How do YOU decide what to make next?

[Jordan Logo]

Happy Saturday Home-brewers!

I just had a random thought/question - how do you guys decide what to brew next? Do you make your own recipes, follow recipes on the recipe forum, or maybe follow recipes from books?

 

[812ajt]

This is a really good thread starter and I’m interested to hear what other people put. I’ve only been brewing for 7 months. I’m doing 2 one gallon batches at a time every 2 weeks as I ferment, bottle, drink, and have 4 batches worth of bottles to keep up. I feel I’m in the experimenting phase still and I’m doing a lighter beer in one batch and trying out darker batches in the other. So, to answer the question, I think about my favorite craft beers and try to find a recipe that is similar. My sons help me brew and bottle so I get their input too. I look for recipes in Brewers Friend a lot. I use the ratings to help me decide since I’m still new. I’m loving the heck out of this hobby!

 

[Jordan Logo]

This is a really good thread starter and I’m interested to hear what other people put. I’ve only been brewing for 7 months. I’m doing 2 one gallon batches at a time every 2 weeks as I ferment, bottle, drink, and have 4 batches worth of bottles to keep up. I feel I’m in the experimenting phase still and I’m doing a lighter beer in one batch and trying out darker batches in the other. So, to answer the question, I think about my favorite craft beers and try to find a recipe that is similar. My sons help me brew and bottle so I get their input too. I look for recipes in Brewers Friend a lot. I use the ratings to help me decide since I’m still new. I’m loving the heck out of this hobby!

Yeah, I'm super curious about how people go about creating their own recipes. I've always been interested in creating my own, but want to get some input as how to start!

 

[schmurf]

I either get inspiration from a recipe I've seen somewhere on the web and, usually, tweak them a bit, just because I can... or start with a recipe of my own and fiddle with it until I'm happy. I have a ton of recipes of my own yet to be brewed! Whenever I feel bored or have nothing to do I'm fiddling on a recipe.

 

[bracconiere]

i only brew 10 gallon batches, so i just throw a bunch a stuff in the pot......it'll be gone in a week, and in my 15 years of brewing once a week, i haven't brewed the same thing twice.....i'm pretty familiar malts, and can eyeball it mostly (@Schlenkerla tripped me up with smoked malt though....now i have a bunch of smoked homemade crystal malt i don't know how to use, which i'm drinking now actually )

 

[Pkrd]

I usually pick up a recipe from here or an online shop, brew it, and then substitute for the next few brews.

Lately I've been working through the recipes of my local maltster to give a bit of variety.
https://www.gladfieldmalt.co.nz/brewing-recipes/

 

[Zemillard90]

Been brewing for just over 5 years and started by brewing a breadth of styles (~45 currently). I also like reading the history of each beer type. Like most on this thread, I'll find a recipe for the style online or book (Designing Great Beers is fantastic) and tweak it.
Now I'm revisiting my favorites and dialing some "house" recipes in a bit. Also, ask your friends what they like and have them come over and brew it with you!

 

[bracconiere]

And Welcome!

 

[Zemillard90]

Haha thanks! Been a longtime lurker, time to start contributing.

Cheers!

 

[bracconiere]

Been a longtime lurker

if you brew and are aware of google, it's hard not to lurk here.....

 

[Franktalk]

I start with a general idea of what I want. I have five taps going all the time, and two are house beers for my wife and her friends, usually a light lager (Tennents type) and a wit. So for the other three, I want something dark and roasty, something hoppy, and something amber and/ or malty.

Now I realize that this criteria is very vague; it is that way intentionally to give me room to brew almost any style as long as it fits the criteria and satisfies the need to have the above specified variety on tap.

Once I decide which one of the above I want to brew, I will the decide if I want something tried and true from my previously brewed recipes or something new. If the answer is something new, I will go to a book. If I can I will then follow the recipe pretty closely, maybe just changing one thing slightly or substituting another thing. When I rebrew, I will use my tastes to adjust the recipe further.

