Triple Freak wrote:Most of the recipes in Cat's Meow aren't worth a crap. A great majority of them were never even brewed, and besides that, they're hopelessly out of date.
You might be better off using the recipator (brewing recipe calculator) from the Brewery at hbd.org. Their recipe database is the one that replaced the Cat's Meow. It, too, has the problem of many unbrewed recipes as many users post the recipes they design in the calculator directly to the database as a means of saving them. The best use of this data base (and Cat's Meow) is to get an idea of what others are using for ingredients in a particular style of beer. This may give you ideas of what to experiment with. When I first started, I brewed a few of those recipes with mixed results. Even posted a few of my own. Now, I seldom even look there.
On the other hand, the recipe calculator there is excellent! If you don't want to shell out the bucks for ProMash (which is what I use now), try this one for free. You have to use it online (no download version available) but it is good basic brewing software. If you don't have brewing software at all, you should probably give it a try.
Wayne
