A different way to scale a printed recipe that I haven't heard of

[linusstick]

On these forums I learned if I wanted to scale a recipe from a book or magazine (5 gallon batch) I should create an equipment profile and put the recipe's efficiency in there. Then once I enter the whole recipe, I choose the "scale recipe" option and choose my equipment profile (1.5 gallon) that has my own efficiency and losses dialed in. In doing this my beers were turning out ok but thats it

I asked this question on the Beersmith forum (the software I use) and someone said you can't determine the losses on the magazine recipes so the best way to do it would be to start the recipe in my equipment profile, enter it as is, then scale the OG and IBUs down to match what's in the book. After asking a million questions here, I'm wondering if this not a good way to do it as this I never heard of this. Any thoughts?

 

[pricelessbrewing]

You will always need to scale your recipes twice.

Once for your equipment (volumes, losses, etc), then again for the efficiency

 

[Dcpcooks]

I've taken the time to measure out my equipment profile and I suggest that everyone does the same. This includes efficiency as it's really the sum. You must use your efficiency to hit a target. I don't care what anyone's efficiency is, I only care about my efficiency.

Once you have that set up it's just a matter of adjusting your ingredients to match the desired percentages of the recipe. So I don't really use the scale up or down function until after I have built the recipe in my system to my number. I use beersmith. And I use the scale up down function to adjust recipes I've entered into my system with my set up. In other words I use it if I want to double a batch size on a recipe I've plugged in to my system previously.

I take a grain bill and enter it by percentages.

87% pilsner malt
13% white wheat.

60 min hop at 40 ibu centennial at 15.5 alpha acid
10 min hop at 15 ibu citra 8 alpha acids.


So I adjust the alpha acids to match the hops I have. Then adjust the amount to hit the ibu target. I adjust the grain weights to hit my target OG while keeping the percentages constant.

After that is done it's easy to scale up or down and keep everything constant.

I think this would be even more critical with smaller batch sizes as a small miss in 5 gallons is different than a miss in 1.5 gallons. Your batch is small so you have less room for error.

What matters here is you hit the recommended OG and ibu targets to match a recipe. Efficiency is relative to your system.

 

[stpug]

Perhaps the magazine recipes are also only "ok" and it's not your scaling method
Seriously.

When I aim to mold a recipe to fit my brewing scenario, I prefer to work off of percentages for grains an IBUs for hops, with the goals of hitting the OG and IBU levels as indicated for the recipe. That said, I cannot see how the two methods you mention above would produce different recipe results. I feel as though any differences in the final recipes from the two methods would be so close to each other that they would be nearly indistinguishable in the final product. Have you tried both methods on a magazine recipe to see what the outcomes (recipes) were and determine their differences? How different were the resulting recipes?

 

[kevin58]

I just manually add a recipe from a magazine/book/forum etc. then adjust in Beersmith to match the OG, IBU etc in the software.

 

[linusstick]

I just manually add a recipe from a magazine/book/forum etc. then adjust in Beersmith to match the OG, IBU etc in the software.

So would you recommend entering the recipe as is using my equipment profile then just scaling the hops and malts with the sliders to hit the targets? I still am a little fuzzy on what to do with the flameout and dry hops in this scenario. That's why I liked entering the five gallon batch then scaling to my equipment. It scaled everything.

 

[linusstick]

You will always need to scale your recipes twice.

Once for your equipment (volumes, losses, etc), then again for the efficiency

I don't get this. If I set my equipment profile for my volumes, losses AND my efficiency why would I have to scale twice? If I enter the recipe using the volumes and efficiency that the book uses, then scale to my equipment profile that has my efficiency in it then where does the second scaling have to happen (or how?)

 

[Qhrumphf]

When scaling, it's easiest to deal with grain strictly in percentage.

X% base malt
Y% specialty malt 1
Z% specialty malt 2

Maintain that percentage, adjusted for whatever you need for your system's efficiency and losses to hit the gravity and volume you need.

For hops, calculate late hops first, as a weight per volume amount (oz hops per gallon wort, pounds per barrel, etc). If you know the boiloff rate/post-boil volume (pre-loss, and not necessarily fermenter) volume, go by that. Otherwise work by preboil volume or finished batch size. Even if the AAs or hop utilization are different, keep that weight to volume ratio. Definitely input the alphas, but don't adjust for them yet.

Then adjust your bittering hops to attain the IBUs you need. This is where you account for changes of AA or hop utilization by increasing/reducing as needed to hit your IBUs.

This, of course, requires you to know your system. Careful notes over multiple brews of varied characters makes that part pretty straightforward.

