Reddit reviews Designing Great Beers: The Ultimate Guide to Brewing Classic Beer Styles
We found 74 Reddit comments about Designing Great Beers: The Ultimate Guide to Brewing Classic Beer Styles. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Brewers Publications
If you move the decimal over. This is about 1,000 in books...
(If I had to pick a few for 100 bucks: encyclopedia of country living, survival medicine, wilderness medicine, ball preservation, art of fermentation, a few mushroom and foraging books.)
Medical:
Where there is no doctor
Where there is no dentist
Emergency War Surgery
The survival medicine handbook
Auerbach’s Wilderness Medicine
Special Operations Medical Handbook
Food Production
Mini Farming
encyclopedia of country living
square foot gardening
Seed Saving
Storey’s Raising Rabbits
Meat Rabbits
Aquaponics Gardening: Step By Step
Storey’s Chicken Book
Storey Dairy Goat
Storey Meat Goat
Storey Ducks
Storey’s Bees
Beekeepers Bible
bio-integrated farm
soil and water engineering
Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation
Food Preservation and Cooking
Steve Rinella’s Large Game Processing
Steve Rinella’s Small Game
Ball Home Preservation
Charcuterie
Root Cellaring
Art of Natural Cheesemaking
Mastering Artesian Cheese Making
American Farmstead Cheesemaking
Joe Beef: Surviving Apocalypse
Wild Fermentation
Art of Fermentation
Nose to Tail
Artisan Sourdough
Designing Great Beers
The Joy of Home Distilling
Foraging
Southeast Foraging
Boletes
Mushrooms of Carolinas
Mushrooms of Southeastern United States
Mushrooms of the Gulf Coast
Tech
farm and workshop Welding
ultimate guide: plumbing
ultimate guide: wiring
ultimate guide: home repair
off grid solar
Woodworking
Timberframe Construction
Basic Lathework
How to Run A Lathe
Backyard Foundry
Sand Casting
Practical Casting
The Complete Metalsmith
Gears and Cutting Gears
Hardening Tempering and Heat Treatment
Machinery’s Handbook
How to Diagnose and Fix Everything Electronic
Electronics For Inventors
Basic Science
Chemistry
Organic Chem
Understanding Basic Chemistry Through Problem Solving
Ham Radio
AARL Antenna Book
General Class Manual
Tech Class Manual
MISC
Ray Mears Essential Bushcraft
Contact!
Nuclear War Survival Skills
The Knowledge: How to rebuild civilization in the aftermath of a cataclysm
http://www.amazon.com/Brewing-Classic-Styles-Winning-Recipes/dp/0937381926
http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Great-Beers-Ultimate-Brewing/dp/0937381500
Designing Great Beers
This is about all you will need.
Designing Great Beers. Buy it.
Most recipes will follow a relatively simple formula of 80%+ some base malt, filling in the rest with specialty malts for color and flavor. Of course, that's where you define the malt character of your beer so you will use different malts for say, an IPA, than you would for a stout. The same holds true for the type of hops used, and typical hopping schedules.
There's no shame in ripping someone's recipe from a forum somewhere and brewing it up - they posted to share the recipe! That said, if you want to make something from scratch, you should understand how different malts affect the brew. The book I linked is a great resource to do just that. It is not a recipe book, but rather a resource to gain a better understanding of what goes into recipe creation.
Designing Great Beers
My advice is to start simple.
I know it sounds like I'm being a buzzkill, but hear me out. A great beer isn't defined by the number of ingredients, but rather the harmony of those ingredients and the skill of the brewer. Look at Deschutes' homebrew recipes. Most of their non-specialty beers only have 3-4 items on their grain bill.
Also, if you only have a few ingredients (2-row, a specialty grain or two, carapils if necessary, and one hop variety) it will be easier for you to identify the character of those ingredients in the final beer. This is the first step in knowing your grains and hops. A malt/hop chart can only tell you so much. I agree that it's overwhelming at first, which is why my advice is to constrain your first few recipes to just a few ingredients.
Once you understand the character of the more common malts and hops, it will be much easier for you to start experimenting and adding more complexity to your recipes. You will also have more confidence that the recipe you put together will actually taste like what you want.
My method was to first start brewing recipes aimed at a very specific style. I picked up Designing Great Beers and brewed a few different styles out of that book. Since I knew what the styles were supposed to taste like and I only used a small set of ingredients, I learned how those ingredients contributed to the end result. Once I built up a baseline I felt much more comfortable experimenting. For example, I brewed a very good IPA and tweaked the recipe slightly to make a ginger pale ale that also turned out really great.
