Use beer recipe software to formulate your own recipes

Once you move on from brewing with beer kits to brewing with malt extract, I'd highly recommend downloading one of the brewing software apps out there. The one I use is Beersmith, although there are a few others out there.

With Beersmith, you can easily tweak a recipe to make the beer you're after. The program looks a bit daunting to the absolute beginner, but it soon starts to makes sense and you'll quickly see how it makes your brewing experience so much easier.

I usually start with a basic recipe for the style I'm looking to brew. I then create a new recipe, selecting the style from the list. I then start adding the ingredients as per the recipe.  Beersmith will calculate everything for you, IBUs, colour, Original Gravity (OG) and final gravity (FG), expected alcohol content. If you like your beer a bit more bitter, simply increase the hops of your choice and see how it changes the bitterness rating. See how changing the type of crushed grains will affect the colour. It's amazing how useful this software is.

One of the best features is that once you've finalised your recipe, it creates a brewsheet for you to follow on brew day. It even calculates how much sugar to add to achieve your preferred level of carbonation for bottling day.