all these fancy things to make something amazing. Hence, HB got a little hard with very little reward (cleaning bottles etc. and getting a basically non-drinkable product that needed to be tipped)

Im starting easy again, making recipes from LHBS or direct from the Coopers web site (I'm still only kit and maybe extract certified still) and just hoping to make a great few 'easy' straight forward brews, enjoy some beer, as well as the process I undertook to make it

 

[aussiebrewer]

Love the thread. Great info keep up the good work. I have been telling so many of my brewing mates for years to cut a lot if the ingredients out of their recipes, some with up to 6-8 grains and then other ingredients like honey and rice. They try my beer and think I'm lying when I say it has 2 grains and 2 hops. I'm sending them all a link to this thread


Cheers
Matt

 

[rbtmc]

Get to know ingredients.
Get to know process.
Get to know equipment
Relate all the above to results.

Yeah I went straight from SMASH's to big/complex/fruit/out-there beers.
Now I'm keeping it dead simple again and making sure I've got the home-brewery in order.
I.e. I've realised sanitation, yeast management, draught balancing, etc. are all things I need to put more focus on before I get wild with recipes.

 

[pk.sax]

I used to add a little wheat, a little Munich etc to recipes, mainly changing one spec/base malt and the hops. Then use different yeasts. It gave good results but I wasn't learning anything about the ingredients.

I've since switched to mashing base only grists, using a single hop with a 2 malt grist, steeping the spec malt and adding it to half a brew, using different regional varietals of the same parent hop. Things like that, that pronounce a thing each time.

Mashing only pils malt I finally saw that grey layer that accumulates on top of the grain bed. It isn't very apparent with a mixed grist because of the darker colours. A lot of recipes I read for English styles used both ekg and fuggles together. I made a couple that way but the flavour was too rounded for my liking, a bit samey. I'd done an IPA in the past that I massively aroma hopped with EKG only and enjoyed a lot so lately I've been on a mission to discover fuggles, styrians again and willamette. One by one I'll go back to combining them with other hops. Wish I brewed more so I can learn quicker, but oh well...

 

[manticle]

What about different mash temperatures and multiple step mashes at different temperatures?

How does GU:BU ratio equate when you have 2 brews both 55:35 but one has 5% Crystal and the other has 15% Crystal?

Bu:GU (not something I personally use) is simply a guide on one way to help balance a beer recipe.

It should never be taken as gospel precisely because of other variables, as you point out.

There are ideas, principles, combinations etc that a brewer can apply but just like cooking or gardening or many other things, context will alter the application. That's why I go back to my idea above - whatever you do - be able to relate that process or ingredient or whatever to your results. If you can't do that, simplify until you can. If you don't know what Dingemans special B is adding to a beer, why are you adding it? If you don't know what decocted pils malt tastes like, why are you doing it?

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

IBU:SG ratios are not set in stone but they are what maeks an IPA from ESB. You do have leway when using it. From this ratio you can determine how much hops to use

Here is a basic table that can help determin where to start

Barley wine ......... 0.94
Ord Bitter ........... 1.28
Spec Bitter........... 0.73
ESB....................... 0.86
Pale...................... 0.91
IPA ....................... 0.95
Bock...................... 0.27-0.45
Steam.................... 0.8-0.90
Mild & Brown........ 0.50-0.70
USA Brown............ 0.90-1.0
Old Ale.................. 0.48-0.58
Pilsener.................. 0.75-0.80
Rob Porter............. 0.90
Brwn Porter...........0.70
Scottish................. 0.3-0.6
Stout...................... 1.0
Sweet Stout............ 0.50
Vienna,Okt............. 0.5-0.57
Weizen/Wit............ 0.35

You will notice some beees like Ordinary bitter have more IBU than SG points...so when formulating you would get

51 IBU for an SG of 1040

Where as a Scotish will be

20 IBU for an SG of 1040.