Kristoffer84
Active Member
Its a question on brewhourse efficiency. So in Germany we call it Sudhausausbeute. Its calculated completly different than brewhourse efficiency but that doesnt matter for my issue. i posted that thread in another forum too, so i get most answeres and opinions. Would be intressting to see your view on that.
So going with german numbers a proffesionel brewing company goes with 70-75% Sudhausausbeute (SHA). A hobbybrewer will get arround 60-65 with "normal" fly sparge and a BIAB brewer get 50-55% SHA. That said shows for me a big issue when converting a recipe of a big company to homebrew levels. I listened to John Keeling on a podcast when he said: "That beer got 80% base 10% Crystal 10% Amber.. etc.." When he says that, he considers the SHA of his company which is 70%-75%.
So a homebrewer normaly just type in that numbers into an editor and according to HIS OWN efficiency. That is a mistake in my opinion.
Let me explain it.
Lets say you have a Stout recipe. The company which makes it uses at their high efficiency of 70-75% and the recipe lets say (at 20 Liters) is 78% Base, 10% Brown and 5% Black Malt. That would make for example: 3610g Base, 420g Brown and 210g black malt.
Thats how the Recipe looks in the brewery but nobody knows since people only give out the % values... so if i then take my own efficiency lets say i am a BIAB homebrewer and take 50% the recipe would look like that: 5410g basemalt, 640g Brown Malt and 320g black malt. So over 100g of black malt and 100g brown malt more than in the original recipe of the brewery. So a complete different beers since even at very low efficiency the black malt will not care a bit and will pumb 320g of roastiness into your brew. And 100g difference is much... Do you get my point?
The level of brewhouse efficeny is taken to see how much sugar (gravitiy) you get out of a certain amount of malt BUT that calculation system NEVER see the aromes you get form speciality malt. I did some experiment where i did exactly that. i put in an amount of black malt into a cup of water and calculated it up to lower SHA. I didnt include base or other malt. at the end the aromes of the malt tea (as we call that here) was sooooo much harsher and undrinkable when calculated on 50% than on 75%... So since then if i clone a recipe of a big company i allways see it as given that their % numbers are counted on 70-75 SHA so i trick as i would have lets say 70% SHA and put the recipe in. Then i remember the gramm numbers of each special malt (at 70%SHA) and then just reduce the SHA to my known level (50% for example) and put in the speciality malt gramm numbers of the 70% SHA. All the malt i need more for lower efficency i adjust with base malt.
Am i right here with that thinking or what you say guys ?
So going with german numbers a proffesionel brewing company goes with 70-75% Sudhausausbeute (SHA). A hobbybrewer will get arround 60-65 with "normal" fly sparge and a BIAB brewer get 50-55% SHA. That said shows for me a big issue when converting a recipe of a big company to homebrew levels. I listened to John Keeling on a podcast when he said: "That beer got 80% base 10% Crystal 10% Amber.. etc.." When he says that, he considers the SHA of his company which is 70%-75%.
So a homebrewer normaly just type in that numbers into an editor and according to HIS OWN efficiency. That is a mistake in my opinion.
Let me explain it.
Lets say you have a Stout recipe. The company which makes it uses at their high efficiency of 70-75% and the recipe lets say (at 20 Liters) is 78% Base, 10% Brown and 5% Black Malt. That would make for example: 3610g Base, 420g Brown and 210g black malt.
Thats how the Recipe looks in the brewery but nobody knows since people only give out the % values... so if i then take my own efficiency lets say i am a BIAB homebrewer and take 50% the recipe would look like that: 5410g basemalt, 640g Brown Malt and 320g black malt. So over 100g of black malt and 100g brown malt more than in the original recipe of the brewery. So a complete different beers since even at very low efficiency the black malt will not care a bit and will pumb 320g of roastiness into your brew. And 100g difference is much... Do you get my point?
The level of brewhouse efficeny is taken to see how much sugar (gravitiy) you get out of a certain amount of malt BUT that calculation system NEVER see the aromes you get form speciality malt. I did some experiment where i did exactly that. i put in an amount of black malt into a cup of water and calculated it up to lower SHA. I didnt include base or other malt. at the end the aromes of the malt tea (as we call that here) was sooooo much harsher and undrinkable when calculated on 50% than on 75%... So since then if i clone a recipe of a big company i allways see it as given that their % numbers are counted on 70-75 SHA so i trick as i would have lets say 70% SHA and put the recipe in. Then i remember the gramm numbers of each special malt (at 70%SHA) and then just reduce the SHA to my known level (50% for example) and put in the speciality malt gramm numbers of the 70% SHA. All the malt i need more for lower efficency i adjust with base malt.
Am i right here with that thinking or what you say guys ?