Designing Beer with Denny Conn – BeerSmith Podcast #55

by Brad Smith on February 16, 2013 · 6 comments

This week I discuss how to design a beer recipe with Denny Conn. Denny shares some of his tips on creating a home brewing recipe from scratch including imagining the beer, selecting ingredients, applying techniques and iterating to perfect the beer.

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Topics in This Week’s Episode (37:36)

  •  Denny Conn is this week’s guest. Denny is a member of the American Homebrewer’s Association governing committee and a member of the Cascade Brewer’s Society. He has a web site on batch sparging at DennyBrew.com
  • Denny wrote an article on beer recipe design for the May/June 2012 edition of Zymurgy magazine. We discuss many of his main points here on this episode.
  • We start by discussing how one starts with a blank sheet of paper and begins imagining a beer.
  • Denny shares his philosophy on researching beer styles and also ingredients.
  • We talk about the next step which is developing the grain bill and selecting ingredients
  • Denny shares some tips for “knowing your ingredients” well
  • We talk about sugars and some unique flavors you can get from sugars
  • Denny shares his thoughts on misc ingredients such as spices and flavorings (including mushrooms and vanilla beans)
  • We discuss process issues like selecting mash temperatures, and applying hop techniques
  • Denny shares a few tips for brewers just starting to design their first beer
  • The American Homebrewers Association Conference which we discussed is June 27-29th in Philadelphia

Thanks to Denny Conn for appearing on the show and also to you for listening!

Thoughts on the Podcast?

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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }

Dan February 16, 2013 at 1:28 pm

Yawn.

Jim February 17, 2013 at 10:20 am

Really interesting podcast, Denny always provides food for thought. Thanks for taking the time to record this.

As for the comment left by Dan above, its amusing that he’s bored by listening to one of the better, most accomplished homebrewers around. Says a lot about Dan, I think.

Jason February 20, 2013 at 5:53 pm

Enjoyed the podcast. Thanks!

Dan February 25, 2013 at 8:19 am

You a e correct, he is one of the more accomplished brewers and if you don’t believe that just ask him in any of the many forums he tried to dominate.

Tony September 9, 2013 at 11:53 pm

I really liked the podcast and as for Dan’s comments,,, Denny has helped me and it seems many others in the forums quite a bit and I appreciate his input.

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