Building a Recipe

Chris Trompeter

beergear@wootown.org

Wootown Brewers

     How time flies. It's been quite a long time since our last Beer Gear article, sorry for the sabbatical. Life gets in the way sometimes but we're back in action and plan to bring you a lot more articles in the coming months. The topic we get asked a lot which doesn't directly relate to "gear" necessarily is how to build a recipe. Since we are technically building something, we'll let it fly.

     Building a recipe is the foundation for moving forward and taking the next step in your brewing. Many people rely on posts around the internet, recipe books that you can buy at the store, or their local homebrew shop. One of the great things about being a homebrewer to me is being able to build my own recipe from the ground up putting ingredients in there that I think will make a great beer. The question is "where do I start?"

     The first thing to do when building a recipe is to pick a style. For a first recipe, it's best to build a recipe that is fairly lightweight and easy on the ingredients until you get the hang of it. If you're limited to Ales because of fermentation temperatures, a good suggestion is for a basic Pale Ale. If you like Lagers, then you can go for a light crisp lager. For our discussion today we will pick a classic style from the American Ale category - the American Pale Ale. Most people have brewed Pale Ales when they first start out brewing and is a great place to get started. If you're used to a kit you probably already have a general idea of what ingredients make up a Pale Ale. Let's pick it apart.

     The BJCP descriptions are a great place to find out about what makes up a beer in a particular style and also gives some commercial examples. I'd like to take a moment to stress the importance of commercial microbrews. When planning your own recipe, go get a 6-pack of 3 or 4 different Pale Ales or whatever style you're creating and taste test them side by side. Tasting each one and writing notes about mouth feel, hoppiness, aroma, etc will start to get your gears turning about what things might go into YOUR Pale Ale recipe. Ask yourself "What color is it?" Try to pick out which one has the strongest aroma as this may give you an idea that the brewer dry hopped it possibly. Ask yourself how much carbonation is in the beer, does it seem to have less carbonation like a stout or a porter or more carbonation like a Pale Ale or a Lager? The better your questions, the better your beer.

     Next we need to have a look at the statistics of the beer. What are the IBU's (International Bitterness Units), the general Color or SRM, and the gravity ranges to shoot for? For a American Pale Ale the Original Gravity to shoot for is 1.045-1.060, which is a fairly large range. The IBU's run between 30-45 and the color or SRM is between 5-14. When formulating your recipe, you should aim to fall in between all of these ranges for your brew if you are making it to style.

     Beers are made up of 4 ingredients - Water, Malted Barley, Hops, and Yeast. Each one of these plays a key role in recipe formulation. Let's take each one apart and see if we can come up with some ideas for our Pale Ale.

Water

     Believe it or not water can have a big effect on a beer. Many breweries treat their water prior to use because of the water profiles in their area. Some areas have high concentrations of chlorine or other adjuncts so treating the water will just make a better beer. For homebrewing, tap water normally is fine. The general rule of thumb is if you tap waster tastes fine, it should make fine beer.

Malted Barley

     We could spend weeks and many articles discussing the various Malts available to a homebrewer. There are some many these days it's hard to keep track of them at times. For a Pale Ale, we need to start out with base malt. This will give you most of your fermentables in the beer. Since we're doing an American style brew, we will pick American 2-row. If you're an extract with specialty grains homebrewer you would substitute Dry or Liquid Malt extract in here. We now need to figure out how much. Shooting for an OG of 1.046-1.060 we need to use anywhere between 7 and 10 pounds to fall within that rage. For specific calculations, please reference the 100's of calculators around the net for OG. If we select 9 pounds of base malt, that leave is with an approximate OG of 1.050 which falls right in the middle of the range.

     Next up will be specialty grains. Some examples of specialty grains can be Roasted Barley, any of the various Crystal Malts, Munich, Chocolate, Special B, Wheat, the list goes on and on. For a Pale Ale we want to go back to the BJCP style guidelines and look for the Flavor category. For a Pale Ale it says that it has a high clean malt character that supports the hop presentation and could be bready, toasty, biscuity. Some malts that lend these characteristics are Crystal Malt, Munich, Vienna. Most Pale Ales have some sort of Crystal Malt in there, up to 10% can lend quite a nice taste but not overpower the base malt and the hops. Let's try 1 pound of Crystal 60L to start with and see how the rest of the recipe calculates. Why do we pick 60L versus 120L or 80L? The L stands for Lovibond and that is basically the color of the malt. Darker colored malts lend darker additives to beer, lighter malts don't do a whole lot for color. If we calculate the SRM right now with 9 pounds of 2-row and 1 pound of Crystal 60L, we come up with approximately an OG of 1.055 and an SRM of about 10. Both of these numbers still fall in our guidelines. Be creative here and this is where a good brewer stands out. A good brewer tries "different" things in a beer which makes it his own. I've tried many things in Pale Ales before, some work and some don't. Munich is a good malt to throw in there in small quantities, a quarter or a half pound is plenty.

