Kit And Extract Beer Spreadsheet

[Juzdu]

info

On the KIT worksheet, just inset a row after English Bitter put the Can EBC 90 in Col E and IBU 340 in Col F the values should then calculate. Put 1.7 in Col D.

note the spreadsheet IBU values are different from those Coopers calculates, Coopers calcalates a value then says in fermented beer value is 20-30% lower.

cheers

Ian

Edit Beaten, see what happens when you try and brew and on the internet at the same time. The values are Can values about 18.5 IBU in 23 litres.

Yep perfect, thanks again.

 

[Juzdu]

I just wanted to check my understanding of the boil volume and hop concentration factor. I plan on making the extract version of Dr Smurto's Golden Ale, but only have the equipment to do an 8 litre brew on the stove to steep my grains and add my hops during a boil.

I've switched the HCF to "Yes", and put a boil volume of 8 litres. The spreadsheet suggests I need around 900gm of LME to make a boil gravity of 1.040. I've then changed the hop timings so that I add 30 grams of Amarillo at 60 minutes, 10 grams at 30 mins, and the final 10 grams at 5 minutes, which gets me back to an IBU of around 32.

So, does this mean I steep my 250gm of crystal grain into say 1 litre, then once the steep is complete, top up the pot to 8 litres, start my boil, then add 900gm of one of my LME cans (the recipe has a can of light malt extract and wheat malt extract), and start the hop additions?

Then once my 60 minute boil is complete, cool the wort, and while it's cooling add some just-boiled water to my fermenter, pour in the remaining 2.1kg of malt from the cans and mix it all up.....then pour my cooled 8 litres (or however much it's boiled down to) into the fermenter, then top up to the 21 litres total volume.

Am I using HCF and boil volumes correctly?

 

[ianh]

I just wanted to check my understanding of the boil volume and hop concentration factor. I plan on making the extract version of Dr Smurto's Golden Ale, but only have the equipment to do an 8 litre brew on the stove to steep my grains and add my hops during a boil.

I've switched the HCF to "Yes", and put a boil volume of 8 litres. The spreadsheet suggests I need around 900gm of LME to make a boil gravity of 1.040. I've then changed the hop timings so that I add 30 grams of Amarillo at 60 minutes, 10 grams at 30 mins, and the final 10 grams at 5 minutes, which gets me back to an IBU of around 32.

So, does this mean I steep my 250gm of crystal grain into say 1 litre, then once the steep is complete, top up the pot to 8 litres, start my boil, then add 900gm of one of my LME cans (the recipe has a can of light malt extract and wheat malt extract), and start the hop additions?

Then once my 60 minute boil is complete, cool the wort, and while it's cooling add some just-boiled water to my fermenter, pour in the remaining 2.1kg of malt from the cans and mix it all up.....then pour my cooled 8 litres (or however much it's boiled down to) into the fermenter, then top up to the 21 litres total volume.

Am I using HCF and boil volumes correctly?

Sounds about right. Could use a bit more than one litre for steeping. I never use to bother adding boiled water to the fermenter but used tap water and ice, that way I could have it cooled to 18C ready for fermenting basically straight away.

 

[Juzdu]

Sounds about right. Could use a bit more than one litre for steeping. I never use to bother adding boiled water to the fermenter but used tap water and ice, that way I could have it cooled to 18C ready for fermenting basically straight away.

So rather than trying to rapidly cool the boiled wort in an ice bath you just pour it into the fermenter with cold water already in there? Does sound like an obvious way to quickly cool it down.

I was just going by the "How to Brew" guide from John Palmer that talks about "proteins that need to be thermally shocked into precipitating out of the wort" and that sort of thing....figuring that needed to happen in the pot before transferring to the fermenter. He also talks about all the "hot break material" that will be in the pot and to try and avoid transferring that into the fermenter...not sure how much of it there will be, and whether or not it settles out any more by cooling the pot first.

 

[ianh]

So rather than trying to rapidly cool the boiled wort in an ice bath you just pour it into the fermenter with cold water already in there? Does sound like an obvious way to quickly cool it down.

No I cooled the boiling wort as well. In Winter (I am in Tassie) I just used cold water in the fermenter, in summer I needed a little ice to get the temperature down to 18-20C.

 

[bum]

Hot break isn't really an issue for kit and extract brews, Juzdu. It should basically be removed in the production process.

If you start playing with base malts at some point then you'll need to start looking at ensuring little hot-break makes it into your fermenter.

 

[Juzdu]

No I cooled the boiling wort as well. In Winter (I am in Tassie) I just used cold water in the fermenter, in summer I needed a little ice to get the temperature down to 18-20C.

I understand, thanks Ian.

 

[Juzdu]

Hot break isn't really an issue for kit and extract brews, Juzdu. It should basically be removed in the production process.

