I've previously posted about how I started brewing through the BJCP styles using recipes in Brewing Classic Styles. (I also got on a soapbox about where styles don't matter. That's a separate topic.) The idea at the outset was to get to know ingredients better and to have a long list of recipes to work through while we're sorting out our process and equipment.
Within the past year, we've brewed a eight recipes out of that book. In no particular order: IPA, Octoberfest, English Ordinary Bitter, English Barleywine, Imperial IPA, Russian Imperial Stout (3x), Saison, and American Brown Ale.
I'm liking the process. These are not complex recipes, but it's amazing to see the different end products. The yeast character and phenolics that we got out of the saison (after fighting with that Belgian strain from Wyeast) are amazing. The fact that it only takes 5% chocolate malt out of a massive grain bill on a Russian Imperial Stout to make the beer completely opaque and have a pronounced, massive chocolate flavor is still pretty amazing to me.
I definitely don't understand anywhere close to all of the chemistry behind it, but I am starting to wrap my head around the fact that the flavors we pick out in food and beer are just specific chemical compounds that can be created or broken down by parts of the fermentation process or occur naturally in our ingredients.
One of the things which really helped to crystalize that notion in my mind was trying a couple of beers with non-traditional ingredients at my last club meeting. One had maple syrup and the other had cocoa powder. Neither beer tasted particularly like the highlighted ingredient. It's totally counterintuitive at first, but adding an ingredient to the beer pre-fermentation will probably not produce the end result you think it will. Which brings me full circle - rather than experimenting with non traditional ingredients, I'd highly recommend learning what the traditional ones contribute.
