Recipes Expressed As Percentages

[Steve@PMF82]

Does no one take my point, or am i just great at killing a thread??

Its raining and i have nothing better to do , so i was fiddling around in BS.

I might see your point? i have probably just confused myself further.

Thinking about it again as long as you have the OG you should be able to adapt the recipe to your system

Playing around with efficiency and batch size 60 to 80% the spec grains do change considerably, but i would have thought that it would all be relative
to your extract potential / mash efficiency, if you have poor extraction % are you not going to need more grain anyway?

haha i dont think i made sense...

 

[pk.sax]

The way I see it, as long as the conversion is complete - do an iodine test - the efficiency is purely an extraction figure, i.e., how much of the sugar remains trapped in the grain and system.

Given that assumtion, the spec malts should be scaled just the same as base malts?! Am I right there?

 

[np1962]

Sim,
I do see your point and to an extent it does work the way you are saying but perhaps not to the extremes you have suggested.
I personnally make several assumptions when I see a recipe on a homebrew forum. Two of which are that a standard batch is about 23L into the fermenter and the other is average efficiency = 75%.
As I say, these are MY ASSUMPTIONS.
There are several other assumptions I make but I won't ellaborate in fear of upsetting the_new_darren. :icon_cheers:

Nige

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Brad, not knocking percentage recipes but if you look closer you'll see that in the example I posted (which is what you often see on the forum) there's no indication of batch size or how much water you need. I could use the ingredients in the first photo in a 60L brew and it would still conform to the recipe, or use 100k of grist in a 30L brew and it would still conform.

If using software, I far prefer the "23L" style and actual ingredient quantities, where it's dead easy to scale up or down once you have it entered in BM or BS or whatever you are using. Also easier for the manual guys with a calculator or a quill pen

the whole point of posting recipes with % numbers instead of absolute numbers - is exactly what you are pointing to as a fault.

Using percentages the recipe is entirely independent of the particular brewers batch size or system efficiency, thus the exact same recipe is just as valid and requires no tweaking to be used on my system as yours. No need to include the information that of course this recipe is for MY system, where I am brewing a 25L batch, oh and that means 25L post boil volume which by the way i measure before not after I cool, and of course you'll need to know that i get 89% efficiency, thats mash lauter efficiency by the way, measured pre-boil.... so you'll need to adjust it for your volumes and efficiencies, whichever way it is you measure them - and if you pass the recipe on you'll have to do it with all that information - or its useless.

use percentages and you dont need to make any changes at all - just plug them into your standard recipe and off you go. As pointed out by other people, you do need total OG and IBU figures though.

these days i only ever give recipes in percentages, i find that its simply too hard to convey all the information you actually need to make a recipe make sense if you try to use absolute figures.

The porter i just made

OG 1.054 - Golden promise base malt, 8.5% flaked oats, 5% Chocolate, 5% roast Barley, 5% light munich, 1.5% Spec B. Mash for a medium dry finish.

38IBUs Millenium for bittering, US Cascade pellets 1.5 g/L cube hops.

And thats all you need to know to be able to brew that recipe.

 

[sim]

if you have poor extraction % are you not going to need more grain anyway?

well, yes you need more grain to up to meet the desired OG, but the specialty grain to batch volume ratio is important to consider. If you just scale everything up in percentages your that ratio will change (you now have more specialty) which will give you a more intense specialty character than before and higher final gravity. This might be a negligable amount but take my prevoius example and say your using choc malt instead for a brown ale:

3kg pale
250g choc

scaled with the same percentages is now black!
6kg
500g

i know thats an extreme example but it illustrates what im getting at.

Percentages are nice an all, but its in relation to efficiency/batch volume.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

sim - i see your point, but its my opinion that making "significant" adjustments for efficiency should not be done by simply altering the amount of base grain. All the grains should be altered proportionally.

so I see how you think a recipe should change if your efficiency changes considerably... and in this case it indeed does, using percentages means you change the whole recipe proportionally and therefore there is no issue.

the example you give is a result of some of the brewing programs calculating colour incorrectly. Extract efficiency is not about "sugar only" extract includes colour and flavour compounds. if you are only getting 70% - you are only getting 70 of the colour too.

 

[yardy]

where would the brewing world be without BribieG :icon_cheers:

 

[Nick JD]

3kg pale
250g choc

scaled with the same percentages is now black!
6kg
500g

How have the ratios changed here? 6000/500 = 12, 3000/250 = 12.

