Following someone elses recipe

First and foremost, I always adjust to fit my own efficiency. From there I might substitute an ingredient slightly, like maybe I'll use German Pilsner malt instead of American Pilsner, use Willamette hops instead of Fuggle, etc. Otherwise I stay pretty true to it, unless the recipe just plain looks like baloney, then I wouldn't brew it at all.

 

I'll usually use a good looking recipe as a starting point and tweak the hops to my liking. I'll also generally add to it (flaked oats for a bit of haze and thicker mouthfeel for example) and sometimes bump up the abv. So in the end, it really looks nothing like the original recipe!

 

I brew the recipe as closly as possible if I like what I see. Otherwise I am not trying something new.

 

I typically craft my own recipes. Looking online for other recipes that have been well-received is a good starting point, then I piece together the parts that look appealing to me. Keeping track of the ingredients to homebrews and commercial beers you enjoy is a huge help too. Turns out I'm a **** for chocolate malt, honey malt, mosaic hops, and WLP013 London Ale yeast.

 

I am not experienced enough to do one from scratch yet. So I'll print one off, but sometimes have to sub a grain or a hop.
Especially on the %A and %B, those often times don't match the recipe

 

If it's a style I brew often I pretty much have some recipes imbedded in my mind, though I like to experiment with subtle tweaks to give some variety and learn how certain ingredients contribute to a beer.

If it's a style I don't brew often I usually look at my old collection of BYO and Zymyrgy mags and look online for recipes from home brewers I've had success copying in the past.

I'll also add that I'm funny about a lot of recipes that call for, eg 2 oz of a specialty malt that I otherwise don't have on hand. I'm likely to omit that addition. I'll also round up or down on other malt additions to use up malts I have on hand or am planning to use for a future batch ( eg if I'm following a porter recipe that calls for 13 oz of roasted grains I'll probably just use the whole pound)

 

I craft my own recipes as well, but after joining Ba and seeing all the cool recipes and beers others are brewing with different meathods, I just have to try some recipes that are very different than my own. Love It!!!

 

Some, I go off the recipe exactly. Others I will customize if I feel the need. For example... Old Rasputin clone: substituted some of the British pale malt for 2 lb cherrywood smoked malt. Added cold steeped coffee at bottling.

I try not to deviate too much from the original recipes, especially since a lot of them have been brewed many times before, and there's a reason why they're brewing it the way they are. There's so many recipes out there now though, that you could tweak a few ingredients in one and call it your own if you really want to.