Designing your own beer.

Bazz · Post by **Bazz** » Mon Jan 12, 2015 10:41 pm

So first BIAB is done and fermenting away and already my mind is turning to the next one! Thing is I quite fancy making something of my own creation, I have an idea I'm just not sure how to calculate the quantities of grain and hops to water ratio and how to estimate the final ABV.

Before everyone shouts Beersmith! I looked at that and was completely bamboozled

There must be an easier way surely.

legion · Post by **legion** » Mon Jan 12, 2015 11:14 pm

Try brewmate, its free and much simpler than beersmith

keith1664 · Post by **keith1664** » Tue Jan 13, 2015 12:26 am

legion wrote:Try brewmate, its free and much simpler than beersmith

This

Jocky · Post by **Jocky** » Tue Jan 13, 2015 9:55 am

Bazz wrote:So first BIAB is done and fermenting away and already my mind is turning to the next one! Thing is I quite fancy making something of my own creation, I have an idea I'm just not sure how to calculate the quantities of grain and hops to water ratio and how to estimate the final ABV.

Before everyone shouts Beersmith! I looked at that and was completely bamboozled There must be an easier way surely.

Beersmith is pretty tricky, but once you get to grips with it (ask lots of questions here), it's pretty good. Brewtoad.com I also think is a great place to start, as it means you can easily share your recipes on places like here.

A tip for creating your own - when I first did this I created several monsters as I chucked a lot of everything in, but I realise now it was like baking a cake by just throwing everything that looks good in the cupboards into a batter. Not good.

Instead what I would suggest is to take a recipe that you know (and like... ideally you have made this before) and tweak just one thing about it.

Some options are:
Change the yeast
Swap the main hops out
Add a small amount of some other speciality grain
Make it an 'Export' beer by upping the hops and malt 15%.

You can't go too wrong by doing this, and if you've made the beer before it will be an important learning experience to see what effect the final beer has.

bigchris · Post by **bigchris** » Tue Jan 13, 2015 4:43 pm

I use Graham Wheelers Beer engine. Very simple to use and free.

Put in the recipe you just made, then, if you want it a bit (say 10%) stronger, increease the malt until the ABV goes up 10%. If you like it twice as bitter, then increase your 90 minute hops until the IBU goes up by what looks about right.

Jockey's tip is a good one, modify just one element of the last beer you made and learn the effect of that.

LeeH · Post by **LeeH** » Tue Jan 13, 2015 9:40 pm

Beer smith on the iPad is simple, it very intuitive and easy to use compared to the PC version. Also it's 99% as functional too.

RobWalker · Post by **RobWalker** » Wed Jan 14, 2015 6:52 pm

In all fairness beersmith isn't very good at calculating FG either, hahah.

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