The recipe design tool is the central area for building new beer recipes. It is intended to allow you to quickly select a set of ingredients and see instantly how it affects your beer. You can perform all of the steps to build your recipe from this single tab. The other tabs (yeast starter, mash details, fermentation) are used to detail and record your brewing process - but the recipe design takes place here.
Recipe design can be a complex process. For details on making better recipes, see the articles referred to below. For the basics, follow the process shown below.
See Also: Scaling and Adjusting Recipes, Finding your Way Around BeerSmith, Using Profiles and Styles and Adding Custom Ingredients
Online Articles: BeerSmith Guide, Recipe Design, Hop Bitterness, Beer Color, Hop Techniques, Mashing Techniques, Understanding Brewhouse Efficiency, Partial Mash Brewing, Beer Style Articles
Recommended Recipe Design Process
o | Open a new recipe by clicking on the Add Recipe button from My Recipes view. |
o | The Recipe Design tab will be selected by default |
o | Enter the name of your recipe, your name as the brewer and pick the type of recipe you want to create (all-grain, extract, partial-mash, mead, wine or cider) |
o | Choose your equipment profile by clicking on the equipment name button. If you have not already done so, it is recommended you set up an equipment profile to match your particular set of brewing equipment. This should populate the batch size, efficiency and boil size fields. |
o | In the style guide section, select a target style for your beer by clicking on the Style name |
o | If you are an all grain or partial mash brewer, select the Mash profile for your beer by clicking on the mash name - if you are a beginning all grain brewer, I recommend you choose the "Single Infusion, Medium Body, No Mash Out" profile. See Mash Profiles for more details on available profiles. |
o | Start adding ingredients to your beer using the various "Add" buttons next to the ingredient list. As you add ingredients the color of the beer glass icon and estimated original gravity, bitterness and color will be adjusted. These numbers will continuously be compared to the style you selected and displayed on scale below the ingredients. |
o | You can select your carbonation (bottling/kegging) method and aging profile to match your beer near the bottom of the dialog |
Adjusting Ingredients
o | The design view now has features to let you cut/copy/paste ingredients as well as increment/decrement amounts and times. |
o | In the various add-ingredient dialogs you can also now add an ingredient without closing the dialog, letting you add multiple hops for instance without closing |
o | From the various add-ingredient dialogs you can also install new ingredient add-ons or create entirely new ingredient items on the fly. |
o | An undo feature is now in place as well so you can undo the last changes to your ingredients list |
o | You can now select and delete multiple items using the shift/ctrl keys while selecting |
o | Keyboard shortcuts are active when the ingredient list has keyboard focus (i.e. an ingredient is selected). |
o | The following shortcuts can be used (use Cmd key for Mac): Ctrl-G - add grain, Ctrl-H - add hops, Ctrl-M - add misc, Ctrl-Y - add yeast, Ctrl-W - add water, Ctrl-Z - undo, Ctrl-D - duplicate, Del - delete current item, Ctrl-S - Substitute, Ctrl-X - cut, Ctrl-C - copy, Ctrl-V - paste, Ctrl-A -select all, +/- - increment/decrement amount, [/] - increase/decrease time for item |
Customizing your Display
o | In the bottom right of the design view you can customize your display using dozens of recipe fields using the Select Fields button |
o | You can now have wide screen support and up to 26 custom selected fields |
Adjusting Grain Percentages or Individual IBUs
o | Click the Grain Pct button next to the ingredients list |
o | Adjust the recipe grain percentages until the total is 100% and press OK - BeerSmith will adjust the weights of the grains to match your percentages |
o | Click the Hop IBUs next to the ingredient list |
o | You can now set individual hop IBU contributions from this panel |
Adjusting Color Icon for Mead, Wine and Cider
o | For mead, wine and cider you can set your own color for the beverage using the Choose Beverage Color button in the style section. |
o | For beer, BeerSmith estimates the color of the beverage |