Hello. I am New to Home brewing and its been great so far. i can’t wait to run more batches and learn more and more , witch brings me to my question. i was given a recipe kit for xmas , a Kit for an American light ale, nothing to crazy I would like to make an adjustment or possibly add something to the Recipe to have some fun with it. Recipe formulation is something i am still trying to learn about and im sure it will all come in time but for now im just taking small steps , What would you add to tune this recipe up a bit? and how would you go about doing it? Recipe includes 3.3lbs Light LME , 1.0lbs Pilsen DME , 8oz Corn sugar , 8oz Rice solids, Hops include .5 oz Brewers gold for bittering and .5oz US goldings for aroma. :cheers:
How do you know it won’t be good the way it is designed. Lots of things you could do to it, but to randomly change something where you do not even know the baseline would be hard to decipher.
I’m sure it would be good the way it is , its just seems like a plain recipe and i am familiar with the taste of a American style light ale. it sounded like a good kit and idea to step into making changes to spice something up a bit. a small move in the direction of crafting my own recipes later on down the road. i guess what i’m asking to you long time Brewers if this was a Kit you had and wanted to change something just to play with the recipe what would it be? how and why?
What is the OG suppose to be? I’m coming up with 1.037. But then my program doesn’t have rice solids in it. I used rice syrup. Not sure if it’s a good sub, but I think it is.
Skip the rice and sugar. After fermentation has been going for 3 days, add and equal amount of local honey. Don’t do anything to the honey. Just dump it in.
[quote=“560sdl”] Lots of things you could do to it, but to randomly change something where you do not even know the baseline would be hard to decipher.[/quote]Yeah, you could add crystal malt, more hops, etc. but it wouldn’t do much good for learning to create recipes if you didn’t know what the base beer tasted like. I’d brew this one then order kits from Northern Brewer of the styles you might like and tweak them from there.
Yes . the O.G. is 1.037 - 1.041
Two years ago, when I first got into brewing, the guy at my local LHBS suggested that if you really wanted to learn how to adjust recipes or formulate your own, you really needed to brew a very simple recipe and tweak or add one thing at a time. Get much the same advice here on the forum.
Mostly I follow tried and trued recipes and adjust by default by running out of something and having to find a substitute.
First - I do agree with the advice of “always brew a recipe/kit as it is” first. Then rebrew it and change it a little at a time to achieve results more to your liking.
That being said - if it is a kit you got for xmas, and it might not be the ideal kit for you . . … . what is your ideal beer? You could do virtually anything with it - but you have to start with at least a general goal. Do you want a brown ale or a stout? Do you want a hoppy pale ale? Do you want to add fruit or honey to a beer? Basically, you could make this kit into almost anything you want by adding certain things to it. So - what kind of beer would you like to drink if you could drink anything?
The other thing - look through Northern Brewers kits - find a few that really catch your eye. Northern Brewer posts their recipes in the details of each kit so click on the link and check out the pdf of the recipe - then compare it to the ingredients you already have, and add what you need to adjust it to the other kit. Obviously, this will be simpler with some kits and harder with others - but that would be a good way to go. As long as you are not trying to brew a lager with an ale kit, or something like that, the basic processes are virtually the same.
i am an Auto Technician by trade. so the understanding of a Part , tool or system is vital to my job. When someone asks me for advice on a Repair or Upgrade i advise them of what i myself would do if i had what they had. When i got into brewing the deeper i got into reading and watching vids a seeming endless world of possibilities opened up, it was and still is daunting, i knew i wasn’t going to learn it all at once. just wanted to get some other ideas. I go to the local Brew shop and see lots of things to add to recipes with no idea how to use them. Experience is the best teacher i know. what i was wanting to learn form this was see something like " Use orange rinds At this stage for X amount of time " or " Add this Hop , it would add a nice tone to this Recipe " something like that, little bits of info like that Help lift some of the fog unknowing. :cheers:
First, you have a kit that probably nobody on this forum has ever brewed.
Second, we have not ideal what you like and don’t like. You “could” add more hops, less hops, different hops, hops at different times, dry hops. That is 5 different things you could do with just hops to change the beer. The different hops option changes that to about 50 different things you could do with hops alone.
You could make it stronger or weaker depending on adding or removing extracts. You could change the color by steeping specialty grains.
I am not trying to be difficult, but I hope you see my point. Yes, there is so much to learn but you can easily go overboard and just start making bad beer by adding random stuff without understanding exactly what you are looking to achieve.
You could always brew the beer and then pour it into separate containers half and half using two different yeasts, because let’s be honest, the first thing you underestimate as a new brewer is the value of yeast.
I do see your point. all i am looking to gain is just a few ideas. its not so much a matter of what i like or don’t like as is whats a good easy idea or a bad one. if someone just dropped that plain jane recipe kit in your lap. what would be a Tip or Trick an experienced brewer do to make it not so plain?
Crank the IBUS! 
that’s a bad habit of mine. I have a very hard time keep the hop profile below 30 IBUs in most of my beers (IBU=international bitterness units… basically just a reference to how hoppy a beer tastes). So IMHO screw with the hop regiment or add a little roasted barely… 8-10 oz.
For recipe formulation, I brewed a wide variety of NB kits to find out which styles I liked, then used those kit recipes as a jumping-off point for tweaking, adjusting, etc.
Also once you brew up a few kits you’ll see a pattern of X grains, Y amount of malt, then some amounts of hops, and yeast. I also recommend hopville.com’s “brew calculus” to help understand how everything adds up. The math on the site isn’t perfect, but if you’re not doing too many esoteric things you will get an idea of the gravities, bitterness, etc. that you can use to calibrate your palate.
I’ll reiterate what 560sdl mentioned. The possibilities are limitless. It just depends where one wants to go.
If it’s fall, maybe I want a holiday beer. Add a little pumpkin spice to it.
Or I want to kill my taste buds, Hoppenheimer’s thoughts are the way to go.
Maybe I want a fruit beer. Add a couple pounds of raspberry or blackberry, or mixed berries after fermentation is done.
Maybe I want a beer to drink after mowing the lawn. Brew it as it is.
Wolfskar:
If you were to go to the beer store and buy a six pack of beer, what would it be?
How about some Orange? for a bit of citrus flavor. what and how could i use it in this recipe?
I would add some sweet orange peel with 5 mins left in the boil. You could also look at the hops to accentuate the citrus character that you want.
Thanks Loopie , i like that way this sounds , how much sweet orange should i add , is there a rule to this? or just boil the whole pack it comes in?
I just brewed a honey kolsh with sweet Orange peel that had good flavor but not much staying power according to my friends. I used 1/2 oz mixed in with 1 cup vodka while it boiled and then added it to the primary with the yeast. I thought it was just right. Also cascade hops has the citric flavors you may be looking for. Cheers
