Looking for a solid recipe!

I'm with most of the others. Start with something simple. One thing I've noticed on this and other forums is that the guys who come in guns blazing (big beers, unusual ingredients, tricky processes) on their first batch tend to disappear pretty quickly. Anyone's first batch will not be perfect, though it can be very good. Complexity just increases the chances of a subpar beer.

 

I recently fermented 2 carboys of a light IPA. One with US05 (chico) and the other with S33 (Belgian) from Safale. The US05 carboy went all the way down to 1.010 quickly while the S33 only got to 1.020 in the same time frame. While the attenuation of S33 is lower than US05, I wasn't satisfied with the FG point so I kegged the US05 carboy and actually pitched the remaining US05 yeast into the S33 carboy. The US05 yeast then did the final fermentation of that S33 carboy, getting it down to about 1.012 FG from 1.020. The resulting beer had very nice Belgian esters so I guess the moral of my story is that you can combine two yeasts and still get a dominant character from one of them. Mainly when you let that one do a majority of the fermenting first and then you later combine it with a fairly neutral second yeast strain. I've also mixed two yeast strains in the beginning of fermentation before, and when I have its always been a crap shoot as to which yeast will have the dominant character if an does at all. Usually in those circumstances I got more of a blended result.

As for starting simple vs. starting with a complicated recipe....i went the simple approach myself and brewed a brown ale my first batch. Recently my homebrewing club actually held a brewers competition called "Rebrew your first recipe ever" and it seemed like 90% of the members brought in a brown ale or an amber ale! It was a funny competition, seeing these really experienced RIMS and HERMS system brewers humbled by competition parameters as most of them had to rebrew there original recipe which typically was an extract brew!

 

If you're hell bent on doing some different treatments to your first batch(es) I'd buy a couple one gallon jugs in addition to your carboys. Brew your 5 gallon batch(es), ferment them out and then do different treatments in secondary in each 1 gallon jug (e.g. cocoa nibs, vanilla beans in one, bourbon chips in the other, peanut butter in the third, or a different dry hop in each one), and make sure to save at least a gallon or two of the base beer, either in a smaller secondary or 1 gallon jug(s). I've performed this procedure every time I want to try out different post-boil treatments, but don't want to potentially ruin a batch of beer.

Regarding recipes, I'd just pick a kit out from NB or a commercial clone of a beer you like (e.g. Pliny, Furious, Smoke), and make sure you control your fermentation temperature. The main reason being you can taste the commercial beer side by side with yours and at least get a baseline for what may or may not have went wrong and where to go from there.

 

There are some great all extract recipes on homebrewtalk, btw. I still get inspiration from stuff over there. Made a Pecan Porter that blew people away based on a recipe there