Okay, I get asked a version of this question all the time: "How do you come up with a beer? How do you get a recipe for a beer? Where did you get the recipe for this beer? Where did you find the inspiration for this beer? How do you come up with this shit?"

Well here is the skinny. There is no one way I come up with a beer. There are many ways and none of them are all that technical. For some beers, I want to make a certain style of beer. For that I start with, you guessed it, a bunch of beer. I sit down with a bunch of examples of that style of beer and drink them. First I drink then I taste. I decide what I like and what I don't like about each one. Really dig in and get inspiration. It's really all about feeling.

 Other times I am not looking to make a beer of a certain style but want to use a certain ingredient. Could be hops, could be a particular malt, could be a spice or some odd ingredient. In those cases drinking other examples isn't an option, so I just drink what ever I have and think about what I want the beer to be.  What is the perfect vehicle for this ingredient? How can I make it shine? How can I incorporate it into the beer that makes it enjoyable yet exciting?

 Still other times I am just looking to make a damn fine beer. Something I want to drink over and over again. Might not fit into a category in the wide array of beer styles. So once again I drink some beer and think it over. For this I need a lot of beer. Not just large amounts, but large variety. Gets the juices flowing. Get into a meditative beer state. I just want to let the mind free flow into what I really want to have in the glass on the next round. The fact is I get inspiration all over the place. Sometimes I wake up from a dream in the middle of the night with an idea. After a night of drinking usually.

 The thing is you just have to put your mind in a space to let the good ideas, recipes, come out. For me that usually involves beer. Well, I hope you all go out and get inspired, to brew, to drink, to do whatever. Cheers!