The Design Primer

The design of beer, like much of human creativity, is a mix of science and art. An architect must know the science of structure, as well as the art of form. One without the other leads to uselessness or ugliness. For this reason, the Design Primer is divided into two sections: the science of beer design, and the art of beer design.

The Science of Beer Design

The Art of Beer Design

The scientific approach to beer design starts with an analysis. Once a beer style has been chosen, examine and analyze its numbers: International Bittering Units, Original Gravity, Terminal Gravity, Color. Read the style description to determine what attributes are mandatory, acceptable or forbidden.

We will choose an Irish dry stout as an example for beer design. The numbers tell us that dry stouts have an OG of 1038 to 1048, bitterness of 30 to 40 IBU's, and a color of over 40 SRM. The style description tells us that dry-roastiness and head character are mandatory, a woody-earthy flavor is acceptable, along with some lactic sourness, and strong hop flavors and aroma are forbidden.

Next, we build up our recipe by ingredients, making sure the numbers true to form. Malts are the best place to start, followed by hops, yeast and water.

Use pale malts to build up the gravity. An exception to this is where styles demand base malts other than pale, such as viennas and bocks. In all cases, start with the lightest malt acceptable for the style. Extract brewers should start with pale malt extracts. Adjust the amount of these malts to bring the predicted original gravity to the lower or middle of the acceptable range.

Six pounds of pale malt extract, or seven and a half pounds of pale ale malt grains will produce an original gravity of about 1.042.

Build up the color and character of the recipe with specialty grains. In this there is no substitute for knowing your ingredients. A half pound of chocolate malt will add the same amount of color as four pounds of 50L crystal malt, but the resulting characters will be vastly different. As a rule of thumb, use the middle color range of malts (chocolate malt instead of crystal or black malt). Again, check your style descriptions. Check the resulting color against the style. Also recheck the original gravity calculations.

The style calls for roasted barley. Since this is a very dark grain, we won't use any other specialty grain for color. However, the medium body and caramel flavor for dry stouts means we'll have to use crystal malts to build up the wort. A pound of light (20L) crystal, and a pound and a half of roasted barley will give us a color of 52 SRM (160 home color units). The added grains will bring the original gravity up to 1.052. We might want to lower the base malts down a bit to adjust this number.

Now we need to work on the hops. Always choose a hop variety to reflect the style origin. Use British hops for British styles, German hops for German styles, and so on. When a style calls for hop bitterness, flavor and aroma to be balanced, add the hops at different times during the boil, rather than all at once. Compute the hop bitterness for each hop addition and adjust until the numbers are right.

For a dry stout, hop flavor and aroma is negligible, so we'll ignore it, and stick with a higher alpha hop, since a lesser amount will be needed, and the flavor and aroma will be driven off in the boil. We'll choose Northern Brewer, since it has a British origin, but has a much higher alpha acid content than the traditional East Kent Goldings. This particular example package of hops has an alpha acid percentage of 8%. Using our calculator, we find that one and a half ounces of hops added to the start of the boil will yield us 36 IBU's. Just right.

You can be a bit more subjective in the selection of yeasts. A yeast with a neutral character is always safe. If there is a yeast traditionally used for your intended style, then use it. For some styles this is mandatory. For other styles, different yeasts can fill out the character of the finished beer. Read the yeast descriptions if you can find them. As with hops, matching the origin of the yeast to the style is a good idea.

We note that several yeast brands carry an "Irish Ale" or an "Irish Dry Stout" yeast. We will use these. If they weren't available, we would consider another British yeast, preferably one that imparts an earthy character.

Finally we come to the water. The true scientific brewer would use various salts and additives to make the brewing water match the style's water of origin. For many brewers, this is not practical or desirable. Water chemistry can be safely ignored, unless the style says otherwise. An exception to this would be if your brewing water was excessively hard or soft to begin with, or had unusual amounts ions in it. In these cases, correct the water to normal levels.

For a dry stout, there is no particular style guideline for water. If we wished to make our water match that of Dublin's, we certainly could. Of course, we should make sure our water is not extremely hard or soft.

Some styles call for ingredients other than malt, hops, yeast or water. There are simply too many adjuncts to include in this primer. Instead, find out what other brewers are using, and how. Read the winning recipes in "Zymurgy". Examine the recipes in Recipe Lists. Try to find at least three good recipes that use your desired ingredient, and compare them.

A lactic sourness is mentioned in the description of dry stouts. Many brewers use a bit of lactic acid to achieve this. Others sour a portion of their beer. However, since this is a not a requirement of the style, we will not attempt to add that character to our beer.

One must also consider brewing technique. Many lager styles demand double or triple decoctions. Simulating a lambic would require a demanding fermentation schedule. If your beer style requires a brewing technique out of the ordinary, it would behoove you to use it. Sometimes the ingredients will demand special procedures. Very pale malt often requires a protein rest during the mash.

Finally, we are at the end of the scientific design method. We have skipped some topics of this approach, but they are useless to us until we have learned about the art of designing beer.