This process works for me because it makes my wife and myself happy, and our friends never complain--except for one friend who is an IPA fiend who will complain if my hoppy choice isn't an IPA. Then, of course, he will proceed to pound down the aforementioned hoppy choice.

 

[S-Met]

I think it just depends on my mood as to what I do next and what I have available. I've made up most all of my own recipes, sometimes using other recipes for guidance and inspiration. With beer, I don't think I've ever made the exact same thing twice. Maybe something as simple as different specialty grain additions or different yeast.

Ciders and country win,whatever is available helps to shape my decision.

 

[kh54s10]

How do I decide what is next... I usually have a bunch of recipes started in Beersmith, I then just go with the one that strikes my fancy at the moment. I have never been one to brew seasonal beers seasonally. I brew stouts for summer and light ales for winter if that is what I decide to drink.

As to the list, none of the above, and all of the above. I have done all of them. I usually have to "tweak" any recipe for my system and ingredients that I have on hand. For instance if a recipe calls for a Weyermann grain and I have the equivalent from a different malt house I use what I have. Sometimes I have to substitute for what I have that is closest.

I found the easiest way to learn designing my own beers was to start from a proven recipe and make an addition to change it a bit. I might take a session ale and up the malts to increase the ABV. I might take a pale ale and add rye. Or a stout and add some smoked malt for a smoked stout.

That is the beauty of this hobby, you can make infinite changes and have multitudes of different beers. I have never brewed a beer twice exactly the same. I have done a couple several times tweaking to try to refine them. Once I went back to the original recipe, but had to use at least one different malt because I had the same type but from a different malt house. In memory it was very close to the original.

 

[Oginme]

The poll and the question are somewhat unrelated, IMO.

For how I decide what to make, I create a list of the recipes I want to brew at the beginning of my 'brew year' which is generally in August. This list gets modified and usually contains more recipes than I can usually get to within the brewing season. The recipes are all updated and a basic schedule laid out based upon seasonal timing, upcoming events, and propagation of yeasts. This list also allows me to use the shopping cart function of BeerSmith to determine my grain and hop needs for the upcoming season so that I can take advantage of bulk purchases and sales events.

When it comes to actual brewing, I often deviate from the schedule, insert new recipes or interesting modifications of existing recipes. There have been a few times when I have been requested to brew a certain style or recipe which I had not planned on doing. My inventory of grains and hops allows a lot of flexibility for such excursions to my whims.

Up until recently, I have brewed almost all my own recipes (barring the first couple which were Mr. Beer kits). After six plus years and over 200 brews, I stepped back and decided to try doing some published recipes, mostly focused on English clones. I also joined in on doing the 'brew the book' challenge on Reddit as a way to push myself to not fuss with a published recipe before trying it straight (or as straight as I can manage with ingredient availability) as printed.

 

[burntchef]

I do 10 gallon AG once a month. I have been working my way through the greatest hits here on the forum. Some of them I brew repeatedly for a while, others are one and done. I recently had a notion to hop an irish red with 8oz. of hops...... It was a exercise not to be repeated, worst of both styles. Currently fermenting a APA.
Eric

 

[AzOr]

I bee what I feel like drinking. Usually I go through a half dozen lagers and then I’ll get an itch for a bitter or IPA.

I get bored of brewing the same recipes so I usually browse websites and this forum for inspiration. Been brewing for a long time so I can usually look at a recipe and know exactly how to tweak to my liking.

Beerandbrewing.com
Has excellent recipes and articles on particular styles. The way they are written allows for the reader to tweak to their own style.
Highly recommended.

 

[Sebastian Weetabix]

You might want to add another option to the survey.

ALL OF THE ABOVE

Thats the one I would mark.

Just sayin'

 

[ncbrewer]

I'm an LME brewer and am mindful of the fact that LME darkens with time. So I plan and order for three styles at a time, brewing the lightest style first and the darkest last. That way the lighter beers aren't affected much by age.