As for things like amount of malts and hops, boil time, etc. Get yourself some brewing software like beersmith. That will help you calculate IBUs and whatnot. Beersmith also comes with an inventory that has some info about the max percentage you should use for a particular grain in a batch.
To conclude, keep in mind that it won't all fall together right away. You'll research a ton and then you'll research some more. Just keep making recipes and keep brewing and eventually it will start to click.
Designing Great Beers
Doesn't cover every style, but breaks down round 2 NHC entries across a couple years by ingredient and percentage.
It depends on the beer, for malty beer and darker beers I'd say yes, for hefes it's the yeast and grain is second, for pale ales, its the hops then the yeast and malt.
I read Designing Great Beers and it really teaches about how even the water is a big factor, temperature plays a role as well, some yeasts taste like cloves fermented cold and bananas fermented hot.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0937381500
Eu começava por conviver um bocado com o pessoal da cerveja para conhecer mais sobre cerveja, trocar impressões e umas dicas em pessoa.
No Porto:
Em Lisboa:
Aposto que há mais locais no resto do país mas, assim de cabeça, vieram-me estes... Outra boa opção é visitar festivais onde podes conhecer os cervejeiros, aficionados, ouvir musica, beber cerveja e conviver!
Depois disso é simples. Começa por fazer cerveja de kit de extrato. Com jeitinho gastas uns €50 em equipamento (que vai servir-te anos) e €15 em ingredientes. Estes kits são mesmo simples de usar e servem bem para aprender algumas das bases da cerveja sem teres que te preocupar com os aspetos mais delicados (como a brassagem). À medida que lhe vais ganhando o gosto vais podendo investir mais ou menos dinheiro até comprares um moinho, algumas panelas e fazeres a cerveja mesmo a partir do cereal.
A partir daí o google e o youtube são amigos dependendo de quanto queres ou não gastar. Tens aqui alguns vídeos que te recomendo:
Estes dois são bons para "entrar no espírito" da coisa.
Para aprender a fazer cerveja a partir de Kit podes ver estes vídeos da BrewUk (boa loja) que mostram tudo direitinho. Lembra-te que o mais importante é a higiene e lavar bem todo o equipamento!!
No youtube recomendo-te muito o canal Brewing TV e o The Craft Beer Channel.
Se te começares a envolver e a gostar a sério da coisa recomendo-te que leias estes livros:
Um livro que a mim me ajudou também imenso foi o Extreme Brewing e o Brewing Up a Business do Sam Calagione (dono da Dogfish Head) se bem que estes dois livros são menos "informativos" e de leitura mais leve. Ainda assim eu acho que o estilo mais relaxado torna-os de leitura mais fácil que os outros (que são considerados bíblias da cerveja) sobretudo para quem está a começar.
Fora isso acredita, o importante é comer e beber cerveja! Conversa com o pessoal e divertir-te com isto tudo! Aprendes mais às vezes numa tarde a beber uns finos com o pessoal num bar de cerveja artesanal do que num dia a ler em casa!
Espero que isto te ajude a ti ou alguém que esteja com a "pulga" atrás da orelha! Mas se tiveres perguntas ou dúvidas estás à vontade. :)
Se alguém quiser acrescentar alguma coisa por favor que o faça! Cerveja artesanal é sobre troca de ideias! :)
I would say take a look at Ray Daniels - "Designing Great Beers" and/or John Palmer - "How to Brew".
How to brew
Designing Great Beers
Those are two books I have used a lot.
Check out the book "Brewing Classic Styles" to learn more about recipes and beer styles. Designing Great Beers is another helpful book.
In most cases, using a secondary vessel for fermentation isn't required and in fact increases your chances of infection or oxidizing your beer. You can read more in the wiki here.
On my bookshelf:
You should probably read the book Designing Great Beers if you really want to make your own quality recipes.
How to Brew - John Palmer
Designing Great Beers - Ray Daniels
Brewing Classic Styles - Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer
Brew Like a Monk - Stan Hieronymus
Clone Brews - Tess and Mark Szamatulski
Yeast - Jamil Zainasheff and Chris White
Beer Captured - Tess and Mark Szamatulski
Radical Brewing - Randy Mosher
Brewer's Association Guide to Starting Your Own Brewery - Randy Mosher
Radical Brewing and Designing Great beers, were the ones I followed How to Brew with.
http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Brewing-Recipes-World-Altering-Meditations/dp/0937381837/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1393807281&sr=1-1&keywords=radical+brewing
http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Great-Beers-Ultimate-Brewing/dp/0937381500/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1393807312&sr=1-1&keywords=designing+great+beers
As jaxonfairfield says.
You had 27 or so IBUs, on a gravity of 1.055, so 55 bitterness units. Thats a BU:GU ratio of 0.49. I like my ales to go a little north of 0.5. So 30 would have made it 0.545.
