POLL: how do you decide on ingrediants

[YamahaXS]

last few batches i have made have been pretty much whatever i thoguht sounded good... same basic stuff though. 6-8 pounds of DME, 1-2 pounds speciality malts, and lots of hops. Some gypsum, some irish moss.



How do you decide what to put in your beer?

[S.F.B.]

Take the old and make something new. I have started to dabble with my own creations.

[Dave A]

all of the above!

[b3s]

some of each.

sometimes i start with a recipe i find and modify ingredients for my own tastes.

sometimes i just make stuff up and bounce ideas off of people.

my latest recipe i'm toying with is a california common, but i want a nice malty belgian taste with a hoppy floral presence. i just kinda played with ingredients, target gravity, and then start asking others "does this sound good?" i definitely recommend some kind of recipe program for that kind of stuff.

i've pretty much settled (which means that i've made up my mind except for the times when i change it) on 8# vienna, 2# belgian biscuit, 2# victory, 2# cara-pils, 2# flaked barley, 1 oz kent goldings for 60 minutes, and 1 oz. kent goldings dry hopped. most of that i just grabbed out of thin air and then played with things like SRUs and IBUs and gravity.

[paul84043]

I'm still too much of an idiot and the extract kits that I have been making are waaayy too good to make me want to kick it up a notch.

[mlsuggs]

A mix of "all of the above."

Lately, I mostly find a recipe for something I feel like drinking... Brown ales and mild ales for the last two batches. I then "modify" based on what ingredients I can get (no Challenger hops? OK, Northern Brewer instead).

I also do meads, and am *extremely* freeflow with them--I use the published recipes as guidelines.

[wortchillergoal]

I make them up most of the time. My problem is I don't make records so I have a hard time duplicating anything I have done. I don't care I always enjoy what I make but my friends complain that I can't reproduce it for them.

[paul84043]

Hmmmm...whining about free homemade beer....
I would be inclined to tell them to give it a whirl themselves!

[YamahaXS]

Originally posted by wortchillergoal
I make them up most of the time. My problem is I don't make records so I have a hard time duplicating anything I have done. I don't care I always enjoy what I make but my friends complain that I can't reproduce it for them.

i keep a journal... it goes back about 6 years... even though there was a gap of about 3 years where I didn't brew, It is fun to go through and remember all the beer I drank. :D plus I can usually approximate a replica.

[b3s]

i keep a spreadsheet of recipes...ones i've made have actual OG and FG statistics and tweaking notes. starting to wish i kept tasting notes, though.

[S.F.B.]

I gotta keep notes. Otherwise I would just get pissed off when I forget the recipes. I have found I get pretty good consistency from batch to batch. I don't get fancy with the spreadsheet. It is just a 3 ring binder of reipes, brew notes and tasting notes.

[wortchillergoal]

Originally posted by paul84043
Hmmmm...whining about free homemade beer....
I would be inclined to tell them to give it a whirl themselves! They only complain till they taste my current offering and ask if they can take some home.

[mmmBeer...]

I also use a combination of the above. I usually use published recipes of clone beers to try and achieve the beers I like. I also use the published recipes to get an idea of proportion of ingredients with a certain style of beer, and then modify it to my own liking.

Sometimes the light just comes on and I think I’ll dry doing this and see how it comes out. I made a Christmas ale this way, had orange peel, coriander and cinnamon in it, used champagne yeast to kick up the alcohol to about 11%. Yummy beer, but I could only drink about half a bottle at a time! I ended up giving it as gifts, and a friend of mine loved it so much I gave him 24 bottles of the stuff.

I too keep a journal. I am terrible with dates, so it is good for me to know when I brewed it, when I put it into secondary etc, plus it has enabled me to reproduce previous batches pretty closely, or modify the recipe the next time I make it.