Experimental Brewing – Chapter 2 – Recipe Design

Authors’ Note: Way back in the Spring of 2013, we were approached to write a book titled Experimental Homebrewing that would “Out Randy” Randy Mosher’s wonderfully crazy Radical Brewing. Quickly, we decided that it was a practical impossibility to achieve that goal. Instead, we pivoted to focus on the word “Experimental” and what it means. Drew was the outlandish one; Denny, the practical digger of how things worked in his brewery and for his tastes. It took us over a year and three editors to pull this book together. (Many thanks to Thom O’Hearn for dragging us across the finish line!)

Experimental Homebrewing is now approaching a decade old and is out of print, we’ve decided to bring the book online over the course of the year in celebration of that crazy decade with annotations! Please note: you can still find used or never sold copies of the book (We’re still partial to having a physical book in hand for practical purposes!)


WHILE WE MIGHT talk often about crazy ingredients or off the wall techniques, our beers are not actually crazy stacks of flavors and aromas. We’ve brewed enough to know that more should never be confused with better. In fact, we love nothing more than stripping away the needless artifice and creating recipes with only the bare essentials. Only once that’s done can you really brew like a nutter and expect any chance of pulling it off. Join us in this chapter as we get simple before we get complex, as we learn the rules that we will soon break.

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