With your latest edit, you're at 37.94 (let's just say 38) and 1.055 (55 GUs), so now you're at 0.69. A lovely number. Should have much more hop flavor (since you added the Saaz at 30 min) and will be a little on the hoppy side now - a fine ale.
See this and this for some good reading along these lines. Also, there's continuing mention of this ratio in Designing Great Beers, which I haven't read yet but understand to be a must-have in the brewing bookshelf.
This book is pretty great
Designing Great Beers - this book assumes you know how to brew so it won't teach you about the brewing process. But it instructs on how to fine tune all the small points.
Edit: I assume you are just starting out. As a tip of advice I can give because of something I just had happen to me. Have extra parts lying around. Like airlocks, tubing etc. They come in handy in emergencies when the brew store is closed at midnight and they cost a buck or two.
Designing Great Beers: The Ultimate Guide to Brewing Classic Beer Styles
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0937381500/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_BD6pDbE1C32YM
A must own book I keep beside my copy of how to brew.
If there are red flags I'm doing in these pictures, please let me know.
edit:
1st batch: Craft-A-Brew APA Kit
2nd batch: Northern Brewer's 1 Gallon Bavarian Hefe Kit
3rd batch: DrinkinSurfer's Milk Oatmeal Stout Recipe @HBT
If I could start over I would go straight to the 3-gallon batches. I hovered around them but I think it's the perfect batch size for beginners -- 1) Most people have a stockpot lying around the kitchen big enough to hold three gallons, 2) The batches are small enough so you don't have to drink two cases of bad brew, but big enough so if you enjoy it [which I'm thoroughly enjoying my first APA], you'll have plenty to taste and rate the evolution of the flavors over various weeks of priming and give out to family friends who are interested to try out what you made, 3) I ordered 3 Gallon Better Bottles for several reasons including worrying about shattering a glass carboy as a newbie. They also qualify for free shipping on MoreBeer's website with purchases above a certain price. 4) Even though I brewed a 5 gallon batch, and since I'm brewing solo, I'm already not looking forward to bottling the whole batch at once so I plan on breaking up bottling between two days.
For resources, I lurk this sub like a crazy stalker. The Daily Q&A is full of information both crucial and minute. I listen to James Spencer's Basic Brewing Radio podcast and practically substituted it for all music recently. It's family friendly and entertaining [I heard the other podcasts aren't so much]. I read Charles Papazian's Complete Joy of Homebrewing, 2nd ed. and For the Love of Hops by Stan Hieronymus to get a better understanding of the hops varieties and characteristics. I plan on reading John Palmer's How to Brew and Ray Daniels Designing Great Beers in the future, as well as Brew Like a Monk. Also, the HomeBrewTalk stickies in the forums provide good picture tutorials for several different styles of brewing.
I got into homebrewing so I can brew the, then, only beer style I liked: Imperial Stouts. But as I learned more about the balance and flavors of beer I surprised myself by branching out to enjoying other beers [even the odd IPA every so often]. My narrow scope of beer has broadened more vast that I ever would've imagined it. My brother got me this beer tasting tool kit used for blind taste tests so I try to keep good records and actively taste and appreciate craft beers. I even keep a couple in my wallet for tasting beers on draft.
I really wish I had an immersion wort chiller, a bigger boil kettle, a mash tun, and a propane burner. Those few equipment pieces hinder me from exploring more advanced style of homebrew. I intend to upgrade to all-grain but making the switch is really expensive. I'm still in the look-to-see-what-I-have-lying-around-the-house phase equipment-wise.
Which leads me to: don't be scared to spend money while DIY-ing. Many of you have probably seen my (and many others', most likely) shitty stir plate. DIY should be a balance of doing things on the cheap, but still making it work and function well. There's no point in DIYing if you're not going to be happy with it and just end up buying the commercial equivalent anyway. That's where I am right now.. I'm currently trying to salvage a cooler [no-spigot] I found in my garage and turn it into a mash tun instead of just buying a new cooler with a plastic, removable spigot. I'm certain it would make DIY easier but slightly more expensive.
But the suckiest thing for me about homebrewing is that I don't have a car so getting local, fresh ingredients and supporting my LHBSs is a piece of PITA bread.
Designing Great Beers?
Yep, Designing Great Beers is the one you want. You might also find Brewing Classic Styles useful, since it'll give you a couple recipes per style with a write-up.
You can't go wrong with two books, both of which are readily available on Amazon.
I'd start out with the New Complete Joy of Homebrewing, and then move on to Designing Great Beers.
After that, I would recommend joining a local homebrew club, and there will be a big community to support you. And if you need yeast, come on down to Sixpoint with a clean mason jar and we can hook you up.