 

[linusstick]

When scaling, it's easiest to deal with grain strictly in percentage.

X% base malt
Y% specialty malt 1
Z% specialty malt 2

Maintain that percentage, adjusted for whatever you need for your system's efficiency and losses to hit the gravity and volume you need.

For hops, calculate late hops first, as a weight per volume amount (oz hops per gallon wort, pounds per barrel, etc). If you know the boiloff rate/post-boil volume (pre-loss, and not necessarily fermenter) volume, go by that. Otherwise work by preboil volume or finished batch size. Even if the AAs or hop utilization are different, keep that weight to volume ratio. Definitely input the alphas, but don't adjust for them yet.

Then adjust your bittering hops to attain the IBUs you need. This is where you account for changes of AA or hop utilization by increasing/reducing as needed to hit your IBUs.

This, of course, requires you to know your system. Careful notes over multiple brews of varied characters makes that part pretty straightforward.

Here is part of my confusion. I thought Beersmith would adjust the grains when you use the sliders to reach OG. I also thought it would keep the same ratios. I thought the X,Y,Z% would stay the same as I adjusted to OG slider. Is that not right? I get confused when I ask things like this because I don't know if a) people answering are just telling me how to manually calculate things and not taking into account that I'm using Beersmith or b) I am overestimating the calculations Beersmith does and scaling a recipe still needs a lot of manual calculations done outside of the software thus making it not very useful.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Here is part of my confusion. I thought Beersmith would adjust the grains when you use the sliders to reach OG. I also thought it would keep the same ratios. I thought the X,Y,Z% would stay the same as I adjusted to OG slider. Is that not right? I get confused when I ask things like this because I don't know if a) people answering are just telling me how to manually calculate things and not taking into account that I'm using Beersmith or b) I am overestimating the calculations Beersmith does and scaling a recipe still needs a lot of manual calculations done outside of the software thus making it not very useful.

For scaling strictly grains, the slider will work. Input the recipe for your system, and slide away. But the rest of your parameters need to be right.

Hops are a little trickier.

The problem is that things don't always scale. But switching between 5 and 10 gals on a similar system, it's probably close to linear.

 

[brewbama]

I use beersmith: http://beersmith.com/blog/2015/10/0...e-in-beersmith-brewing-other-peoples-recipes/

On that page it says:

"To scale a recipe, simply open the recipe and select the Scale Recipe button which is on the large ribbon for BeerSmith desktop or near the bottom for BeerSmith mobile. This will show the scale recipe dialog.

Next select the equipment profile you want to scale to by clicking on the “Equipment” selector – this will bring up your list of equipment profiles.

Finally you have the option (using the checkbox near the bottom) to maintain the OG, Color and bitterness of the original recipe. In most cases you will want to do this. If you uncheck this box, the program will do a simple scaling based on batch volume of all the ingredients. However this may not maintain the same characteristics as each equipment profile has different hop utilization and other characteristics.

Press the OK button and all of the ingredients as well as mash profiles, carbonation and other features will be adjusted to match the new equipment

The recipe is now ready to brew using the new equipment profile!"

 

[linusstick]

I use beersmith: http://beersmith.com/blog/2015/10/0...e-in-beersmith-brewing-other-peoples-recipes/

On that page it says:

"To scale a recipe, simply open the recipe and select the Scale Recipe button which is on the large ribbon for BeerSmith desktop or near the bottom for BeerSmith mobile. This will show the scale recipe dialog.

Next select the equipment profile you want to scale to by clicking on the “Equipment” selector – this will bring up your list of equipment profiles.

Finally you have the option (using the checkbox near the bottom) to maintain the OG, Color and bitterness of the original recipe. In most cases you will want to do this. If you uncheck this box, the program will do a simple scaling based on batch volume of all the ingredients. However this may not maintain the same characteristics as each equipment profile has different hop utilization and other characteristics.

Press the OK button and all of the ingredients as well as mash profiles, carbonation and other features will be adjusted to match the new equipment

The recipe is now ready to brew using the new equipment profile!"

See THIS is what I was expecting. When I scale a recipe using my equipment profile, it will scale all things to make the recipe correct. Hops, grains, water etc. Whenever I ask this question, though, I get tons of answers saying things like above. Things like "the hops don't scale" or you have to scale twice. Once for equipment and once for efficiency. Almost everyone says there are manual calculations you have to do when scaling a recipe, then I must ask why use something like Beersmith? I've used it religiously since i began but it seems like the things I thought the program did, people are telling me it doesn't

 

[Qhrumphf]

However this may not maintain the same characteristics as each equipment profile has different hop utilization and other characteristics.

