Help with formulation

[vw addict]

Went to the store today, took my first "step" towards all-grain by not buying a kit. Picked up 6.6 lbs liquid amber, 1 lb roasted Barley, 1 lb 40L crystal, 1 lb 60L crystal, 1 lb choclate, 2 ounces Fuggle(4%), 1 ounce Golding(5%), and 1 ounce Crystal(3.9%). Now what? Was kinda going off a recipe of sorts to get "about" what I needed. I figure all the 40L, half the 60L, and a bit of the choclate and barley. Have no idea on the hops. I'm in the process of reading to figure out what I'm doing but I'm getting WAY ahead of myself.

[MichaelM]

Lookup a program called beersmith. its pretty awsome

[vw addict]

Thanks, but I hate downloading, and was hoping to get some simple, practicle, experience based answers. Like do I need a stronger alpha hop for my 60 min bittering addition? I was looking at adding the Fuggles, maybe a higer alpha. Adding twice as much dosen't really accomplish the same thing, or does it?

[BrewDog]

Here's something to think about:

You have a few batches under your belt now.
Why not pick the extract or partial mash batch you liked the best and do an AG version of it?

A couple things about this:

1) You've made it before, so you are familiar with the specialty malts and the hops and stuff already.

2) Anything you DIDN'T like, you can tweak, like taking away some of the crystal malt or adding a dry hop addition.

3) You won't be shooting totally in the dark as far as what you will expect it to taste like.

4) You wouldn't ride your first no-training wheels bike ride in somebody else's neighborhood. Don't do that with your first AG beer, either. You will have enough to keep you busy besides wondering what the thing is gonna look/act/taste like when it's finished.

We'll be more than happy to help you convert an extract or minimash recipe to AG.

HTH-

[MrNate]

Well, I can offer what I've learned on recipe formulation so far. Mind you, I've only done 4 batches, so it's a bit of the blind leading the blind but...

Don't add more than 1# of any crystal malt in an experimental recipe. Start with 1/2# and fiddle from there.

Try to limit yourself to 1 or at most 2 specialty grains that you've never used before in any given batch. It should give you a better feel for what that grain does.

Estimate your color. It's the first thing people will notice about the beer. I use appendix B in How To Brew.

I generally add about 1 oz of +5% hops @ 60 for bittering. Taste from this addition doesn't seem to carry through to the product, just bitterness. I use the cheap stuff.

I'll add anywhere from 1/2 - 1 oz finishing (flavor, aroma) near the end (last 5-15 minutes). This is where you get your flavor and aroma; use the good stuff.

As a general rule, I use more hops in darker beers, less in pale. For my recent lager, I used 1oz Hallertauer - 1/2 bittering, 1/2 finishing. This gave me a beer slightly hoppier than a Bud.

I used 1.75 oz of cascade in my Blonde & Bitter; 1 oz boil and .75 oz finishing, for a bitterness similar to Fuller's ESB.

This calculator has helped me estimate IBUs fairly well: http://www.realbeer.com/hops/bcalc_js.html

It's all about trying and learning, I think. Worst case scenario, you have a lot of malt vinegar.

[vw addict]

I'm gonna slap this one together and see what happens, remember RDWHAHB.:D

[MrNate]

Dat's what I'm talkin' about.

[markaberrant]

Originally posted by vw addict
I'm gonna slap this one together and see what happens, remember RDWHAHB.:D

In my opinion, when you are already using all that Amber LME, adding any crystal malt would be total overkill.

It's fine if you don't want to be exact with your recipe, but you must have some idea of what you want the finished product to be. Care to share?

[corkybstewart]

When I decide to formulate a new recipe there are a few steps I go thru every time. First, what style do I want to brew. Without knowing this you can't do anything. And I don't mean following some rigid guidlines, but do I want an English style dark ale, or some kind of Belgian pale for instance. Then I read a bunch of recipes from various sources, books and online, to see what they have in common, and what they seem to avoid. Then I do a quick inventory to see what I actually have on hand and at this point I start writing a recipe. I'll enter it into Promash for tweaking and then I start brewing.
BTW, a pound of chocolate goes a long way, especially in 5 gallon batches.

[HogieWan]

you may not like downloading, but brewing software helps guide these whims. You can go to tastybrew.com or beertools.com for simple recipe calculators that don't install on your system.

You want to use these to figure out your OG and IBU values because the by-hand method takes forEVER, especialy if you want to tweak things a bit as you go. A good rule of thumb is to keep your gravity points to IBU ratio close to 2:1 (ie an OG of 1.040 with IBU of 20, 1.060 with 30 IBU) for a balanced beer. You can adjust to style or personal taste up or down.

[MikShau]

Both Beertools (http://www.beertools.com/) and TastyBrew (http://www.tastybrew.com/) have calculators online that are quite helpful.

BeerTools has a kind of recipe wizard that asks what style you want, what grains, hops etc. and will give you a starting point.

It might generate something that doesn't taste very good, but it will have the right OG, IBU, SRM for the style.

It let me generate a recipe with 2 #'s of crystal and 1 # of honey malt that came out tasting like soda. (pop for the midwesterners)

[HogieWan]

beertools has the recipe generator as you noted, but they also have a recipe calculator that works more like beersmith or promash, but the free version limits how many ingredients you can use in a recipe.

[MichaelM]

Originally posted by HogieWan
you may not like downloading, but brewing software helps guide these whims. You can go to tastybrew.com or beertools.com for simple recipe calculators that don't install on your system.

You want to use these to figure out your OG and IBU values because the by-hand method takes forEVER, especialy if you want to tweak things a bit as you go. A good rule of thumb is to keep your gravity points to IBU ratio close to 2:1 (ie an OG of 1.040 with IBU of 20, 1.060 with 30 IBU) for a balanced beer. You can adjust to style or personal taste up or down.

Couldnt have said it so well myself. Brewing software is a massive boon to brewers. it helps simplify the guesswork while really helping you be alot more creative because you can see the changes on the fly without haveing to recalculate everything you did just to tweak a ingrediant a tiney bit.