Let us know how it goes!
Designing Great Beers
Water
Hops
Malt
Yeast
There are many things to consider when composing a grainbill to create a beer, and more often than not, that "something crazy" is there for a very specific purpose. If you want to "freestyle" a beer from random ingredients, think of it this way. Think about every characteristic you can imagine that you'd like from that beer in the greatest most specific detail you can. Head, carbonation, sour/sweet, floral hops/piney hops/citrusy hops/floral hops, malty, grainy, roasted, smooth/bitter... (Aroma, Clarity, Color, Flavor, Malt, Mouthfeel, Carbonation, Body, Head, Hops, Other. ) Now determine the priority of each characteristic in order and write them down in a list from top to bottom. From that point you can literally compose your recipe by finding the very same words you've identified as desirable characteristics in ingredient descriptions. Adjust your proportions accordingly.
You should try to get your hands on a copy of this as well.
http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Great-Beers-Ultimate-Brewing/dp/0937381500
I would also be careful or at least rather deliberate when fermenting grains and malt with champagne yeast. Champagne yeast does several things that may not be desireable: It ferments at warmer temperatures than are good for most beer styles (except maybe farmhouse and saison) and it kicks off a lot of odd esters and odors (usually sulfuric) during fermentation, and it will generally consume nearly ALL of the available sugars, converting them to alcohol and leaving you with a watery body-less beer.
If you're looking for a Do-it-all yeast, try Fermentis Safale S-04 English Ale, or Fermentis US-05 American ale. They are vigorous and rapid fermenters, kick out very few off flavors under a variety of conditions, and are cheap and easy to keep on hand.
May your worts be clean, your yeast be hungry, your hops be potent, and your beers be the envy of friend and foe.
Good luck and post results!
The standard ones: The Brewmaster's Bible by Stephen Snyder
How to brew by John Palmer
Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels
Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff & John Palmer
The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian
Brew Like a Monk by Stan Hieronymus
Yeast by Jamil Zainasheff & Chris White
(= I own this book)
http://www.annarbor.com/entertainment/a-lesson-in-beer-stout-vs-porter/
If you're really interested, Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels has a great chapter on the history of stouts and porters, and how they came to be known today.
They both started as dark roasty beers from different origins around the same time. Some stronger or weaker, on both the sides of porters and stouts. They merged into one style, stouts, with a few breweries choosing to keep a dark beer on the books with the name 'porter.'
Today, in modern craft brewing, stouts are usually include roasted barley with more coffee-like flavors, while porters typically taste more chocolatey. Although this is a very fuzzy spectrum, and there aren't any real rules.
For more info, check out the BJCP style guidelines. Category 12 is porter, 13 is stout.
This book could help:
https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Great-Beers-Ultimate-Brewing/dp/0937381500
it's a bit old, but it's still a very nice book and in the second part of the book it goes through various styles and tells you about them.
It has tables with what commercial breweries put into beer and NHC second round entries did. It goes over the amounts of malt (the types and variation), hops, yeast, covers water chemistry for each style.
There is also cool historical info about styles and how they evolved.
It's pretty good in showing you what options you have and the ranges of each addition. If you mostly brew hoppy beers I would get a different book since this one is old and hops for IPAs changed a lot since the book was published.
You'll eventually want a copy of Designing Great Beers. It has all the tables, formulas, and descriptions of ingredients you need to roll your own.
Also recommend Designing Great Beers.
Hear great things about it all the time. As soonami said, can't go wrong with buying him some beer. :)
This is my full list of books from /r/homebrewing but it includes pro level books:
New Brewers:
Continued Learning:
Specialty/Advanced/Other:
Business Books:
Technical Readings (Textbooks might be expensive):
I picked up a book which really got me excited about brewing again, I mean really really excited. I would think it would go a ways to answer some of your questions, and if you are trying to make your own recipes it gives a great starting point for each style that you can build off of, it's called Designing Great Beers
Also: Designing Great Beers
Sounds good!
In terms of learning more about beer styles, I'd recommend buying and tasting a bunch of different beers - when you find something you like, make a note of it and do some searching to get a general sense of why it tastes the way it does (usually you'll want to look into the basic types of malts, yeast, and hops used, along with any other ingredients that may be of interest). Sites like Beer Advocate are great resources for learning about new styles and figuring out what you might want to try next, and there are tons of local microbreweries with employees/brewers that are happy to talk with you about what goes into making their beers.
