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| Formulating your own recipes: |
| Sooner or later, you will grow tired of making beer
from other peoples recipes, and will want to create your own |
| When making your own recipe, you need to determine,
what kind of beer you want to make, and what methods you want to use. |
| The kind of beer you are going to make will have the
biggest influence on your recipe. |
| The things you need to decide include: |
How much alcohol will my beer have?
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| What color will it be? |
| Will it be sweet or dry? |
| How bitter will it be? |
| How malty will it be? |
| Will I be duplicating a popular style? |
|
 Alcohol content
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| In a typical five gallon batch, one pound of
fermentable sugar is about equal to 1% alcohol by volume. A typical homebrew is
about 5 to 6 percent alcohol. Each pound malt syrup adds less than one pound of
fermentable sugar, because water, and unfermentable sugars and flavors are also present.
Dry malt is more concentrated, lacking water, but still has unfermentabe chemicals.
These chemicals are important to the success, and flavor of your beer, but do not
add to the alcohol content. for this reason, a typical 5-6% beer will require 6 1/2
to 8 pounds of malt syrup, or somewhat less (6-7 lbs.) dry malt. Adding more malt
produces a more alcoholic beer, until the beer becomes so alcohol rich that it kills the
yeast. The point at which the yeast dies varies from strain to strain, for this
reason someone looking to brew a strong beer must also concider the strain of yeast that
they are using. |
| Color |
|
The color of your beer is mainly determined by the malt used.
The simplest method is to use malt extract in the color you want your beer to be,
amber extract for an amber beer, dark extract for a dark beer. Some brewers, myself
included, prefer to start with light extract, and then add flavor grains to give their
beer its color and flavor. |
Sweet vs. Dry
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There are two main factors that determine the level of sweetness
percieved in your beer. |
|
The yeast you use. Different strains of yeast are more
effieient at turning sugar into alcohol than others. A more efficient strain will
result in a drier beer than one that is less efficient. |
|
The balance of malt to hops. Malt adds a sweet character to
your beer, while hops add a bitter flavor that tends to counteract the sweetness of the
malt. the more malt you use, the more HBUs of hop bitterness you need to maintain
balance. Darker beers also tend to require more hops than lighter beers. |
|
Bitterness |
| Hops are the primary source of bitterness in beer. the higher
the number of HBUs a hop strain has, the more bitterness one ounce of those hops
will contribute to your beer. The amount of time that the hops are boiled will also
affect the amount of bitterness your beer has. In a typical 5 gallon batch of average
strength, 10 HBUs of hops boiled for one hour will yield a beer of typical
bitterness. |
| In addition to hops, some dark grains such as roasted barley, and
black patent malt can also add a grainy bitterness to your beer. |
|
Remember, it is not only the amount of hops, or dark grains that
contribute to percieved bitterness, but their balance with the sweet malts used that
determines the final level of bitterness.
|
| Maltiness |
| As mentioned above, it is the balance of hops to malt that
contributes the flavor to beer, however the use of flavor grains will improve the
malt character of your beer greatly. |
| Duplicating
popular styles |
|
If you are setting out to duplicate a
popular style of beer, you should try to match the ingreedients you use to
those that are used in the original. For example German malt should be
used when making a German style beer, and Northern Brewer hops should be used
when making a steam beer. You may also want to adjust the water you are
using to try to replicate the water in the area the beer you want to duplicate
is from, for example using Burton water salts when making an English Bitter.
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