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Recipe Design Tab

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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

oOpen a new recipe by clicking on the Add Recipe button from My Recipes view.
oThe Recipe Design tab will be selected by default
oEnter 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)
oChoose 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.
oIn the style guide section, select a target style for your beer by clicking on the Style name
oIf 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.
oStart 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.
oYou can select your carbonation (bottling/kegging) method and aging profile to match your beer near the bottom of the dialog

 

Adjusting Ingredients

oThe design view now has features to let you cut/copy/paste ingredients as well as increment/decrement amounts and times.
oIn 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
oFrom the various add-ingredient dialogs you can also install new ingredient add-ons or create entirely new ingredient items on the fly.
oAn undo feature is now in place as well so you can undo the last changes to your ingredients list
oYou can now select and delete multiple items using the shift/ctrl keys while selecting
oKeyboard shortcuts are active when the ingredient list has keyboard focus (i.e. an ingredient is selected).
oThe 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

oIn the bottom right of the design view you can customize your display using dozens of recipe fields using the Select Fields button
oYou can now have wide screen support and up to 26 custom selected fields

 

Adjusting Grain Percentages or Individual IBUs

oClick the Grain Pct button next to the ingredients list
oAdjust the recipe grain percentages until the total is 100% and press OK - BeerSmith will adjust the weights of the grains to match your percentages
oClick the Hop IBUs next to the ingredient list
oYou can now set individual hop IBU contributions from this panel

 

Adjusting Color Icon for Mead, Wine and Cider

oFor mead, wine and cider you can set your own color for the beverage using the Choose Beverage Color button in the style section.
oFor beer, BeerSmith estimates the color of the beverage