Recipe Creation
Many of you will reach a point where you want to construct your own recipe from scratch, even though there is a huge range of recipes already available in books, magazines, on the web, and from your homebrew supplier. There is a lot to be said for sticking to an established recipe, but this is a hands-on craft we practice and there comes a time when you want to expand your brewing skills and create a brew that is entirely your own. A previous article, “Balanced Recipe Formulation” (BYO March-April 2007) described how to do this, and I shall not try to improve on on it because I do not have enough space in this column. Instead, I want to come at recipe formulation from a somewhat different angle and give you some insight as to how I approach the matter and how I put together a recipe for a beer of mine that I call “Small IPA.”
Ask the questions
Before you start, you must determine what you hope to achieve. The following questions should be helpful:
1. What kind of beer do you really want to brew?
2. What original gravity (OG) and alcohol by volume (ABV) do you want in the brew?
3. Are there any special flavors you want to confer on the brew?
4. What kind of balance do you want in the finished beer?
5. What level of hop bitterness suits this beer best?
6. Which hop variety would you like to use?
7. Do you want the beer to have a lot of hop character and aroma, and should some of this come from dry hopping?
8. What yeast strain is going to work best for you?
Let’s look at these questions in more detail. Number one is obviously the key to the whole process, and you need to have a clear aim in mind. If you don’t know what you’re trying to make, you will never know if you made it! So you have to decide whether you want to produce a clone, or something similar to a commercial beer you like, whether you want to enter it into a competition, or if you just have a set of flavors in your mind that suits your palate. In the first two cases you can find a lot of pertinent information from things like the brewer’s website or the style guidelines put out by the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP). The last possibility requires more thought on your part, and decisions such as whether you simply want to make a “house drinking beer,” or want to try something entirely new in the way of spices or other flavorings. In such cases, you will need to answer the other questions very carefully.
Question number two should be straightforward to answer and help you choose what malts to use. Note that base malt choice may be decided largely by the style of beer you have chosen — say English 2-row pale for an English bitter, or Pilsner malt for a pale lager. From consideration of the above paragraph, you will pretty much have defined your beer’s OG. For example, a “drinking beer” is going to fall in the range of 1.035-1.050 (8.8-12.4 °P), while an imperial stout will be around 1.080 (19.3 °P) and up. Alcohol content is approximately equal to the difference between OG and finishing gravity (FG). Therefore the alcohol level reflects the fullness, sweetness or even dryness of the beer. For low- to medium-strength ales, a useful rule of thumb is the FG is usually about one-quarter the OG. If you want a fuller, sweeter beer, you need to shoot for a slightly higher FG than that. That could be achieved by using specialty malt such as caramel/crystal, which will contribute some non-fermentable matter, or by using a low-attenuating yeast strain. For a dry-finishing beer, you would want a slightly lower FG (higher ABV), so you should keep non-fermentable matter down by mashing at a slightly lower temperature than usual, say 148-150 °F (64.4-65.6 °C), or use a well-attenuating yeast.
The third question requires that you decide whether you need to add specialty malts, and which ones. Obvious examples are caramel malts, brown malt for a licorice flavor, Belgian biscuit malt for biscuity notes, Briess Victory® for a bready-like character, and, of course, black and chocolate malts for roasted flavors. Do remember that all of these malts will also add color and should not be overdone; select the amount and nature of such malts with color in mind. Other flavorings such as spices, coffee, or chocolate might also be in your mind; it’s best to start at a low addition rate and work your way up in subsequent brews if necessary.
Number four is a little trickier to answer, since balance in a beer depends on the type of beer you are brewing. Bland, run of the mill commercial beers are balanced in that no single flavor sticks out. But a dry stout should have a definite roasty bitterness, and an IPA should have noticeable hop bitterness and character. The simple way to look at it is that in a balanced beer no single flavor dominates all others, and the beer has “drinkability” (also difficult to define, but you’ll know it when you taste it). Again, my advice is to be circumspect and not add heaps and heaps of a potentially powerful-tasting ingredient initially.