Once you actually take the leap into homebrewing, I'd recommend going to a local homebrew store (like Stomp Them Grapes), chatting with the employees, and picking up equipment and ingredients to do a basic extract-based recipe with steeped grains. My personal preference at that point would just be to jump right in - it's not really that difficult, and you'll learn a lot as you progress. From there, you might check into some local homebrew clubs, get some books like The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, How to Brew, or Designing Great Beers, and start creating your own recipes by tweaking existing ones.
Really, the biggest thing is just to have fun. Beer is surprisingly hard to screw up as long as you follow the basic steps and sanitize everything well enough.
If you have any other questions, or want to chat at some point, feel free to send me a PM. I'm in Boulder, but would be happy to help out if possible!
"Designing Great Beers" by Ray Daniels really got me into thinking about water pH, etc. It's a good intro to the chemistry. I've read all the Papazian books, it takes it a little further, but still accessible to the non-biochem major.
I'm just started reading "Designing Great Beers" so I can learn how to make my own recipes. The book comes highly recommended from several respectable sources. I also read Brewing Classic Styles, which, besides great recipes, it has great descriptions and guide lines for each style.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Brew-Everything-Right-First/dp/0937381888/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322590396&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Great-Beers-Ultimate-Brewing/dp/0937381500/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322590351&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/How-Brew-Everything-Right-First/dp/0937381888/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322590396&sr=1-1
How to Brew by John Palmer, as others have mentioned, is wonderful. I am also a huge fan of Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels
You may want to think about these two books:
http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Great-Beers-Ultimate-Brewing/dp/0937381500
http://www.amazon.com/Brewing-Classic-Styles-Winning-Recipes/dp/0937381926/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410207249&sr=1-1&keywords=brewing+classic+styles
I'm selling all my home brew equipment and books asking 300, its an all or nothing deal sorry. I will provide pictures for any one interested.
1-glass carboy and hauler
1-bottling bucket with spout
1-fermenting bucket with lid
1-1 gallon glass carboy
1-2 gallon bucket
1-Hydrometer
3-Air locks
1-Thermometer
1-wood stirring paddle
1-40 quart stock pot
1-turkey fryer with the timer removed
1-20lb empty propane tank
1-capper and about 50 -60 beer bottle caps
1-corker for wine bottles and some corks
Auto siphon, tubing, racking cane,some PBW cleaner and Star Sanitizer left over, I have I think 12 empty wine bottles and probably have about an empty case worth of beer bottles.....I mean pretty much everything you need to brew or make wine.
Books are listed below and are in great shape.
How to Brew Beer
Designing Great Beer
For The Love of Hops
Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation
Hop Variety hand book
The Homebrewer's Garden
Designing Great Beers has a lot of good advice on what goes into a recipe. Books like How To Brew and Complete Joy of Homebrewing spend of lot of time on the "how", Designing Great Beers does a good job with the "why" of recipes.
I'd recommend this as a reference for intermediate brewers: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0937381500
Designing Great Beers is another excellent resource for learning how different ingredients affect your beer.
Designing Great Beers covers this in the 'Hitting Target Gravity' section and means of adjusting to a mash too high/low. A great read if you're interested in more info on the equations that make up brewing, btw.
*(PrGU PrV) / PoV = PoGU
Thus, if you want to adjust your post-boil gravity units to target, you can either increase/decrease the final volume, or add malt extract to compensate. The formula for calculating the extract needed is:
Extract = (Target Gravity Units - Mash Gravity Units)/(Extract per pound value)**
Extract per pound value depends upon type/brand, but generally 45GU/lb for dry, and 38GU/lb for liquid.
If you can tell the difference between extract and all grain it's not necessarily the ingredients but the brewers level of skill. Ray Daniels lays out reasons why you can make great beer with extract.
As zebbielm12 pointed out, you'll get better tasting beer with Ferm Temp control than you will doing AG. But AG is cheaper to get into and provides another level of fun to brew day. I'd recommend using equipment you probably already have to do a partial mash. I just picked up a 2 gal cooler and some paint stainer bags for <$15.
Finally, to answer your question, I have. Sounds like we have the same beginnings. I didn't want to waste money transitioning to AG and went straight too it. I found it was annoying to have all of that equipment in a small apartment so I went to extract with steeping grains. I'm able to brew more and enjoy having less things to worry about.
Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels is a good place to start. As for equipment, you can usually just go to your local homebrew store and they will give you what you need to get started. That kit you linked to seems a little expensive. You really don't need two carboys. A fermenter, bottling bucket, air lock, brew kettle, capper, bottles, auto siphon, caps, and bottles are what you should be looking to buy and i can almost assure you it would be cheaper at your LHBS.
My Secret Santa sent me this book.
It just arrived today, so I've only had a chance to leaf through it, but it looks to be a great resource for the experienced brewer. It touts itself as "The ultimate guide to brewing classic beer styles."
