# Beer Colour Calcs



## Trent (19/2/05)

Hey guys
Just been looking through the archives for a way to determine my beer colour (I have an apple, so cant get beersmith or promash or anything like that), and I found a calc from Jayse that he wrote in April last year thaat said 
((grain wieght (kg) x grain colour (ebc))/volume (L) multiplied by 10
His example was 5kg of pilsner malt in 20L 
((5x2.9)/20) x 10 = 7.25 EBC
That works out quite well for me, but when I got to my half kilo of choc malt addition at 600ebc, i ended up with around 165ebc for my beer, which it clearly isnt (I dont think). This post is in NO WAY aimed at denouncing Jayse's formula, cause god knows that guy hands out so much good information to anyone that wants it, I just want to know if I have managed to stuff up my calcs somehow, or if there is a certain other calc for dark malts. My grain bill was 4.5kg pale. 600g caramalt and 500g choc 600ebc. I guess colour isnt really that important, , but I have so much fun trying to calculate all my targets and points, that colour may aswell be included.
Any help would be appreciated.
Cheers and beers
Trent


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## sluggerdog (19/2/05)

beertools.com has a free membership part where you can test this kind of thing. Probably not the best thing but it works for me (I have the upgrade version though)


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## Trent (19/2/05)

Thanks sluggerdog, I'll check it out
T


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## Guest Lurker (19/2/05)

I think colour calculation is a complicated business because of the many factors involved, and different people have worked out different factors to incorporate in the formula to correct the value predicted just from the malt colours to the value you actually get. That factor gets more important as the beer gets darker.

That formula by Jayse doesnt seem to be right in this case as you say.

Promash using Morey formula says 4.5 kg of pale at 7ebc plus 0.5 kg choc at 600 ebc plus 0.6 kg caramalt at 56 ebc in 20 l = 58ebc.


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## dicko (20/2/05)

Colour is an interesting point.
I have been looking at the colour swatches that are on the Promash package and I have been comparing beers produced with the supposed or predicted colour on the recipe and ingredients page.
In most cases the colour of the beer IMO is nothing like the sample swatch although the it falls within the style guidelines range.
There is a variety of adjustments to change the colour by the influence of different colour hues, but each result seems to me more like a "cartoon" example than the real thing.
I know this digresses from Trent's original enquiry and I have not applied Jayse's formula to any of my brews but I wonder has anyone been able to adjust Promash colours to resemble a closer colour?

Cheers


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## Trent (20/2/05)

Looks like colour is a difficult one to pin down, from the sounds of things, so I will give up trying to work it out with a calculator! I tried to punch in my beer on beertools calculator, and it gave me about 60ebc, which is very close to guest lurkers call of 58ebc, so I think that I will just use that to try and work out my colour from now on. While I have ya's though, i will ask this question - when working out my target OG and stuff, I can hit my preboil OK, but if I were to put 21L into the fermenter, should I work out my efficiency of 21L or add on the 4L left in the bottom of the boil kettle, and work it out on 25L? Its a difference of about 13% efficiency (62% vs 75%), so I am hoping its the latter.
Cheers 
Trent


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## Guest Lurker (20/2/05)

Trent

Did a bit more reading in Ray Daniels and in teh Promash help manual, and you can manually calculate estimated colour as well as any software can, its just not a straightforward calc and not very accurate.

You start by working out the contribution of each grain using a formula similar to Jayses one, which works out the number of Malt Colour Units in the beer. 

The next bit is to work out what the actual colour would be by converting the malt colour units to the actual colour of the beer.

The only way to do this, is actually brew a range of beers, measure the resultant colour in a lab, and compare that against that predicted from malt colour units. Then you plot up all the results top see how malt colour units relate to the measured lab colour.

For lighter beers, the malt colour units in SRM is pretty much the same as the colour of the beer. For darker beers, the actual colour of the beer can be a third to a half of the predicted value.

So different people have used the plotted points to generate a relationship between MCU and actual beer colour. Depending on which colour formula you use, the estimate will be a bit different. On top of that, you can see from the scatter of points that different brewing systems and techniques can produce significantly different colour beers from the same malts.

So, anyway, there are formulas around for MCU calculation (in US units, would need to convert) and there are formulas around to then translate to actual colour (in SRM, still need to convert that to EBC, search for Morey, Mosher or Daniels). So you could set it up, can send you some formulas if you want, but it is all a bit complicated, and doesnt tell you that much in the end!

Efficiency can be measured either way you describe, but most people quoting figures for their systems use the second one, takes account of the total volume including losses, and on that basis 75% is a pretty good number.


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## Doc (20/2/05)

Trent said:


> Just been looking through the archives for a way to determine my beer colour (I have an apple, so cant get beersmith or promash or anything like that), ...



Hope might be on the way. Check our Jeffrey Donvans post a third the way down the page here

Jeffery Donovan is the author of Promash.

Beers,
Doc


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## Trent (22/2/05)

thanks for all the info guys
I think that I will wait till the prosmash software comes out for mac, till then I will get me hands on daniels book, I have been meaning to do it for a while (though I dunno if I will be able to go into that much depth for my calcs). 
All the best
Trent


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## Gough (22/2/05)

G'day Trent,

Hope life's good in sunny Forster. I can copy some bits from Daniels for you if you are having trouble getting it. Well worth it. Give me a shout if you are keen.

Shawn.


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## Jovial_Monk (23/2/05)

Get the Daniels book! ASAP!

Not for color calcs but for the info it ca give you on many many beerstyles.

I decided 2-3 years ago not to worry about color as we can't measure it! Using malt color might be OK, but what if we do a triple decoction or boil or wort for 5 hours, e.g. when brewing a dopplebock or other big beer??

Jovial Monk


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## rob7 (23/2/05)

Hi Trent,

I've found this site:

http://hbd.org/recipator/
(the 'spreadsheet' link)

to be a good promash-type recipe calcuator, it gives you the colour approximation, which is all anything can give you, by the sounds of it.

might be worth a look

cheers,
rob


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## jayse (23/2/05)

Hi Brewers,
Going back to the first equation trent mentioned the number you get from that is i believe in MCU 'malt colour unit'.
To quote daniels 'they do not correlate to any known system of color measurement'..except he does indeed go on to give some correlation between MCU and SRM in chart form.
His calcs are for pounds*srm/gallons. But the correlation for metric equation MCU to EBC seems to give the same result.

This stuff you either want to know it or you don't, most just choose to brew beer like me and leave all this to the computer. When designing a beer for me colour is ussually the last thing and ussually doesn't need adjusting because the sum of the grist for a given style of beer gives you the right colour for that beer.... :blink: :blink: funny how that works  

Happy Brewing 
Jayse


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