Hey everyone,

I'm from the Iowa City area and I started brewing all-grain out of the gate 6 months ago. It's amazing how much you can learn with a few brew books, internet, and Brew Strong. The one thing that I need a lot of education on is building grain bills as well as the thought process for hop additions. I'm assuming these forums will lead me to these answers (and create more questions) but if anyone has a good place for me to start let me know.

Cheers.

Have you read How to Brew by John Palmer? The current edition is widely available at brewshops and bookstores, and the earlier edition is free at his website of the same name. General thought process on hop additions is that some hops are better suited for aroma and flavor additions, and you would want to use these late in the boil or in dry hop.

Brewing classic. Styles is an excellent book as well. It has definitely helped with my brewing.
Also, welcome! Tons of info here. Some of its even good!

Hello from Pella. See you at the Festival of Iowa Beers, Sept 2nd, Millstream Brewery, Amana.

-CH

For building grain bills I always reference "Designing Great Beers" Ray Daniels. Great book although I would get some good proven recipes and get your brewing skills up to par before diving into recipe creation.

+1 Designing Great Beers for learning recipe design. BCS has award wining recipes and gives great tips on how to brew specific styles. But Designing introduces some really cool concepts regarding grain bills, hopping schedules, and Bitterness:Gravity ratios all the while referencing 2nd round winning beers at the NHC. Designing may not give you the best guide to winning competitions these days as certain categories creep into bigger beers. But the basic concepts for recipe design are sound.

Cedar Rapids Brewer from the Cedar Rapids Beer Nuts. If you are interested please feel free to make the trip down to check out one of our meetings. This month it is on Thursday April 19, 2012 at Third Base Brewing.

Hello to a fellow Iowa City brewer. I've been all-grain brewing for about 6-8 months myself and have learned soooo much from the BN. The guys in the forums are extremely helpful as well. I picked up Brewing Classic Styles after listening the Session for about a month and use it to help in all of my brews since. Great book.


peaceandbacon
BN Army, Hawkeye Division


Primary: Raspberry Porter (from BCS)
Keg(s): Roggenbier (NB kit) & Smoked Strong Scotch Ale