Good luck!
Book: Designing Great Beers
Magazine: Brew your own
Online HBS: The Beverage People
I would always recommend people start with 'The Compleat Meadmaker, by Ken Schramm'. This has been the meadmaking bible for a very long time. You can find supplementary information about staggered nutrient additions, pH buffering compounds, new sanitizers, etc online in various articles and forum sites. Of course, understanding your ingredients can also be very good for any brewer, and water is a huge ingredient. So besides the other element series book 'Yeast' by Christ White and Jamil Zainasheff I highly recommend 'Water' by John Palmer and Colin Kaminski. For those of us making mead in Ferndale, our water is a very key ingredient which comes to us from an underground aquifer treated by the city of Ferndale, and is of very high quality (even compared with the high quality water from the City of Detroit). Understanding honey is a huge area of study. There are many classic textbooks on honey and honey-hunting by Eva Crane that are considered primary sources (but these can be prohibitively expensive for most mazers, and honestly, Ken's book does an awesome job of summarizing her contributions, as well as other historical information about meadmaking, honey, etc). I feel a basic understanding of beekeeping can be highly instructive for meadmakers, and so I recommend that you get your hands on some beginner beekeeping books, e.g. 'Beesentials' by L.J. Connor and Robert Muir and/or the 'Beekeeper's Handbook'. A solid background in wine or beer-making doesn't hurt, either, and there are multitudes of books I can recommend to you on the subject of beer specifically (this is my homebrewing background). My two absolute must-haves for beer brewing are 'Designing Great Beers' by Ray Daniels and 'Brewing Classic Styles' by John Palmer and Jamil Zainasheff. Learning to brew beer can help you if you decide you want to try your hand at braggots.
https://www.amazon.com/Brewing-Classic-Styles-Winning-Recipes/dp/0937381926
https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Great-Beers-Ultimate-Brewing/dp/0937381500/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=TKTBXHX5PXA5KM2XJRBT
How to brew is worth reading to learn good process, recipe is really not that important in the grand scheme of things that can (and usually do) go wrong with novice homebrewers: https://www.amazon.com/How-Brew-Everything-Great-Every/dp/1938469356/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=TKTBXHX5PXA5KM2XJRBT
Oh, ok. Then you can raise the temperature of your mash partway through to get more non-fermentable sugars.
You should investigate this book: https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Great-Beers-Ultimate-Brewing/dp/0937381500/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1522868535&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=designing+great+beers
Most libraries don't have it, but getting it through interlibrary loan is pretty easy.
Wow you're really lucky, I wish I'd got that much to spend on brewing for a grant!
Feel free to ask this subreddit any question at any type of course, and I'm sure we'd also love it if you posted your findings as you study the chemistry too.
Are you completely new to brewing? Do you want to make beer or mead or what?
Some good sources:
Designing Great Beers - Great book full of hard data and numbers on tons of brew related topics. This would be good to use as a reference for experiments.
Brew Judge Certification Program website - This is the official certification site for beer judges and it outlines a large variety brew styles from various types of beer, to styles of mead, and explains what is used to make them, how it should taste, etc.
I have a lot of books but I mostly refer to Palmer's How to Brew which has already been mentioned and the classic styles books. The other 2 I use when building recipes are:
Designing Great Beers
Brewing Classic Styles
http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Great-Beers-Ultimate-Brewing/dp/0937381500?ie=UTF8&amp;keywords=designing%20great%20beers&amp;qid=1465266751&amp;ref_=sr_1_1&amp;sr=8-1
Like others have said, How to Brew is a great book.
The other one I like is Designing Great Beers. Its a pretty technical read, but, chock full of information on general brewing and specific styles. I picked up both of these to start out with because I have my eyes set on making my own recipes.
Je te conseil ste livre la : https://www.amazon.ca/How-Brew-Everything-Right-First/dp/0937381888 sinon, son site web gratuit : http://www.howtobrew.com/ Je sais pas si il est a jour comparer au livre. Ya eu plusieurs découverte de brassage depuis quelques années. C'est un super de bon livre avec la grande majorité des choses que t'as besoin de savoir concernant le brassage de la bière et c'est super bien expliqué.
r/homebrewing peux t'aider aussi. Super belle communauté consacrer au brassage de biere et plein de gens qui veulent t'aider. Incluant John Palmer lui même (auteur de How to Brew).
Ya aussi ste gars la qui fais des cherches sur des bieres historique anglaise : http://barclayperkins.blogspot.ca/ Super de bon stock qui t'apprend les ancien type biere avant la révolution industriel et les guerres qui a eux qui a tout changer.
Je recommande aussi http://brulosophy.com/. Super de bon blog qui teste des mythes de brassage de façon scientifique et les prouve correcte ou non.