 

[dwhite60]

I go by what I have in inventory. I do a lot of "ish" beers.

Pale Ale-ish.
Bitter-ish.
American wheat-ish.
Strong Ale-ish.
Etc.

Sometimes I will try to nail something spot on but it isn't often. I'm only trying to satisfy mysel .

Picasso didn't get famous following the herd.


All the Best,
D. White

 

[Dr_Jeff]

I use the BJCP Style guide for my recipes. Everyone should consider using it for guidance.
I look at it if there is any question and develop the recipe from that.
I also look to see what I have on hand grain/hop/yeast wise as well.
Having 13 beers on tap and five solaras & oak barrels complicate the decisions as well.
Mainly, what do I want to drink that I don't have on tap, on deck or is about to run out that I want to drink again.

 

[kevin58]

Your poll doesn't really jive with the question. How do I decide what to brew? I make a schedule at the beginning of each year. Some brew days are penciled in very generally such as April/May where all I have written down is brew IPA and ESB and some are hard scheduled like my holiday beers so as to give them the time that they need to mature.

Where do I get my recipes? I create a very few on my own. I find that there are so many good recipes (crap ones too) that I don't need to waste time re-inventing that wheel. The vast majority of my recipes come from Ron Pattinson's research into historic English beer. At last count I had 218 recipes stored in Beersmith so I don't have to go far to find something to brew.

 

[David SEMich]

I plan for keeping three taps going; one dark, one IPA and one of something else. Over the winter I lay out a general yearly schedule for 10 5-gallon batches. I include one or two new styles to continue learning. I have my first lager in the cellar to be tapped in the next few weeks. Recipes for the new styles come from online and I choose by comparing them to the style guide. The IPA recipes are my own and are based on my hops inventory.

 

[ltito8080]

My lhbs closed about 1yr ago so I buy 50lbs of either pale or pils malt. Luckily I like smash ish mosaic ipa and simple pilsner. If I go to a bigger city with a hbs I'll stop by and maybe get some vienna or munich malt and play with my formula. I usually make 10 lb malt batches so i get 5 brews from my grain purchase.

 

[day_trippr]

I agree with @Oginme, from the subject line I thought this was going to be more of a planning/scheduling thing.

Anyway, everything I brew is from "my own" recipes, but let's face it, a solid recipe builds on the knowledge, efforts and experiences of others who did the heavy lifting, so I don't put much stock in "my own". I keep six beers on tap, and five out of six brew cycles are repeats of reliably well-received beers, with that sixth being the one I will experiment with.

The last one of those was a raspberry hibiscus wheat beer that is bogglingly good and will be in the rotation at least until fall. So now I need to find a new "sixth"

Cheers!

 

[bracconiere]

So now I need to find a new "sixth"

lol, so is that the 'sixth sense'?

 

[day_trippr]

No. That's a whole 'nuther thing - that is best appreciated sober...

Cheers! (good luck )

 

[day_trippr]

Speaking of weird movies watched while plowed...when The Exorcist came out the day after Christmas 1973 a bunch of my buds and I stood in the admission line at the Kenmore Theater on a cold rainy night getting absolutely stoned on schnapps waiting for our ticketed showing. By the time the movie started we were laughing at all the wrong times and generally being a nuisance.

Pretty sure the only reason we weren't kicked out is the rest of the audience was fighting the urge to puke too much to call for an usher...

Cheers!

 

[jready]

This is a great topic and something I am trying to improve on. I am trying to brew 5-6 “seasonal” beers each year. As an example a Brett beer each January that gets bottled and opened each New Year’s Eve vertically. A fall dark saison that would be for aging a la Mad Fermentationist. I’d like to add a Fest beer for fall, some sort of spring beer and then a holiday beer too. I’ve moved away from IPAs for now and tend to brew 1 to 2 batches a month of something Belgian something dark and lots of funky beers. I usually start with a base recipe that is close to what I want and tweak from there, similar to the way I cook or bake. I wish I was like others who posted and thought way ahead but I don’t. I usually have plenty of pils, Maris Otter, Belgian pale and wheat on hand then buy extra specialty malts when I need them so I build up a stock pile.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

Yeah, I'm super curious about how people go about creating their own recipes. I've always been interested in creating my own, but want to get some input as how to start!

