So far in my home brewing I have been duplicating other peoples recipes on this website and others like Denny Conn's Waldo Lake recipe, which is pretty good. My question is how do you create your own recipes? I've looked at the recipe calculator on this website, but how am I suppose to know what grains to use in a porter or in any other beers? Do you all just experiment? I have only brewed 7 all grain recipes, but I would like to know how to create my own recipes. Info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Here is a site that might help. It gives characteristics and base ingredients for most beer styles and then you can tweak them however you want to come up with what you want.

http://www.brewwiki.com/index.php/Beer_Styles

www.beersmith.com This software is free to try and is the best one that I have found for giving you styles and selecting which grains, hops, adjuncts and even gives a very good water profile chart and design system if you get that involved... I highly recommend this program..



Drinking: Hoppy Cock IPA
secondary: Hoppy Cock IPA
Secondary: Strawberry Blonde
Bottled: Berliner Weisse & Blueballs Hefi

its a big read, but this is a great place to start...

http://www.bjcp.org/docs/2008_stylebook.pdf

also, check out the book 'brewing classic styles'.

check out designing great beers by Ray Daniels as well. It's really informative about which grains people typically use for a particular beer style and roughly how much of each grain is used.

DOUBLE DITTO to Designing..it is the most valuable resourch in my 40+ brewing library and shows that there are many variables to all classes of beer.In time U will learn as in any other taste based experience (ice cream,pizza,sandwiches)that U have prefernces and then u will develop your own "house beers"

You can also start collecting the style series. They are books on porter, pale ale, stout, etc. lots of common styles.

DGB, excellent start

Some of the style series books are a lot better than others. I'd recommend avoiding the ones on stout, VMO, and Belgian beers, at least. The pale ales and porter books are really good.

I got all the style series books. I think they are all worth a look, but some are better than other for sure. bcity, take any info you get with a grain a salt, trust you instincts, and your own experience is the best guide.

If you want just recipes take look at Palmer and JZs book. Most them clone recipe books stink.

I typically start w/ the BJCP guidelines. Then I'll look through the Brewing Classic Styles and Designing Great Beers books for info and suggestions. BYO and Radical Brewing are also good sources of info. For whatever reason I rarely use Zymurgy when developing a recipe. Maybe do a search through a forum or two. Then I go for it!

Which belgian beers book is bad Denny? I'm hoping my extremely late Xmas gift from my sis-in-law is going to be BLAM.

Dunno. But I picked up Wildbrews: Beer Beyond the Influence of Brewer's Yeast at the recommendation of a friend. Have yet to read or even flip through it. Any good?

I like it. I've read it all the way through. Nice history and good tips on sours and lambics.

Robert, IIRC it was authored by Pierre Rajotte (sp?). The more recent ones (BLAM, Farmhouse Ales, Wild Brews) are excellent. AFAIAC, BLAM is not only the best book on Trappist and Abbey beers, much of the info in it is applicable to all homebrewing.

stay away from "beer captured"....Ive brewed many from this book and have been very dissatisfied..

Thanks for all the info guys.

I too like to use BJCP website and style doc.
When I hit AG, the only recipe I've kinda followed that was posted by someone else was Conn's RIPA. BTW, it is a good one, DC. I had to sub some Zeus and Chelan hops in it though, but still darn good. Thank you.

Edit- I am going to follow Larson's Christmas Tree ale for SN Celebration clone.

ive never done anything but my own recipes, and i just kinda threw them together. theyve all been very drinkable. but i have a feeling i was just lucky. I just research the hell out of a style and then go. I use BJCP guides hand in hand with the full recipe calculator here on TB. ide brew the most basic representation of the style and then add to it.

I've got 3 of the style books; Porter, BLAM, and Farmhouse Ales. The last two are great books; the one on porter was a waste of money.
DGB has a lot of good information.
A book on clone recipes might be a good way to start learning about the use of different malts. Don't take them at their word though.
One thing I did was to brew 3-gal. batches to experiment with malts and such. That way, if it doesn't go so well, I don't have that much to get rid of.

Glad ya liked it, WApilot! Dean's Christmas Tree absolutely rocks!

This is also a pretty good source of recipes to either brew as they are or get ideas from...

http://wiki.homebrewersassociation.org/Recipes

quadruple ditto on DGB. That's the best book for what you're trying to learn- recipe formulation.

If you're interested in a specific style, definitely check out those style books.

But, we have a new brewer among us who kinda just threw things together without any regard to style or consistency (ie english base, german & american hops, with belgian yeast) and he's made some pretty fine beers. So, don't be afraid- just do it.