Ingredient Ratios and Recipe Scale

[Groo]

I checked out some brewing books from the library and downloaded the Beersmith Trial program but I can't get any of the gravity readings to match up. The most confusing one is Brewing Classic Styles because they use 7 gallon boils .

Can I just formulate the recipes in Beersmith based on the ratio of each ingredient? What is more important, matching the percentages and getting a slightly off OG or matching the OG and getting a slightly off ingredient ratio?

I'm guessing this is how you scaled down commercial recipes as well.

 

[Yooper]

Your effficiency may be set differently than the recipes in the books. I don't recall the assumed efficiency in BCS, but I think it's around 70% or so. Try setting the efficiency to the one in the recipe, and see if that helps.

You're correct in assuming that using % is the way to do it.

For example, a recipe may be:

90% pale malt
5% crystal
5% Vienna

In my system, using 10 pounds of pale malt, and 9 ounces each of the crystal and Vienna, I'd get an OG of 1.060. If that's too high, I would decrease the amount of each grain, keeping the same ratio. If it's too low, I'd increase the grain, again keeping the same ratio. So, whatever our systems, we can still use the 90/5/5% even though the exact weight amounts might change.