Beer styles can be a rough outline for knowing what ingredients work well together. Grouping ingredients by the flavors they provide can provide another short-cut for learning what will (or will not) provide a solid base recipe.

• Ingredients: A vocabulary for tasting beer (one example from Mastering Homebrew).
  
• Ingredients/styles: "The Amazing Shape-Shifting Recipe" (from Mastering Homebrew)
• Styles: "To help get your creative juices flowing, here is a rough approximation of the recipes for the common ale styles"
• Styles: The "Make Your Best (link to duckduckgo search)" series at Craft Beer and Brewing

 

[Immocles]

There's a few styles I always like to keep on hand, and get brewed as my stock runs low ( I bottle ). Cream ale. Simple, single hopped pale ale. A maltier, darker ale/lager. I do tend to brew by yeast temperatures as well. Lagers/colder fermented ales in the winter, hefeweizens in the summer. Going to attempt a warm lager this summer for certain. I repitch yeasts 3-4 times before starting fresh, and generally have two different brews fermenting at once between 1-4G in volume. I just bottled my last lager so I dumped that yeast. About a bit over halfway through my Nottingham chain (cream ale > blonde ale > pale ale >porter/stout). After that, Ill move onto 1007 yeast for some malty goodness. Will probably be pitching the half packet of remaining US05 I have into a SMaSH this week, and that'll grow into a couple IPA attempts.

Around that time it'll probably be summer and I'll be brewing by the seat of my pants and hoping for the best because it'll be 80F in the basement and time to change out ice bottles every 6 hours.

 

[BrewMan13]

I always create my own recipe. I create a rough draft way in advance, so I can tweak it along the way, and then be confident that I like it by the time brew day comes along. If it's a new style to me, I'll reference 'outside' recipes for ideas. Otherwise I'll use an existing one as a jumping off point. I'd say roughly half of my brews in any given year are totally new, and the other half are direct or tweaked re-brews.

 

[NitrogenWidget]

i'm still a newb.
So, for the most part i find recipes on the forums that multiple people have made and have come back and said it was good.
If I make them and my friends like them I keep them on my rotation of brews.

I may change things a little depending on what I have available.

but I really have not educated myself on specialty malts like I should so usually stick with base malts for most of my own concoctions.

 

[Jordan Logo]

wow! Didn't think I'd get this many replies!

Looks like most people so far create their own recipe. For those who haven't stated already/those who are first time posters to this thread - do you find a popular recipe on a forum, THEN tweak it to be your own, or are you literally creating your own recipe from scratch?

 

[Sebastian Weetabix]

I have two Picos, a Pico Pro and a Pico C.
The grain bill for my Picos are only four pounds inclusive.
So with one and a half gallons of water to start with, I like to just wing it sometimes.
I keep track of my hop additions and mashing temps in case everything sucks so I’ll know what NOT to do again.
I’m fascinated with water, grain, hops and yeast combining to make EVERY beer you can think of!
There are a gazillion and four different beers out there made with just FOUR ingredients!
That is just kewl as all get out!

 

[bracconiere]

my last batch, i guarentee, you'll never see another one like it....

but i'm familar enough to know it'll be good...dark grains make a sure winner by my taster.....

 

[day_trippr]

Looks like a porter trying to become a stout.
But, I gotta ask...why did you tell BeerSmith that was an Amber Ale?
And what's with all the enzyme additions?

Cheers!