If you start playing with base malts at some point then you'll need to start looking at ensuring little hot-break makes it into your fermenter.

Cheers for that, it's a little misleading because JP's How to Brew talks about hot break and ensuring you leave it behind in the pot in Chapter 7-2 of Section 1, which is Brewing with Malt Extract, hence why I was expecting to see it when I try my extract brew.

 

[bum]

I'm not going to say he's wrong (but I can think it if I like) but think about how you probably made your first brews (I know that I did and the vast majority here will have, and many continue to without detrimental effects of hot break in primary) - you tipped a tin of goop and some dry fermentables into the fermenter with 2L of boiling water then topped up with cold water, right? Where is the effort to remove hot break?

By all means, follow the practise if you want to be sure as it will cause you no ill effects to do so but it's not necessary for kit/extract brews.

As a side note, I understand that a number of things are different between the free edition of HTB and the current, printed version. There's a few very debatable things he presents as facts in the online version and I believe he has changed or tempered some of these. I don't know if this issue is one of those or not.

 

[Juzdu]

I'm not going to say he's wrong (but I can think it if I like) but think about how you probably made your first brews (I know that I did and the vast majority here will have, and many continue to without detrimental effects of hot break in primary) - you tipped a tin of goop and some dry fermentables into the fermenter with 2L of boiling water then topped up with cold water, right? Where is the effort to remove hot break?

By all means, follow the practise if you want to be sure as it will cause you no ill effects to do so but it's not necessary for kit/extract brews.

As a side note, I understand that a number of things are different between the free edition of HTB and the current, printed version. There's a few very debatable things he presents as facts in the online version and I believe he has changed or tempered some of these. I don't know if this issue is one of those or not.

Interesting, thanks again. You'd reckon the free online edition would be the one with the most current info given how easy it would be to update. The photos in it do make it look pretty ancient though. Actually I just checked the site again, and your point is very valid, look at this statement: "How to Brew (1st Edition) is free. You are free to enter, read it in its entirety, and print pages for your personal use." So no doubt a fair bit has changed now the book is up to its 3rd edition.

As for my first few kit brews, I just assumed the "hot break" leftovers must have been removed before Coopers reduced the wort into what went into my can.

 

[carniebrew]

I'm not sure if i'm reading/entering this right....does anyone know why the recipedb on this site shows a much lower alcohol content than when I use the K&E spreadsheet? For example, a recipe i've done for a dunkelweizen shows in the db as 4.42%, but the same ingredients in the spreadsheet shows 5%, 5.4% in the bottle (with bulk priming turned off, and using 3.00 volumes of co2).

I wouldn't be worried if we were talking .1 or .2%, but .6% - 1% is gonna make a big difference to how a beer tastes.

 

[carniebrew]

Oh and another question on the spreadsheet, why is it I can only choose up to 2.90 vols of CO2 in the bottle using the little up/down arrows, when the bulk priming calculator suggests that 2.9-3.1 is 'normal' for homebrew, and a weizen can have from 3.6-4.5?

 

[ianh]

Oh and another question on the spreadsheet, why is it I can only choose up to 2.90 vols of CO2 in the bottle using the little up/down arrows, when the bulk priming calculator suggests that 2.9-3.1 is 'normal' for homebrew, and a weizen can have from 3.6-4.5?

Hi carniebrew

When looking at these beer styles I found two different sets of numbers. If you go to the Styles worksheet you will see these, as I don't do these styles I don't know which is correct. Just change the numbers around to get the CO2 range required.

On the other question I suggest the the AHB recipe database calculates for all grain and not extract, thus the 75% efficiency. This what gives the lower OG value.

 

[carniebrew]

Hi carniebrew

When looking at these beer styles I found two different sets of numbers. If you go to the Styles worksheet you will see these, as I don't do these styles I don't know which is correct. Just change the numbers around to get the CO2 range required.

On the other question I suggest the the AHB recipe database calculates for all grain and not extract, thus the 75% efficiency. This what gives the lower OG value.

Ah cheers, I hadn't seen the co2 volumes in the styles sheet, easy enough to tweak now. Can't imagine i'll want anywhere near a 4.5 in my dunkel, I used carb drops in a recent hefe that are supposed to give around 3.0 vols and I reckon that was a touch high.

The ABV thing is also curious in Beersmith...i'm using a dunkel recipe from a guy who put it together in beersmith...it calls for 2.7kg of LME, .5kg of DME, and nearly 1kg of specialty grains. He says it should be 5.5% abv, and if I put it together as an extract recipe in Beersmith 2 that's what I get. But if I do the same recipe in the K&E spreadsheet (19 litres) I get a whopping 7% abv after bottling. Which just makes me think i'm doing something wrong with your spreadsheet?
EDIT: I just put the same recipe into BrewMate v1.26 and it comes out at 6.5%, much closer to your spreadsheet...so perhaps i'm doing something wrong in Beersmith. Although that doesn't explain how the owner of this recipe got 5.5% in Beersmith too.

