Two beginner recipes and the arithmetic behind them. Gravity and bitterness figures are targets, not guarantees — your efficiency, your kettle, and your hop lot all move them. Run your own numbers in a recipe calculator before brew day. Gear links are Amazon searches, marked sponsored.
A first batch of beer is five gallons of sugar water that you keep clean and hold at a steady temperature for two weeks. That is genuinely most of it. The recipe matters less than the sanitation and the fermentation temperature, which is why both recipes below are forgiving styles built for a warm house.
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Extract or all-grain
The only real decision at the start. Both make good beer; they differ in where the sugar comes from.
| Extract | All-grain | |
|---|---|---|
| Sugar source | Malt extract, syrup or powder, already made from grain | Crushed malt you mash yourself |
| Brew day | About 2 hours | About 5 hours |
| Extra kit | A stockpot and a bag for steeping specialty grain | A mash tun and enough kettle for a full boil |
| Variables to get wrong | Few — the gravity is essentially fixed by the tin | Mash temperature, water volume, crush, efficiency |
| Cost per batch | Higher | Lower |
Extract exists because someone else already did the mash. You dissolve it in hot water, boil with hops, cool, and pitch yeast. All-grain means you hold crushed malt in water near 150 °F for an hour so its own enzymes convert starch to sugar, then rinse the grain bed and boil that. All-grain gives you control over the malt bill and drops the ingredient cost; it also gives you three or four more ways to miss your numbers.
Brew two or three extract batches first. Not because all-grain is hard, but because it is much easier to diagnose a fermentation problem when the mash isn’t also a suspect.
Two numbers to measure
Take a gravity reading with a hydrometer twice: once into the fermenter (original gravity) and once when it’s finished (final gravity). Alcohol by volume is roughly the gap times 131:
ABV ≈ (OG − FG) × 131.25
So 1.050 down to 1.012 is (0.050 − 0.012) × 131.25, about 5.0% ABV. Those terms are defined on beer styles, plainly, alongside the BJCP ranges these recipes are aiming at.
Recipe 1 — extract American pale ale
Extract American pale ale
5 gal · target OG 1.050 · target FG 1.012 · about 5.0% ABV · BJCP 18B
Fermentables
- 6.6 lb light liquid malt extract (two standard 3.3 lb tins)
- 0.5 lb crystal malt, 40 °L, steeped in a grain bag
Hops — Cascade, 3 oz total
- 1 oz at 60 minutes
- 1 oz at 15 minutes
- 1 oz at flameout, steeped 10 minutes
Yeast — one packet of a clean American ale strain (Safale US-05 or Wyeast 1056). Ferment at 66–68 °F.
Method. Steep the crystal malt in 2.5 gal of water at 155 °F for 20 minutes, then pull the bag — do not squeeze it. Bring to a boil, kill the heat, stir in the extract until nothing is stuck to the bottom, then return to a boil and start the 60-minute hop clock. Chill as fast as you can, top up to 5 gal with cold water, take your OG reading, and pitch.
On the bitterness. Roughly 35 IBU on a full 5-gallon boil. A 2.5-gallon partial boil is less efficient at extracting bitterness and will land lower — put your actual volumes into a calculator rather than trusting this line.
Cascade and a clean American yeast are the safest pair in homebrewing. If the beer comes out well, you learned your process works. If it doesn’t, the recipe is not the reason.
Recipe 2 — all-grain American amber ale
All-grain American amber ale
5 gal · target OG 1.052–1.055 · target FG 1.012 · about 5.3% ABV
Grain bill — 10.75 lb total
- 9 lb American 2-row pale malt
- 1 lb Munich malt
- 0.75 lb crystal malt, 60 °L
Mash — single infusion, 152 °F for 60 minutes, then sparge to your pre-boil volume.
Hops
- 0.75 oz Centennial at 60 minutes
- 0.5 oz Cascade at 10 minutes
- 0.5 oz Cascade at flameout
Yeast — the same clean American ale strain, 66–68 °F.
Method. 60-minute mash, 60-minute boil, chill, pitch. Leave it alone for two weeks, then check gravity on two consecutive days — when it stops moving, fermentation is done, whatever the airlock is doing.
On the gravity. 1.052 assumes about 72% brewhouse efficiency into 5 gallons. First all-grain batches often come in lower. That is a normal result, not a failure; write down what you actually got and adjust the grain bill next time.
The parts that matter more than the recipe
- Sanitation. Everything that touches the beer after the boil gets sanitized: fermenter, lid, airlock, spoon, hydrometer, your hands. Star San works in 30 seconds and does not need rinsing. This is the single biggest cause of ruined batches.
- Pitch enough yeast. One fresh 11 g dry packet per 5 gal at these gravities. Dry yeast keeps a long time in the fridge and does not need a starter.
- Hold the temperature. Ale yeast at 66–68 °F, and fermentation runs several degrees warmer than the room. In a Florida summer, a fermenter in a tub of water with a frozen bottle in it beats an air-conditioned closet. Hot fermentation is what makes homebrew taste like homebrew.
- Wait. Two weeks in the fermenter, two more in the bottle. Rushing either is the second biggest cause of disappointing beer.
These are ale recipes on purpose. Lager yeast wants 46–56 °F for weeks and then a long cold conditioning — see lager vs ale — which means a dedicated fridge with a temperature controller. Worth doing eventually. Not batch one.
Brew-day gear is on Kits. If you’d rather pour a finished keg than bottle, build a home tap.
Updated 2026-09-02.
Sources and notes
These recipes are conventional beginner formulations, not proprietary ones. Style targets are cited; the ingredient amounts are ordinary homebrew arithmetic and should be checked against your own system in a recipe calculator.
- BJCP 18B American Pale Ale. vital statistics for recipe 1 (OG 1.045–1.060, FG 1.010–1.015, IBU 30–50, ABV 4.5–6.2%), retrieved 2026-09-02.
- BJCP. Yeast and Fermentation. ale fermentation range 55–75 °F, lager 46–56 °F.
- American Homebrewers Association. What’s the Difference Between Ale and Lager?. cold conditioning for lagers.
- BJCP Style Guidelines. 2021 guidelines, landing page.
- Category searches for gear: homebrew hydrometer; no-rinse brewery sanitizer; fermentation bucket with airlock. Grouped on Kits.