 

[bracconiere]

Looks like a porter trying to become a stout.
But, I gotta ask...why did you tell BeerSmith that was an Amber Ale?
And what's with all the enzyme additions?

Cheers!

as far as the enzymes, that how it's 9.4% instead of ~7%....gotta watch my waist....and i tosed the roast barley in for just subtle finish of roastyness...wanted it be more carmely though....and with the special b hoping for some nutty notes.....if i had any low lovibond crystal probably would have thrown a bit in to make it a smooth transition....


edit: and i don't give a damn about style guidelines....

 

[grampamark]

wow! Didn't think I'd get this many replies!

Looks like most people so far create their own recipe. For those who haven't stated already/those who are first time posters to this thread - do you find a popular recipe on a forum, THEN tweak it to be your own, or are you literally creating your own recipe from scratch?

TL;DR-I use a brewing app to create a recipe that will utilize ingredients I have on hand. I like to brew on the spur of the moment and don’t have a LHBS nearby.

Unless one is set on creating a brand new beer style there really is no such thing as an original recipe; every “from scratch” effort is just one more reinvention of a particular wheel.

That said, if I want to brew a style which I don’t have a recipe saved for in my brewing app (I use Beersmith), I use the “add recipe” function and start mixing and matching ingredients appropriate to that style until the “sliders” on the bar graphs for gravity, bitterness, and color are in the middle of the range of those characteristics for that particular style.

When I first saw this thread I started thinking about how I use the software to put a recipe together and about what I wanted to brew next. It occurred to me that I couldn’t remember the last time I brewed a Brown Ale. I didn’t have a recipe, so I put one together in Beersmith. I brewed that recipe yesterday. I hit my desired volume into the fermenter exactly, and was 6 points higher than the calculated OG, so my efficiency was a little better than predicted. The OG sample tasted great and the beer was bubbling away this morning.

I could have just chosen one of the hundreds of Brown Ale recipes in the Beersmith database, but what would have been the fun in that? Besides, coming up with my own was based on ingredients I had on hand. If I didn’t have the exact ingredients for an existing recipe I would have had to go through the new recipe process anyway, in order to tweak the existing one to utilize what was in my stash.

 

[Jordan Logo]

TL;DR-I use a brewing app to create a recipe that will utilize ingredients I have on hand. I like to brew on the spur of the moment and don’t have a LHBS nearby.

Unless one is set on creating a brand new beer style there really is no such thing as an original recipe; every “from scratch” effort is just one more reinvention of a particular wheel.

That said, if I want to brew a style which I don’t have a recipe saved for in my brewing app (I use Beersmith), I use the “add recipe” function and start mixing and matching ingredients appropriate to that style until the “sliders” on the bar graphs for gravity, bitterness, and color are in the middle of the range of those characteristics for that particular style.

When I first saw this thread I started thinking about how I use the software to put a recipe together and about what I wanted to brew next. It occurred to me that I couldn’t remember the last time I brewed a Brown Ale. I didn’t have a recipe, so I put one together in Beersmith. I brewed that recipe yesterday. I hit my desired volume into the fermenter exactly, and was 6 points higher than the calculated OG, so my efficiency was a little better than predicted. The OG sample tasted great and the beer was bubbling away this morning.

I could have just chosen one of the hundreds of Brown Ale recipes in the Beersmith database, but what would have been the fun in that? Besides, coming up with my own was based on ingredients I had on hand. If I didn’t have the exact ingredients for an existing recipe I would have had to go through the new recipe process anyway, in order to tweak the existing one to utilize what was in my stash.

Exactly the type of reply I was looking for! Thats awesome!

 

[TwistedGray]

The poll and the question are somewhat unrelated, IMO.

Your poll doesn't really jive with the question.

I agree with these guys. I was disappointed when I read the questions.

Lol, anyways, I just decide on the style depending on what time of the year. I'll usually look at a few dozen recipes from here and through Googling and create something from all of those. I'd say a large portion of what I do is experimental. So far, so good.