 

[awall]

Thanks for the spreadsheet. It's an amazing resource and I've used it for my last few beers! I just have a question about the IBU calculations when doing a partial boil. If I set my recipe to get 30 IBU's then change the HCF to yes, for a 10 litre boil it only reduces the IBU's by a few points. If I'm topping up 10L of water to get to 20L wouldn't the IBU's drop to ~15? My understanding may be way off, but this seems to make sense? 50% wort and 50% water so ~50% of the bitterness? Am I just doing it wrong?

Edit... This is without a kit. Just extract and steeping grains.

 

[carniebrew]

Thanks for the spreadsheet. It's an amazing resource and I've used it for my last few beers! I just have a question about the IBU calculations when doing a partial boil. If I set my recipe to get 30 IBU's then change the HCF to yes, for a 10 litre boil it only reduces the IBU's by a few points. If I'm topping up 10L of water to get to 20L wouldn't the IBU's drop to ~15? My understanding may be way off, but this seems to make sense? 50% wort and 50% water so ~50% of the bitterness? Am I just doing it wrong?

Edit... This is without a kit. Just extract and steeping grains.

I believe the IBU's are calculated on your "Ferment Volume" from cell C3, not from your boil volume. The reason the IBU changes only slightly when using HCF is because of the slight utilisation change you get out of boiling your hops in anything less than your ferment volume. Technically, if you have a 20 litre recipe you expect to get 30 IBU's from, then turning HCF on and entering your boil volume of 10 litres means that after your boil, that wort will have an IBU of 60.....once you add the extra 10 litres of water into the FV it dilutes it to 30. Technically! It's just that to get to that 60 IBU's in your boil, you need to adjust your hop additions for the amount you're boiling.

I've gone back and read most of this entire topic, and it seems Ianh himself doesn't turn on HCF for his 10 litre boils, as the difference is quite marginal to that of a full boil. I'm doing 8 litre boils myself at the moment and am going to stop turning HCF on from now on as I think my beers are marginally over-hopped.

EDIT: The bit i'm still a little vague on is boil volume vs boil gravity. I've researched this quite a bit, but can't find any definitive answer to the question....is it the gravity of the boil that affects the utilisation of the hops, or the volume of the boil? Or both? I use the "late extract addition" method in my partial boils, i.e. in my 8 litre boil I only add enough LME/DME to bring my boil gravity up to around 1040 after steeping my specialty grains. So i'm really curious if boiling say 40 grams of 10% AA hops in 8 litres of ~1040 gravity wort would give me the same IBU's as putting the same amount of hops in a 22 litre full boil of ~1040 gravity wort.

 

[awall]

I'm still slightly confused. Does the spreadsheet take into account the 10L of top up water or should I aim for 60IBU's in the spreadsheet and then allow the top up water to take it down to 30IBU's? I've just found that my beers have been quite under-hopped if anything.

 

[carniebrew]

I'm still slightly confused. Does the spreadsheet take into account the 10L of top up water or should I aim for 60IBU's in the spreadsheet and then allow the top up water to take it down to 30IBU's? I've just found that my beers have been quite under-hopped if anything.

No, don't aim for 60 IBU's, it takes into account your 10l of top up water. If you use HCF, just enter your boil volume and adjust your hop additions accordingly to achieve the actual IBU's you want in your final beer.

Are you adding all your extract at the start of your boil? That would cause significant under-hopping.

 

[awall]

Ah thanks for clearing that up. I've read about gravity and hop utilisation so I've been adding enough extract to get the gravity to 1.030-1.040, then adding the rest with just under 10 mins to go in the boil. I was concerned with the IBU calculations as I want to try an IPA next brew.
Cheers! :beer:

 

[carniebrew]

I'm concerned about your beers being under-hopped with a 10 litre boil though (you did say you were doing 10 litres boils yeah?). As I mentioned, Ian was saying somewhere back in the middle of this thread that since he moved to 10 litre boils he doesn't bother with HCF. That says to me if you've been using HCF with a 10 litre boil your beers should be over-hopped, not under. Maybe you just love your hops?

I almost made a mistake with the spreadsheet the other day....I chose the hops for my Dunkel (Hallertauer Mittelfrh) from the drop down list, but didn't check the AA% that appeared (4.3%) against the actual AA% of my hops. According to my hop packet the 2011 Mittelfrh i'd bought were was 6.4%, which makes a bit of difference to the IBU numbers. Thankfully I caught it as I was cutting open the pack, so nicked back to the spreadsheet to adjust, and ended up moving 5 grams from 60 minutes to the 10 and flameout additions. That's the sort of thing that would have a big impact on a high AA bittering hop such as Warrior i'd imagine.