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As the old saying goes, "If you want to play the blues, you have to pay your dues". This is applicable to every art form. If you paint, you must know your pigments. If you play guitar, you must know your chords. It is the same way with beer design. You must know your ingredients, styles, and equipment. And you must practice, practice, practice. Practice brewing other folk's recipes. Practice brewing an old favorite but with different hops. Practice with other methods of brewing. In practicing, you learn the fundamentals of the art.

We will choose a Pale Ale as an example for beer design. It is assumed that you have studied the scientific method of beer design first. You have to know the rules intimately before you are qualified to break them. Thus, you should have a basic, bare-bones pale ale recipe already ready.

Taste as many different beers that fit your intended style as is practical. You can't design a masterpiece of a stout if the only stout you've ever tasted has been Guinness. What makes the different samples different from each other? What do they have in common?

From these tastings, and from you experience as a brewer, what do characteristics do you want your beer to have? Maltiness? Bitterness? A hint of coffee? Are you able to provide your beer with these qualities? If you want the clean, crisp bitterness of a Bohemian Pilsener, but don't have the capability to lager, then you should try something else.

Go to your local brewpub and taste their pale ale. Take notes. Go to the liquor store and pick up a few commercial examples. Taste them. Take notes. For this example, we decide that we want the following characteristics: sharp bitterness, woody aroma, caramel notes, and a hint of red in the color.

As with the scientific method, start with the malt. This is the canvas upon which you will paint. Do you use pale or pilsener malts? Extra light malt extract or amber extract? From your experience, you should know which malts grant which quality. Your vision of what your beer will be might point you towards complicated mashing schedules or towards simple extracts.

Malt extracts will tend to have thin body as compared to all-grain recipes. Pale malts produce a "bigger" body than lager malts. Infusion mashes will have less maltiness than decoction mashes. Dark malts have a curious flavor-to-color continuum that requires understanding through practice. Crystal and caramel malts have yet a different flavor-to-color continuum.

We will start with a canvas of light malt extract. This will have a neutral base from which we can work. For the caramel notes we definitely need crystal or caramel malt. Since the darker crystal malts add reddish notes to the color, we will choose a scottish crystal malt of 90L color. Our experience as brewers will tell us how much to use. We will also add a tablespoon of chocolate malt to add complexity.

Hops are the bold colors in our palette. High-alpha hops are great for adding bitterness, but they are not always desirable. But on the other hand, too much low-alpha hops used for bitterness can lend a "spinachy" quality. Blends of hops can add wonderful complexity to beers. Many hop additions at narrow time intervals will extract more flavor and aroma than just a couple. Refer to your tasting notes.

Pale ales are noted for the bitterness, so we have to paint broad strokes. We will start with galena hops for their high-alpha content. For the woody notes, fuggles are ideal (and traditional). We end up with galena additions at the start of the boil, fuggles at twenty minutes, galena at fifteen minutes (to get some of its noted flavor), fuggles at ten, fuggles at five, galena and fuggles at two, and dry hopping with fuggles. Whew! The exact proportions we determine through experience.

There is no substitute for experience in choosing a yeast. You may already have chosen a "house" yeast, one that you use for every batch. Many award winning breweries do this. In painting, the quality of the pigments is of great concern. So it is with all brewing ingredients, but especially yeast. Check the time stamps on your smack packs, or culture your own. Dry yeast are okay for lesser beers, but for your masterpiece they won't do at all unless they are absolutely fresh. Using more than one kind of yeast is perfectly normal. Do it if your vision tells you to.

We loved the character that the "Irish Dry Stout" gave to our scientifically brewed stout, and decide to use it for the pale ale! It gave us a woody, earthy character. This yeast will be our drama.

For water, the scientific method can serve us well. But a good rule of thumb is to use the water one already has, without adjustments, just like a master painter uses his or her natural talents. If the water is not perfectly suitable, one can either take note of it and let it be, or adjust the recipe to compensate. Perhaps a sauer mash or dark malts can be used to adjust pH. Or perhaps blending one's hard water with quality bottled soft water.

Our water, in this example, is of medium hardness. Traditionally, pale ales were brewed with hard water. Our artistic sense tells us not to use prepackaged "Burton" salts. Of course, if we had to work with soft water, we might have to. We decide to use our water as is, with pride.

Other ingredients can be the hallmark of the artistic brewer. But experience, not experimentation is needed. For fruit beers, the finished fruit flavor will not always taste like the fresh fruit, since many aromas will have been purged with the CO₂ during fermentation. For your masterpiece, it goes without saying that real fruit is preferable to bottled extracts. Honey can add a lightness to the beer, but be aware that it will ferment slowly.

We will not use any other ingredients in our beer. However, if it turns out superb, we might decide to use it as the basis for a future fruit beer. An artistic brewer is always thinking about future brews. Let's see, blackberry pale ale. Apricot pale ale. Cranberry pale ale. Hey, that last one sounds interesting!

If your finished beer is not a masterpiece, don't fret. Taste and analyse the results to help determine what needs adjusting. A bit more aroma hops? A bit less vienna malt? Pass it out to all your friends and drink the rest up to give you room for your next creation.

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