Nowadays I make up my own recipes. However, some of the places I used most frequently early on in my recipe writing were: Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff (book) https://www.themadfermentationist.com https://www.homebrewersassociation.org Various byo.com articles. I still reference some of these resources on occasion, especially when brewing a new (to me) style.
I have always created my own... I think over my 100 batches, I have maybe done 2-3 'clones'. Prior to starting to brew (in which I went 'all grain' from the start) I spent quite some time (months) studying ingredients (malt, hops, yeast) and how they are used in what percentages, what they offer in terms of flavor, color, etc...Looking at a bunch of recipes for beers I liked at the time and what made them what they are. My first few batches were 100% my own... From the looks of my records, I only ever 'cloned' Milk Stout from Left Hand and Zombie Dust at some point. But the rest have been my own, of course with research and references along the way. But I never wanted to just clone someone else's work, per-say. So even if I was trying to brew a beer like "Example A", I would look up as many recipes for such a beer, dig into the actual ingredients used and come up with my own interpretation based on my experience. I may change base malts, yeast or something. But where I found those references? Just google for the most part, scanned various forums and such. Brewery websites, technical papers or articles. Anything I could find!
I mostly like to brew clone beers, and started out using the book, Clonebrews. I'd choose a recipe from the book for a beer that was available in local beer stores and then buy one for comparison after brewing its recipe. Usually I was close. Then I realized that many clone recipes were available online for hyped beers like Pliny the Elder and Zombie Dust, beers that I couldn't easily get, so those were the beers that I began brewing.
I create my own, with recipes inspired from various sources: 1. Online sites; 2. Brew Your Own Magazine; 3. Clone Brews by Tess and Mark Szamatulski; 4. Modern Homebrew Recipes, by Gordon Strong; 5. Extreme Brewing, by Sam Caglione; 6. American Sour Beers, by Michael Tonsmeire; 7. Brew Your Own Big Book of Homebrewing; 8. IPA Brewing Techniques, Recipes and the Evolution of India Pale Ale, by Mithch Steele; 9. How to Brew Like a Monk, by Sam Hieronymous; 10. Brewing Classic Styles, by Jamil Zainasheff and John J. Palmer; 11. New Brewing Lager Beer, by Gregory J. Noonan; 12, Designing Great Beers, by Ray Daniels; 13. Continental Pilsener by David Miller; 14. Vienna, Marzen and Oktoberfest, by George & Laurie Fix; 15. Brewing Beers Like Those You Buy, by Dave Line; 16. Beersmith; 17. HomeBrewTalk. and many others. Beer Advocate also has a difficult to find/access site for recipes, but it is sparse and very few seem either unaware of it or don't bother to use it: https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/forums/homebrew-recipes.67/ I don't know why it isn't one of the main sites.
Not a huge fan of recipes, especially anonymous on-line garbage. If it's Jamil or someone then I'll work with that but otherwise I'm not risking an afternoon and $40 on some random lunatics idea of a good brew. No way. I have made many SMASH brews. Over years of brewing I have come to find that simple beers are the best beers. For me anyway. So my vocabulary of yeast, malt and hops is fairly solid and I have a good idea of what might work and what is to be avoided. It just takes time. You learn and that knowledge is yours. If there are some considerations I'm not entirely comfortable with, for instance cocoa or coffee or habanero I'll always check this forum. Somebody has already done it and we have already discussed. Cheers
Excellent list, and mirrors my own reading over the last decade of homebrewing. I would add: Let's Brew! by Ron Pattinson (@patto1ro). If you like beer history, it's really good. Some of the beers I've made from that book have been amazing.
Yeah, that more-or-less sums up my usual approach. Apart from historic recipes from Ron's book (The Homebrewer's Guide to Vintage Beer, 13/10, would buy again) I don't think I brew anything that's taken directly from an existing recipe. On the other hand my first few attempts at a style normally follow at least the outline of a "book" recipe - generally Jamil or BYO - for the main malts, gravity, bitterness, rough size of the hop additions etc, but with some amount of switching up of ingredients because there's always some compelling reason that I want to do something different...
I brew with gluten free grains, so the playbook is not yet written. I do rely on barley beer recipes around the interwebs, from AHA to random forum posts here and on HBT. Then, I try to find comparable GF malts or blends of GF malts to mimic the grain bill of the barley beer I'm trying to emulate. After that, it's a matter of tweaking and dialing those recipes in.
First I'd copy brew kit recipes when I could scan them on line. Then can brewing TV which I loved to watch. And brew many of their beers. They were big proponents of doing what you want, then other home brewers, got more ideas when I helped out in a local brewery and now it's run and gun. Whatever I think will work goes. Request beers arestill run and gun but I will use some requested ingredients. I never go for style guidelines, don't know em don't care.