Hops

     Hops are a core ingredient in beer. It's not beer without hops. As with Malts, there are a ton of hops available for use in beer. As of this writing however there is a hop shortage going on which makes a lot of common varieties unavailable for homebrewing. Since this is the case, we will pick a hop this time that is not available and find a substitute. For an American Pale Ale we want to use hops that are somewhat citrusy with moderate to high hop flavor. The American "C" hops usually come to mind for Pale Ales. I'm talking about Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, Challenger. Some other good options for a Pale Ale would be Amarillo, Millenium, or even Warrior. For our American Pale Ale I would normally pick something like Cascade however Cascades are not available right now. Since Cascades are around 5-7% Alpha Acid we need to pick a substitute that is close to the same AA or if picking one slightly higher, use less in the recipe. For bittering let's pick Centennial. It's still a C hop and comes in around 10-11 Alpha Acid Units but it's not quite as citrusy as Cascade. The hop schedule you pick will vary depending on style. Since our Pale Ale needs moderate to high hop bitterness an addition at 60 minutes, one at 30 minutes, and one at flameout should suffice. For some beers where the IBU's are very low you may only do a 60 minute addition. This is where good beers come from. Play around with the hop schedules a little. Don't ignore the standards out there but experiment, it's one of the reasons that homebrewing is so much fun!

     For a second hop to balance us out we should pick either another C hop or some other American citrusy hops. I've never tried it in a American Pale Ale, only an American Amber Ale but it worked well - Amarillo. You hear mixed reviews about Amarillo, some people like it and some don't. We should use this hop in our 30 minute and flameout addition. For amounts of hops, it is best to use one of the many online calculators to figure out percentages and IBU's. Here is a potential schedule:

     This is only one suggestion. You can pick a different C hop to bitter with for 60 minutes or a different hop for the other additions. Let your mouth and your nose be your guide here. Once you brew a lot of popular styles, you will find your likes and dislikes when it comes to hops. My latest hop that I fell in love with is Millennium. It's a great bittering hop and not very commercially used at all.

Yeast

     Now that we have the water, malted barley, and hops nailed down it's time to pick a yeast. The two main yeast suppliers, Wyeast and White Labs, have excellent descriptions on their web sites about the various yeasts available to you and which ones are good for which styles. Normally for a Pale Ale, 1056, US-05 are great choices because they ferment quickly and leave a beer very clean tasting. Here is another great place to experiment. Try using Wyeast 1332 which is Northwest ale, or maybe try an English yeast with all those American Malts and hops! This is the time to experiment and try new things. Some will work, others won't. You wouldn't want to use a lager yeast for this recipe but who knows, try it and maybe you'll find a winner! Experiment, experiment, experiment. It's the best advice you can get when being a homebrewer. For this recipe we will use 1332 for a change of pace.

     One final step is to name the beer. I always name my beers because it's fun for labels and it can be a nice creative outlet. Since this is an American Pale Ale let's call this one BeerGear's Formula! Be creative and this way you can keep track of future brews and remember something special about that beer later down the line when you own your own brewpub and are brewing all sorts of crazy concoctions.

     In the end, our recipe looks like it will make quite a tasty beer. I hope we've given you some insight as to what makes up a beer and how you too can start to play around with the calculators and come up with your own recipes. If you're in a brew club, ask other members for opinions or your local HBS owner on your recipes, there is never a shortage of opinion. Many seasoned brewers can guide you if you get stuck and feel free to email us here at Beergear@wootown.org for any additional questions.

Slainte,

Chris Trompeter

Chris Trompeter is an avid homebrewer, all grain enthusiast, and member of the Wootown Brewers. When he's not brewing, he's usually making better equipment for better beer. Chris lives with his wife, son, and West Highland Terrier, Barrett, in Bel Air, MD. Chris may be reached at beergear@wootown.org.

This article is one in a series on homebrew equipment brought to you by the Wootown Brewers.

Building a Recipe

Building a Cooler Mash Tun

Building an Immersion Wort Chiller

Building a Pump Housing

Refurbishing a Cornelius Keg

If you'd like to request a beer gear topic, or write for us yourself, please contact communications@wootown.org.