More?

As I was going through my brewing books in preparation for starting up an American Pale Ale this Sunday, I was struck with the question. Just how many recipes do I have? Well, in the brewery I have 7 different brewing books. Counting quickly, I tallied 735ish recipes. Now some of these recipes are similar if not the same. But they are published in different books, so I counted them as their own recipe. I also included other things like mead, cider, sake and any other home fermentation recipe.

But then I remembered my magazine collection. I had several years of Zymurgy and BYO brimming with recipes. After quickly counting them, I was over 1,200. Now assuming I make 5 gallon batches, that's 6000 gallons. US law allows for a brewer to brew 100 gallons worth of beer per year. So it would take me over 60 years to brew every recipe that I have. Now that's a lot of beer over a very long time.

The funny thing is, I've been creating my own recipes for the last year or so.