Tout ca c'est le brassage de biere de type Anglais. Si tu veux du stuff de biere belge (ce qu'on a beaucoup au Quebec) je te recommande la serie - Brewing Farmhouse Ales, Brew like a Monk et Brewing with Wheat. https://www.amazon.ca/Farmhouse-Ales-Craftsmanship-European-Tradition/dp/0937381845/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1519234800&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=brewing+farmhouse+ale&amp;dpID=51oI7VkdTwL&amp;preST=_SY264_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&amp;dpSrc=srch
Si tu cherche du stuff des biere Allemande/Czech je te conseil ste livre la : Brewing Lager Beer : https://www.amazon.ca/New-Brewing-Lager-Beer-Comprehensive/dp/0937381829/ref=pd_sim_14_18?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=YJKTZ5QSPD8KH7MZQ48Z
ET Si tu cherche plus des recettes qui fonctionne que son selon les styles BJCP, je te conseil ste livre la : https://www.amazon.ca/Designing-Great-Beers-Ultimate-Brewing/dp/0937381500/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=S5CFF5PGSYQN6YW5HNZH
Si tu cherche du stuff concernant les biere surrette (Lambic, Brett, Lacto etc) regarde ste livre la : https://www.amazon.ca/American-Sour-Beer-Michael-Tonsmeire/dp/1938469119/ref=pd_sim_14_9?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=DF5N9XVQ8FWQCNK6NKS3
Je connais malheureusement pas de literature en francais.
Sur ce bonne chance et lache pas! C'est super interessant!
Mash water is typically 0.3gal/lb of malt. Sparge water can be tricky but typically you want enough for your final runnings to be around 1.010 or 1.008 (2 brix). Beersmith has helped me out a lot when it comes to homebrewing, I would recommend purchasing the software. Another great resource would be [Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels] (http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Great-Beers-Ultimate-Brewing/dp/0937381500)
For your particular beer, I would suggest doing this:
Mash In: 3.60 gal of water at 164.1F to reach a step temp of 152 F
Mash Out: Add 2.1 gal of water at 199.6 F (again, not sure if you want to mash out or not)
Sparge: Use around 5 gal at 170 F until you achieve volume and/or final runnings are at or below 2 brix.
I have no idea what type of system you are using along with what your losses are due to evaporation, cooling, etc. but this might give you a ball park at least.
Got a chance to watch the replay. I joined just at the "made you look", so I has JUST missed the question.
Ordered the book on amazon today (as well as Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels which was recommended in this thread), and plan on a trip to my homebrew shop this weekend.
Not sure if you've done this before, but I'd watch this religiously if you continue to do these.
Thanks for getting my question in.
I know you'll probably still want an answer from the Hangout, but if they don't get to it, or you're looking for another opinion, Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels is an awesome book for learning how to create recipes.
Heya, I'm two secondaries away from this stage myself. I bought a book that goes into pretty good detail about where to start and the different styles. Personally, it wasn't exactly what I was looking for so I'll save you what I learned:
I started off making an excel sheet that calculates pretty much everything but SRM (or color). While this is great for me (I have it tell me what each grain/hop/yeast contributes) there's better options. I use qBrew for now. Why these softwares are nice is because they allow you to figure out your style. This leads to OG, color, IBU, etc.
You've certainly got some OG ready in there (qBrew claims around 1.085). And you've definitely got some hops. IMO, I would put some more into the boil. I've only done DH once and haven't tasted it yet, but it seems like you're headed for a very aromatic beer with a mild bitterness. That's a lot of grain (around doppelbock levels IIRC) so you might want to consider upping your boils to match and then overcome that maltiness. Not smart enough to comment on your yeast yet. I'm sure its fine :D
If your hops are providing some earthy tones, I could see some orange bitters being a really cool addition.
Edit: if you get a brewing software: http://www.2shared.com/document/0wxR6IAU/soulfrequencies.html
With BIAB you'll save time setting up equipment, brewing, and cleaning afterward. I have it down to around 4 hours and it's a really low-stress experience. My efficiency is much lower than when I fly sparge, and I have trouble hitting a target gravity. If I know I have a few hours free on a weeknight I'll go BIAB, or if I'm brewing an AG fly-sparge batch with someone else, I'll add a second BIAB batch on the side. It's really easy and the first couple beers came out clearer than expected.
Regarding the gravity of BIAB, in Designing Great Beers, Ray Daniels said that you can use extract to boost gravity once you've gotten to around 1.050 with grains. I haven't tried this myself yet but plan to do so in the near future.
http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Great-Beers-Ultimate-Brewing/dp/0937381500
written by Roy Daniels.
