Home brew recipe book

IMO, the best bang for your buck is "Brewing Classic Styles," which has recipes for every BJCP beer style, or at least every style that the BJCP guidelines had at the time the book was written.

 

I enjoy the challenge of brewing clone recipes of well-known beers that I'm curious to try but are not easily available to me. You can use the Internet to find recipes for many popular beers (Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger, Zombie Dust), and even if it's an all-grain recipe that you find you can convert it to an extract recipe.

However, I got started along this way of clone brewing with the book Clone Brews. From that book I usually choose a style that I want to try and then select a beer in that style from the book. And the challenge of it is to select a beer that is available to me commercially so that I can get a bottle of it to compare to my finished beer.

 

I don't own it myself, but everyone I know who has it swears by the Greg Hughes book, Home Brew Beer. I've certainly drunk a lot of good beers based on recipes from it.

 

Brewing Classic Styles was very helpful for me. While I have brewed a few recipes verbatim, I mostly use the recipes as templates for exploring ingredients. Once you know how to brew a good IPA, Brown Ale, or whatever, start substituting out hops or malts or yeasts for something that aroused your curiosity and learn what it brings to the table. Modern Homebrew Recipes is also good for the same reason. In both cases, you have recipes from brewers who really are expert at crafting recipes. While a good recipe doesn't guarantee a good homebrew, it is where you need to start.

 

The "Averagely Perfect" recipes found on this very forum are solid recipes. Ingredients/ processes were voted by BA members. Also, back when I was starting out I found the mad fermentationist (M. Tonsmeire) website to be super helpful.

 

My experience with the Averagely Perfect Kolsch was a real beauty and crowd-pleaser; I will definitely be brewing this again!

I've also tried the averagely Perfect Dubbel... but unfortunately I screwed up the recipe by unintentionally going off-script (in a big way). Still enjoyable, but could be better. Next time I will be paying more attention.

 

I think the Kolsch may have turned out to be my favorite. I also really liked the original, AP American IPA.

 

Lots of good advice, I would add if you bought kits to start your own recipe book and include every thing you brew good or bad

 

My favorite book 15 years ago was Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels. It is a bit dated now today, but can still give you good ideas on how you might go about making your own recipes. Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher is also a very good one, with recipes in it and ideas for how to make your own. Otherwise, best collection we have today is probably BCS by Zainasheff & Palmer, and even that is becoming a bit dated already.

Several of my own favorite recipes (and memes!) can be found at the following link, if anyone is curious. Note: Most of these are not for 5-6 gallon batch sizes, but very odd batch sizes. Pay close attention to that. (I'm not exactly sure whether this link will work for you, as I've never shared it before.)

https://flickr.com/photos/152484552@N02/

 

The link seems to share a collection of memes, etc. for everyone to see.

 

Yep. AND homebrew recipes.

 

Here's the "The Averagely Perfect Kölsch - "Kölsch-Vid 19" 'How We Got There' thread"

Scroll to the end and you’ll find links to the rest of the AP “How We Got There” threads. I think there have been eight.
Typically, the recipe is toward the bottom of the first post in a “How We Got There” thread and shown as “Averagely Perfect [style name here]”
There are also some follow up How My Averagely Perfect [XYZ] Turned Out threads, but I think they're scattered about in the regular Homebrewing forum.

Peruse some of the threads to see how a recipe was developed and how the discussion progressed. Mighty interesting, to some.

 

Direct links to the recipes:

American IPA Pellet Hop Version - AG
American IPA Whole Leaf Hop Version - AG
American Stout Whole Leaf Hop Version - AG
American Stout Pellet Hop Version - AG
Saison Pellet Hop Version - AG
Saison Leaf Hop Version - AG
NorthEast IPA - AG (w/partial mash option)
ESB - AG (w/extract + steeped grains option)
Dubbel - AG (w/extract + steeped grains option)
American Brown - AG
Kolsch style - AG (w/extract + steeped grains option)

 

The final recipes are also in the recipe forum. Here's a search string that should show all of them:

Search String Click Here

 

Just be sure to keep sanitation and proper fermentation conditions at the top of your technical list and you should be okay.

 

OP, another thing to keep at the top of your technical list that has always served me well - don't drink, or don't drink much, while you brew. When your brew day is finished, have at it.

 

Well, some of ,y best and worst brews were during the drunken brewer series.
In general, it’s best to be somewhat functional but, as

ong as I can write down, accurately, the ingredients then a beer or 2 is fine, for me.