Small Batch Beer Recipes for All-Grain Brewers

In the vein of simplifying an already tasty recipe, I tweaked my original APA recipe by reducing the grain bill to two grains, swapping out Amarillo for Perle, adjusting the hop schedule, and trying a different yeast strain. The changes were worth it—this version is superior to the original. It has become my new go-to APA recipe, so I thought I’d offer it here for your consideration. As a fun experiment, brew the two APA recipes back-to-back and compare. One can never have too many APAs in the house!

Inspired by Hill Farmstead’s renowned version of American Pale Ale, this beer is flowery, with impressions of citrus and pine.

Sometimes you just want an easy-drinking pint with a solid (yet restrained) hit of malt character, with a dash of caramel and toasted notes. If you need a break from hoppy beers, try this one out, and enjoy its beautiful colour.

Blanche de Chambly is one of Quebec’s great beers, and one we Canadians take for granted more than we should. It’s readily available on our store shelves, but when it was new to the market, it was one hell of a revelation. Here’s my version, named after the beloved Toronto neighbourhood I call home.

This is one refreshing beer. Wit is the Flemish word for white (or so I’m told)—the colour of this beer’s head. This is a pretty complex beer, especially considering the restrained additions in the boil. Enjoy a style made famous in 1800s Belgium, especially on a warm spring day or a scorching summer afternoon.

This is a stout for those of us who can’t get enough of the phenol notes of Belgian yeast. This particular yeast gives the beer a rich malt and distinctive ethanol character. This won’t taste like Guinness. But it will taste delicious.

This is by no means a clone of the famous Breakfast Stout made by Founder’s Brewing Company. But it it’s a similar beer in spirit. I love coffee stouts and when the original Breakfast Stout finally hilt the store shelves in Toronto, I couldn’t get enough of it. This is my own version of this recipe which has strong notes of coffee and chocolate, with the smooth mouthfeel that only oats can provide.

This smoked porter is best enjoyed in your study, by the fire, perhaps with a good pipe in hand. Or just a good Netflix series. Either way, it’ll set you right!

Ditch the box of chocolates for that special someone. Make this instead! This is a good starter recipe. Play around with the cocoa levels to make this your own amazing stout.

HALO is an amazing brewery in Toronto. I met one of the founders when they were looking for seed funding. Sadly, I was a month too late in pledging my support. I wanted to invest because of this one beer. The brewery has since shared its recipe for the world. I’ve adapted it for one-gallon BIAB brewing here. If you’re ever in Toronto, pay HALO a visit—they’re fellow homebrewers gone pro.

I could tinker with saison recipes without ever touching another style. Saisons offer so much variety and I just love how spicy you can make it while still producing a balanced beer. This one has a classic spice mix that augments the yeast so well.

I got the idea for this recipe from Sam Calagione’s home-brew recipe book. The original is a partial mash extract recipe. I adopted it to my own liking, and for all-grain, one-gallon brewing. Ginger is one of my favourite beer ingredients, and it shines in this recipe. It’s good for your digestion, so this beer must be good for you, right?

I have seen few breweries in Canada brew with these two herbs, but one brewery—Beau’s—does it so well. When I first had one of their bog myrtle gruits, I was enchanted. This was my first attempt at making my own, and I couldn’t be happier with the result. This beer is beautifully herbaceous, sweet, and peppery. It’s one of my favourite recipes. You can order these special ingredients online. I get mine here.

Two of my closest friends celebrated their wedding in summer 2017, and I wanted to toast them with a beer they could call their own. They had recently spent a week in Asheville, North Carolina and raved about the coconut brown ales (and porters) that brew mecca had on offer. So, I thought, why not make them their own version? This is it, and it’s worth the extra effort.

Thanksgiving comes early in Canada (second weekend of October), which means I get a head start on my American friends for this popular beer style. This recipe took me three years to perfect, but I’m finally happy with it. I hope you’ll enjoy it too. I can’t think of a better way to mark the start of Fall than a pint of this tasty beer.

This was a fun experiment. My former colleagues and I wanted to create a beer that would represent each of us in one recipe. So, we chose a grain bill and a Belgian yeast to represent our resident Belgian; hops with mint and lime aromas to represent our resident Cuban and Peruvian, a wit style for the white guys on the team. Designed for easy sipping on a hot patio, it can double as a beer cocktail base. Why not toss in some mint leaves and a dash of white rum?

This style should not be confused with its German cousin. This is not a Hefeweizen. You won’t find notes of cloves or banana. However, you will notice prominent hop flavour. Here I’ve opted for New Zealand hops to give this a bright, citrusy profile perfect for warm weather drinking.

Blanche de Chambly is one of Quebec’s great beers, and one we Canadians take for granted more than we should. It’s readily available on our store shelves, but when it was new to the market, it was one hell of a revelation. Here’s my version, named after the beloved Toronto neighbourhood I call home.

Two of my closest friends celebrated their wedding in summer 2017, and I wanted to toast them with a beer they could call their own. They had recently spent a week in Asheville, North Carolina and raved about the coconut brown ales (and porters) that brew mecca had on offer. So, I thought, why not make them their own version? This is it, and it’s worth the extra effort.

Brown ale is such a broad range that one recipe can’t really do the style justice. It remains, in my view, one of the most underrated styles out there. The term itself isn’t particularly exciting. “Brown Ale”. As the Oxford Companion to Beer points out, that’s not much more useful than the term “red wine.” This is especially true when you consider that before the 1700s, most beers would have been brown—hence why pale ales would eventually become a huge hit.

If you take a second look at the Uncommon Lager recipe, you’ll notice it shares the same grain bill as this recipe. It also shares an identical fermentation profile, having fermented warm (for a lager) at 18ºC for two weeks. Here I’ve simplified the hops to a simple boil addition, and have swapped in a different yeast. The changes are subtle, but noticeable if you have the two beers side-by-side.

This beer gets its name for taking inspiration from California Common, but with a grain bill you would expect to find in a Vienna lager. This was also the first recipe in which I experimented with fermenting a lager on the warmer side, maintaining a fermentation temperature of 18ºC (64ºF). It worked incredibly well. I hope you enjoy this one, and the freedom to make a lager at a warmer temperature!

It can be easy to forget how tasty the Vienna Lager beer style is, and the powerful role the Boston Brewing Company has played in the craft beer movement with its signature interpretation. I went years without drinking Sam Adams’ Boston Lager, and was inspired to brew it after rediscovering such a classic.

If you’re looking to showcase and enjoy a malt-forward beer, this is a user-friendly recipe. The grains really shine in this recipe, giving you the chance to explore the pronounced cereal and biscuit notes of this particular grain bill. With a low ABV, you can have a couple of these in a session and properly explore this under-appreciated style. If you want to have fun with this one, taste the specialty grains and adjust the ratio to your liking. Be sure to keep 85% of the grain bill for the pale malt.

It probably comes as no surprise that the Scots have their own distinct flavour and beer style. Scotland, the land of scotch whiskey, grows a lot of barley. It’s a crop that has been readily available to brewers in the land of lovat tweed, so it comes as no surprise that Scotland has a unique brewing culture. While barley may have been an easy crop to grow in Scotland, hops were a bit more challenging. Hence the sweet malt-forward flavour profile of this classic style.