Formulating and balancing a new recipe.

[Pom]

Hi guys.
Guys Ive been brewing for a few months now and thanks to the great help I recived from many of you on this forum I have been making some very drinkable brews. In fact now my freinds have found out about it its getting hard to keep up. Three have even started brewing themselves which is good.
But ive now got to the point where im experimenting more and more but find it very hard to try and work out quantities for new recipes. For instance if im to make a pilsner and want to step some grains how much and then how much ldme or liquid malt should i used and dex and hops etc. I know to a certain point its trial and error. I downloaded Beersmith but at first glance found it a bit to much and couldn't even get pass the first steps of entering data on batch sizes. (it was all in U.S. gallons)
So I left it for a while with all intentions of going back to it at a later date. That was nearly 3 months ago and the trail has now expired. Is it worth me paying to download it even though I don't understand it? Is this the line I should be going down to get help with balancing a recipe?

[warra48]

BeerSmith is well worth buying. I use it to design all my recipes, and store them along with notes etc. If you buy it you can set it up to your own preferences, ie metric or imperial, kg or grams, exactly as you wish. I'm brewing AG but you can use it also for extract and partial brewing.

If you don't want to go down that track right now, here's a link to a very simple calculator, which might be enough for what you want to do at present:

http://www.liquorcraft.com.au/wa.asp?id ... etails=107

As to what quantities of grains etc to use, Ross' site at CraftBrewer has a full list of grains, and if you click on them, you'll get a detailed page which will also indicate the maximum proportion to use in a recipe:

http://www.craftbrewer.com.au/shop/default.asp?CID=21

Beyond that, keep records of what you do, and you'll soon learn what works and what doesn't. You can always post a proposed recipe on this site, and someone will critique it and give suggestions for improvements or modifications where necessary.

[Pom]

Cheers warra
I think I will buy a full version as Im sure I will use it, if not right away I will in the next few months, but thanks for the other info.
I just tried the calculator out and that will help me to start with.

[StuTee]

+1 for beersmith
If you play around with it for a bit, it starts to make sense... And speaking as a person against using brainpower to calculate things, it's a godsend.
Oh and with the gallons etc, you can change the settings to litres, kgs etc, so no dramas there