Writing recipes

[robcoombs]

There have been a few new brewers join the club forum as of late and I have seen this topic come up so I thought I would share my process for writing recipes, other members please feel free to discuss your thoughts, process etc.

For me writing a recipe comes almost entirely from experience at this point. Unless I'm going to brew a new to me style or something I haven't brewed in a long time that is. If you are new to brewing, or new to writing recipes I would highly recommend keeping a binder in house or files on your pc with your recipes and notes, including tasting notes. I keep both a hard copy and BeerSmith backups updated on a regular basis. I keep a hard copy because I have lost recipes with a hard drive failure before. Even the backup files had some corruption so I now keep a large binder with all of my recipes, brew day notes, tasting notes, current hop inventory, a list of beers I want to brew as well as ideas to incorporate into those beer. I keep a rough schedule for my long term beer as well. When I want to add fruit, oak or dry hop to sours, or other long term Brett and Belgian beer.

The tasting notes are essential to me. Even if you are an extract brewer you can keep the recipe sheets and jot a few notes down, even simple improvements you would like to see next time you brew that beer, it doesn't have to be official tasting notes. For example, say you brew an IPA and you enjoyed it but you felt it was thin. You could note that and make an addition of wheat to increase mouth feel. You like the extra mouth feel but not the flavour that the wheat contributed so you make notes to try an addition of oats next time. You see where I'm going with this. 

Finally, brewing on a consistent basis. It's hard to improve and keep styles straight if you brew 4 times in a month and then have so much supply you don't need to look at your gear for months at a time.

Brew, take notes, repeat...

[Two Wheeler]

Great points Rob! The note taking especially is helpful. I try to take detailed notes of the brew day and anything that was out of the ordinary. Tasting notes as well. It really helps when you're  designing a recipe and trying to modify (or avoid) previous results! Especially if you're trying to remember a beer from two years ago.

The biggest help for me to get a handle on a new style are the  style profiles in BYO magazines, previously written by Jamil Z. Many are available online by searching. They give you a great idea of what you are looking to achieve, and how to achieve that along with sample recipes. I typically start by searching google for "Jamil profile ESB", obviously replacing ESB for whatever you are looking to do.

[Roger]

What I do is just about the same. I check out style profiles. Then look at other recipes on line and take the parts I like from those recipes. After you brew enough batches you get to know what works for you and doesn't. I then use beersmith to help put it all together. I then print off a copy and use the free space to take notes of all my temps, volumes, gravity readings, things I changed on the fly just about anything I feel is note worthy...

[shazapple]

I use www.brewersfriend.com for my recipe formulation. I am bad at taking tasting notes though...

I kind of have two methods of making a recipe at this point as I still don't really have any idea what I'm doing.
- Make a SMASH then start adding stuff
- Google for a highly rated recipe in the style I want and then modify from there.

[robcoombs]

Great points Rob! The note taking especially is helpful. I try to take detailed notes of the brew day and anything that was out of the ordinary. Tasting notes as well. It really helps when you're  designing a recipe and trying to modify (or avoid) previous results! Especially if you're trying to remember a beer from two years ago.

The biggest help for me to get a handle on a new style are the  style profiles in BYO magazines, previously written by Jamil Z. Many are available online by searching. They give you a great idea of what you are looking to achieve, and how to achieve that along with sample recipes. I typically start by searching google for "Jamil profile ESB", obviously replacing ESB for whatever you are looking to do.

Also a good point, finding an online resource that you like. For me it's a few blogs I follow and of course Modern Times have a number of recipes available on BeerSmith online.