I want to say "Designing Great Beers" would be a great source but I can't recall if they go into detail on Scottish and Scotch ales or not.
http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Great-Beers-Ultimate-Brewing/dp/0937381500/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376913872&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=designing+great+beers
I'll have to check my copy when I get home tonight. There's a blog by a guy near Belgium/Netherlands that covers a lot of historical data and he updates almost daily. Lots of interesting stuff, old brewer logs, hop exports, etc... Sometimes you got to dig around a bit to find what you're looking for but it's almost always an interesting history lesson.
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/
Also check out designing great beers
Designing Great Beers is a great book that can answer your question on what ingredients and ratios attribute to each beer style.
To answer some of your other questions it's the amount of fermentable sugars that determine the alcohol percentage. The type of yeast used and yeast health is also a huge factor. Some yeasts simply can't tolerate higher levels of alcohol.
The body of a beer is controlled by the ratio of fermentable sugars vs non-fermentable sugars. The more non-fermenatables there are in a beer gives it a heavier body. This is controlled during the mash.
"Crisp" is a somewhat subjective term but I would say a crisp beer is light in body, and has slight bitterness to the finish.
Citrus can be added with bitter orange peel, which you can find at most homebrew supply shops, or by adding fresh orange zest. Typical amounts are one ounce added at 15 to 10 minutes left in the boil.
The one thing you really should know is RDWHAHB (Relax, Don't Worry, Have A Home Brew). Even if you think you have really messed something up, it will still turn out to be beer. Cheers!
These books are great resources:
Designing Great Beers
Brewing Classic Styles
I enjoyed the book Designing Great Beers . It helped me understand ingredients by style.
Designing Great Beers also has a really informative chapter on water that goes through the calculations for mash and sparge additions. I've done my own calculations the last couple of brews and found that I can come up with much more accurate numbers than if I let BeerSmith tell me what to do.
Even if you still want to use BeerSmith it's very helpful to know what's going on behind the scenes.
Awesome! Welcome to the greatest hobby there is. If you are really interested in creating your own recipes, Designing Great Beers and Radical Brewing are two of my favorite resources. The former is very technical and contains detailed information on ingredients and how the play with other ingredients to affect the flavor of your beer. The latter is a great, well-rounded brewing book that focuses a lot on brewing with non-conventional ingredients, and how to use them in your recipes.
+1 on How to Brew. He has an older edition online here. If you really want to geek out, get Ray Daniels Designing Great Beer with you're ready for recipe formation
I'm not sure my approach to recipe formulation is really going to help here, but one of the things you can do to start learning is to taste a commercial beer and try to devise a recipe that you think would clone it. Then, look up clone recipes online and see how close you came. It really helps you understand some of the different flavors that go into beer.
Anyway, I think I can most contribute by sharing some resources I consult when making a brand new recipe. Firstly, I cannot speak highly enough about [Designing Great Beers](http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Great-Beers-Ultimate-Brewing/dp/0937381500 "Not a referral link, so click away"). It gives you a good understanding of the ingredients found most in styles, and a nice history of why they're brewed the way they are.
Next, I spend a lot of time looking at the Homebrew Wiki Malts Chart. It gives you a really good idea of what flavors and properties different malts iwll bring your beers.
Lastly, I experiment. Try stuff out. Re-brew the same recipe with minor tweaks to improve it.
Do you have a hydrometer? If not, get one and learn how to use it. It is the most important tool for troubleshooting fermenting beer. There is no other accurate way to tell if a beer is finished.
Most yeast strains have a documented alcohol level that they can handle. Google is your friend. With a precursory search, I'm finding 9% for English ale, but I've gotten higher. 9/10 times the beer finishes, unless you're pushing your sugar to some crazy heights.
I highly recommend picking up some books if you haven't yet. I cut my teeth on The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. It contains a huge amount of information for the beginner up to all grain. Simply laid out techniques, recipes to try, and the origin of RDWHAHB. Designing Great Beers is a great book to get guidelines on a lot of the major styles, it is the one I am using most often these days. Online forums like r/homebrewing and HomeBrewTalk are also great sources of information.
Heavy Googling up front. If it's a common/popular style, a quick search of the webz should turn up a number of articles on the history of the style, as well as common approaches to create it. If it's a common style, Daniels' "Designing Great Beers" is a good resource and takes a systematic approach to recipe formulation by means of evaluating the recipes of past AHA competition winners.
If you're looking to do a style that is less popular or obscure, finding articles and other people's experience in recreating is much tougher, but necessary. Sometimes reaching out to a brewer (via Facebook messenger) on advice pays off. If you find foreign text, and it's the only resource, snag it anyway and work at getting it translated.