Do you use a specific Recipe?

[The Baron]

Just changed mine to occasionally as I forgot I do the odd clone recipe

 

[Nicks90]

I've only done 2 AGs, but neither have been a recipe.
I don't own a book either.

I wanted a session bitter for ag1 and searched on here and on brewers friend and made my own up based on those.
AG2 is an IPA and based on my preference for hops and citrus and I didn't even look at any recipes for that one. Just ploughed on with what felt right.

 

[skulltat280]

With no experience behind me, I kinda followed a brewdog recipe

Though because I had 2 x 250g of extra grains left over I added them in plus extra water. Original abv was 7.5% so I figured I had room to play with it to get around 6%

 

[Duxuk]

I brew the type of beer I most like drinking. I've evolved my own recipe over 130 AGs and generally only change the hops.

 

[SamBrewster]

I look at recipes for beers I like then make something up that I think I will like. So far still tinkering with the 3 core recipes I have until they are 'perfect' - a long way to go but lots of fun sampling

 

[steve denholm]

recipe or kit because I'm still learning (oh and the standard 200g of oats) :p

 

[Dutto]

I have to say that many of the 25 votes cast remind me of my Mum's "Duck à l'Orange" which she managed to cook with no duck and no oranges; but still gave me a filthy look when I pointed out that we were actually eating "Lemon Chicken"!

I find it very heartening to read that:

• Most of us apparently started off following AG recipes as near as we could ...
• then branched out by "tweaking" malts, yeasts, hops and timings for a known brew ...
• before going 'Full Monty" and designing our own brews.

Even going the "Full Monty", most of us still check that the brew will be within a particular "style".

In my case, I started checking the "style guidelines" after a "user up" brew that produced 23 litres (in 45 x 500ml bottles) of a totally undrinkable liquid!

Thanks for the input.

I hope the newer members will experiment as they get more confident, but my advice is to make only small changes to what you know; and NEVER be tempted to use up those last few grams of Malt!