Formulating Recipes

[mshergold]

How do you guys go about formulating recipes?

[Spud395]

Well I'll start the ball rolling as this will prolly be the least experienced reply you get.
To date I've done 10 AG brews all my own recipe.
I look at other recipe's of the style I want to brew, I read what books I have and I look at what's in my store room.
I then sit down with a pen and paper and Beer Engine open and start playing with figure's.
There seems to be a few basic rules/guidelines.
Base malt will be the majority of your grain bill, dont overdose on crystal's (10% a lot, very max 20% in some recipe's)
Have a look at what hops go with each other, broadly speaking hops from the same region will mix well and will match the style from that area.
There's loads more and I've to go to work, but I'm sure you'll get more help from guys with more experience as I said.

Oh and it's very hard to make bad beer if you do some research and dont go mad although sometimes it helps too.

[a-slayer]

See what you have in stock!

[Barley Water]

What I do is work backwards. I get an idea of what I want to make in my mind then start looking through my brewing books for something close (and I have damn near everything ever published on the subject, some recipes are chiseled on stone tablets they are that old). Generally speaking, I have tasted something someplace which is the seed for my original idea so I try to find a clone in one of my books. Once I find a recipe I think might be good, I think about any tweeks I want to make just to make my creation unique or more closely fit my idea of what the beer should be like. The more beer you brew, the better you get at this part of the process, also I have noticed that my tastes have drifted quite a bit over the years. I don't care about cloning per se, just something in the ballpark. I really like Jamil Z's book because it has good starting formulatons for most styles out there but I have a very hard time just following somebody else's formulation, I almost always mess with things at least just a little. Sometimes, I hit something really good with the first try and other times, it takes several iternations before I get something I am happy with. It took about four go-rounds before I came up with a Dubbel recipe I like and I am still trying to get what I consider a decent Irish Red (you wouldn't think it was that hard but for some reason I just keep missing what I consider the mark). A couple of other books which have really influenced my formuations are "Radical Brewing" and "Brew Like a Monk". After going through both those books, I will add damn near anything to a beer if I think it will help be get where I want to go flavor wise. Also, "Designing Great Beers" will give you a very good idea about how to go about putting a recipe together from a mechanical point of view. Over the last year or so, I have started messing with sour beers as well as adding oak, both things can really add some unique flavors to beer which you can't get any other way, an endless source of fun. Finally, I send my creations to contests where you get unbiased feedback, and I do pay attention to the comments and incorporate many into subsequent attempts.

[dave-o]

Formulate a rough recipe from an idea in my head, put it into Beersmith and fiddle with it until it looks right.

[weiht]

This is a tricky area to me. I think its very tempting to add a lot of things into our grain bill as well as hopping, but there are many great beers that have very simple recipes and i've brewed some that have very interesting additions that was just disappointing. So more additions doesn't mean the beers is going to be BETTER.

Although u didnt really ask about end result of having a great beer. I think recipe is the fun part because we can formulate and create something, but to me other things like mash (extraction and body)and fermentation temperature, the boil and handling of wort have more impact on the beer final result. In fact, i respect those guys who brew single malted/hopped beers and yet the beers is still so amazing. There just isnt many things in the beer to mask off flavours or things that are lacking, so those are really excellent brews. Anf of course, using different yeast can really change the profile of the beer