This is the kicker part where all your caveats are coming from. BeerSmith is a number cruncher. It can be done by hand as well, almost as easy. The only point of BeerSmith is to do the math you don't want to do by hand.

BeerSmith does a lot of things, but it doesn't do them all well. Hell it does few of them well, apart from the most basic number crunching.

 

[linusstick]

This is the kicker part where all your caveats are coming from. BeerSmith is a number cruncher. It can be done by hand as well, almost as easy. The only point of BeerSmith is to do the math you don't want to do by hand.

BeerSmith does a lot of things, but it doesn't do them all well. Hell it does few of them well, apart from the most basic number crunching.

I wonder if this is why after 10-15 batches I can't seem to get any hop flavor out of my beers. I've done 2 IPAs that turned out sweet messes and drain pours with not a hint of hop flavor. I'm thinking if scaling the hops is not working right on such small batches

 

[Qhrumphf]

If you're even ballpark reasonable for an IPA recipe and getting zero hop, it's probably procedural (oxidation typical culprit) and not a scaling issue. If the original recipe is solid, minor scaling errors aren't going to make bad beer, per se, just different beer.

 

[pricelessbrewing]

See THIS is what I was expecting. When I scale a recipe using my equipment profile, it will scale all things to make the recipe correct. Hops, grains, water etc. Whenever I ask this question, though, I get tons of answers saying things like above. Things like "the hops don't scale" or you have to scale twice. Once for equipment and once for efficiency. Almost everyone says there are manual calculations you have to do when scaling a recipe, then I must ask why use something like Beersmith? I've used it religiously since i began but it seems like the things I thought the program did, people are telling me it doesn't

Because some people like keeping things simple, some people don't know any better, and some people would rather do things correctly even if it is a bit more work.

I'm in the latter camp.

Any recipe will ALWAYS need to be scaled to your equipment and efficiencies, always. Even if it's at the same batch size. Even if it's your friends recipe and he has the same equipment, your process may be slightly different and have a different efficiency.

After you scale the ingredients by the above, which is a near linear formula, the IBUs will be slightly different since it's very much non-linear. So you need to adjust bittering additions to hit the intended target.


Lastly you can run into one more conundrum, how do you scale grains? There's two main camps

1) Only scale base malts. Specialty malts are like spices, and as such you keep them at the same lb / gallon ratio for the same amount of wort.

2) Scale all ingredients equally. This is what most brewers do, as it's what was published awhile ago in many of the brewing books. I don't like this approach though, since you end up cutting the flavor contributions of the specialty malts some.

Then you also need to account for the changes in SRM, if you care (I don't).

This is why there are so many different ways to scale recipes, and why different software can do different things. Most people don't do all that though, but if you want to reproduce a recipe as it's intended, you have to do the work. Otherwise it's not really the same recipe, it's ever so slightly different.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Because some people like keeping things simple, some people don't know any better, and some people would rather do things correctly even if it is a bit more work.

I'm in the latter camp.

Any recipe will ALWAYS need to be scaled to your equipment and efficiencies, always. Even if it's at the same batch size. Even if it's your friends recipe and he has the same equipment, your process may be slightly different and have a different efficiency.

After you scale the ingredients by the above, which is a near linear formula, the IBUs will be slightly different since it's very much non-linear. So you need to adjust bittering additions to hit the intended target.


Lastly you can run into one more conundrum, how do you scale grains? There's two main camps

1) Only scale base malts. Specialty malts are like spices, and as such you keep them at the same lb / gallon ratio for the same amount of wort.

2) Scale all ingredients equally. This is what most brewers do, as it's what was published awhile ago in many of the brewing books. I don't like this approach though, since you end up cutting the flavor contributions of the specialty malts some.

Then you also need to account for the changes in SRM, if you care (I don't).

This is why there are so many different ways to scale recipes, and why different software can do different things. Most people don't do all that though, but if you want to reproduce a recipe as it's intended, you have to do the work. Otherwise it's not really the same recipe, it's ever so slightly different.

Ahhh this is a good point. I never brew other folks recipes, so my thinking was between scaling batch sizes with similar enough efficiencies that it didn't occur to me. Where the hop utilization (and timing) very much does change.

Another factor to scaling not discussed is that with an increase in batch size comes a decrease in yeast character (due to increased pressure on the yeast). Probably not noticeable scaling 5 gals to 10 gals. But sure noticeable scaling from homebrew and commercial scale. Applies if you're trying to clone a commercial beer- you'll want to ferment a bit cooler than the commercial version.