With some thought and planning, big dessert stouts are well within reach of extract brewers. Here's a recipe featuring vanilla, pecan, cacao, and plenty of toasted coconut.
Don’t bother with a yeast starter, oxygenation, or cold crashing here. We want the yeast “struggling” to produce a nice, noticeable ester/phenol profile, and the cloudiness is no vice in a weiss.
This is a homebrew-scale recipe for the German-style Pils from Smith & Lentz Brewing in Nashville, Tennessee. Below, we explain how the recipe can be adjusted for a range of variations.
Courtesy of Perennial Artisan Ales in St. Louis, Missouri, here is a homebrew-sized version of a big-bodied imperial stout that gets a pile of coconut for a decadent, chocolate-macaroon-like character.
Kristen England is head brewer at Bent Brewstillery in Roseville, Minnesota—and a longtime homebrewer and BJCP Grand Master Beer Judge. Here is his recipe for a rich-but-quaffable Czech-style dark lager, including a straightforward single-decoction mash.
As historical beers go, this is an odd one: an Austrian beer once described by Mozart (maybe), with a grist of 100 percent malted oats, and cream of tartar to lend a refreshing acidic touch.
You, too, can brew a quaffable, enjoyable, malt-forward lager beer—in relatively short order.
From Superstition Meadery in Prescott, Arizona, this homebrew-scale mead recipe gets a tropical boost from Samba hops in the fermentor.
In 2009, Maine Beer Company cofounders Dan and David Kleban brewed Peeper—over and over—on a one-barrel system until they were happy with the results. It’s a superb example of a modern, brightly aromatic American pale ale.
Agostino Arioli, founder of Birrificio Italiano, provided this homebrew-scale recipe for the beer that inspired “Italian-style” pilsner—an aromatic, floral, dry-hopped pilsner in an elegant frame.