You can answer questions five, six, and seven together to keep things simple. If you are brewing to style, the level of hop bitterness and hop flavor and aroma are pretty much decided for you. But if you are making your own unique beer, you have to make a decision on these things for yourself. If you like a lot of bitterness, add plenty of high-alpha hops, but remember the comments on balance above. Similar considerations apply to hop character and aroma, but bear in mind that just because you like such flavors; they do not necessarily work well with all beers. Beer styles have evolved because certain flavors complement each other, and wild deviations from such combinations can easily result in something undrinkable.
Hop variety selection is no simple matter with so many varieties available today. Which one(s) you select depends on your own experience and preference. If you are not sure, geography rules — English hops for English beers, German hops for German styles, and American hops for American beers. If you are considering dry hopping, I would counsel caution that it does not work well with all kinds of beers. Dry hopping is best suited to bitters, pale ales and IPAs. If you still want to try it in your developing recipe for another kind of beer, then work out the recipe, brew the beer without dry hopping it, evaluate it, and if you still think it’s worth doing, dry hop the second batch.
The last question is that of yeast strain selection. Again, you may have some preference, but you should choose according to the beer type you have in mind. There may be other flavor considerations, such as using an English strain if you want an estery, fruity character, or a “neutral yeast” if you are looking for a very clean-tasting beer. If you are not sure which to opt for, I suggest a good browse on the supplier’s website before choosing your strain.
Plan it out
Once you have answered the questions above, you need to plan out the recipe and determine how much of each ingredient you will need to reach the OG and IBU levels you want. This means you need to know what yields you get from your base and specialty malts. If you are unsure, use the BYO Recipe Standardization based on 65% extract efficiency, and given in every issue of BYO (see page 2). This is simple if you are making an all-malt extract beer since efficiency doesn’t come into it — what you put in is what you get, though you will have to calculate how much extract you need in order to hit your target gravity. Put your malt bill together from this, then calculate how much hops you need to reach the target level of bitterness. You can do this by experience if you have made similar beers in the past, or you can calculate the weight of hops needed, making an assumption as to your own hop usage — I generally reckon on 25% usage of added alpha acid as a first approximation and go from there in the next brew. For more on this, see my techniques article in the September 2011 issue of BYO.
A simpler route to working out the recipe is to use a brewing calculation program. If you are up to it, putting together your own brewing spreadsheet is also a good way to go. A great advantage of both these approaches is that they make it easy to do a “what if?” test. In other words, they permit you to quickly see what happens to parameters such as OG, IBU, and even approximate beer color when you change the amounts of an ingredient, or add a new one. They also allow you to keep a permanent record of the brew recipe. It is always important to keep careful notes of a brewing, but it is particularly so when you are trying to develop a new recipe that may require a little tweaking after your first shot.
The recipe
I very much liked an IPA we brewed at Brü Rm@BAR in New Haven, Connecticut, and wanted to do something similar at home. But, it was about 7% ABV, and I wanted a lower ABV for a session beer (hence the name Small IPA). Therefore, I opted for an OG of 1.045 (11.2 °P), and an FG of 1.011-1.013 (2.8-3.3 °P), so an ABV around 4.3-4.5%. Seeking balance, I aimed at giving it a malty flavor by using substantial amounts of both pale (8.3 °L) Munich malt and Vienna malt. I also added a good amount of Briess Victory® malt for more malt fullness and the addition of some bready character as well. I mashed the grains at 152 °F (66.7 °C), high enough to help provide a little extra palate fullness. I opted for a variety of hops, starting with Simcoe® in the boil to give me about 35 IBU – enough bitterness to taste, but low enough to retain a good balance with the malt body. I wanted some Anglo-American character, so I late-hopped with US Goldings at 90 minutes, but went back to all-American hops by dry hopping in the secondary with Amarillo®. Lastly, I used an ESB yeast because that also tends to enhance malt character.
The result was an excellent, full-bodied beer bursting with hop character, and with great drinkability. It doesn’t fit any style really; it’s not strong enough for an IPA, it’s too red for a pale ale, and too hoppy for a regular bitter. But it’s good!