You've lost me. If you double the water volumes as well then you're making the same beer.

Oh, wait - now I see. You mean if one person is getting 50% efficiency and the other 100%, then the 6kg/500g beer will be much darker? Point taken, now I understand.

But don't you think the brewer in question has more issues than getting the recipe right if they have to double the ingredients to make the same beer?

I'd say most AG brewers on this site are within 10% in efficiency figures - and that's just how much we're all leaving behind trapped in the grain, really.

 

[bradsbrew]

Brad, I tend to notice a higher eff when i brew larger batches. If you were to adjust for a decrease in mash efficiency % when you scale down to 20litre, in relation to the amount of brewing water used the specialty malts used would be higher than they should.

Yep and that comes down to knowing your system and adjusting accordingly. The brew wars hosted by babbs for the brew conference is an example of how a recipe does not gaurantee the same beer. Unless you have a Herms, Rims or proprietry made brew system you are not going to consistently get the same beer on the same rig with the same recipe, even with these the results can differ and even then ferment regime may alter it as well.

I look at all recipes as a guide and tune to meet my system and my prefered tastes. And I will create my own recipes using the weight not % but when referencing another recipe prefer %.



Cheers

 

[sim]

if you are only getting 70% - you are only getting 70 of the colour too.

Right. i can totally pay that. I guess i thought that mash efficiency was one thing, and flavour and colour extraction efficiency was another. Along these lines, someone was saying how Jamil uses a "no-sparge" so he gets a lower efficency and can use more grain to get a bigger flavour. If what you say is true he's got a lower efficiency but also a lower colour and flavour extraction, so a case of one step backwards and no steps forward. Interesting.

i like the percentage thing, i just thought flavour and colour were independant of mash efficiency.

So, percentages and OG and IBU it is then.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Recipe for my home Pale Ale:

100% malt
100% hops
Yeast

I see the point - brewmate always exports as % & g/L. I only picked it up the other day when a newer brewer asked for actual quantities because he wasn't at that point yet.

IBU and OG should be the bare minimum. Maybe volume.

Goomba

 

[Goofinder]

How is the recipe from the OP any more difficult to understand than this:

4000 BB Galaxy
225 Carapils
500 Polenta

67 degrees 90 mins

30 Green Bullet flowers 60 mins
20 Motueka flowers 20 mins

20 Motueka hop tea sometime in cold conditioning

500 dex
Nottingham - both sides of a twin repack as I'm going to ferm it out at 15 degrees for a clean fake lager.

4000 what of BB Galaxy? Grains? Do I need to count them out by hand? 20 Motueka flowers (at) 20 minutes? It's a bit hard to count them out when they come compressed. It might be easier if you used pellets.

Volume?
Expected OG, IBU?

:lol:

 

[bradsbrew]

I see the point - brewmate always exports as % & g/L. I only picked it up the other day when a newer brewer asked for actual quantities because he wasn't at that point yet.

IBU and OG should be the bare minimum. Maybe volume.

Goomba

No it doesn't, you are exporting 'forum freindly'. Try exporting 'normal' and you will get this information which is better IMHO.

Stoutinator
Oatmeal Stout

Recipe Specs
----------------
Batch Size (L): 20.0
Total Grain (kg): 4.900
Total Hops (g): 68.00
Original Gravity (OG): 1.052 (P): 12.9
Final Gravity (FG): 1.013 (P): 3.3
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 5.11 %
Colour (SRM): 40.5 (EBC): 79.7
Bitterness (IBU): 35.5 (Average)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 70
Boil Time (Minutes): 90

Grain Bill
----------------
1.882 kg Vienna (38.41%)
1.000 kg Wheat Malt (20.41%)
0.900 kg Flaked Oats (18.37%)
0.500 kg Roasted Barley (10.2%)
0.318 kg Pale Ale Malt (6.49%)
0.300 kg Chocolate, Pale (6.12%)

Hop Bill
----------------
25.0 g Aurora Pellet (10.3% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil) (1.2 g/L)
20.0 g Willamette Pellet (7.1% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes (Boil) (1 g/L)
23.0 g Willamette Pellet (7.1% Alpha) @ 0 Days (Dry Hop) (1.2 g/L)

Misc Bill
----------------

Single step Infusion at 66C for 90 Minutes.
Fermented at 20C with


Recipe Generated with BrewMate

 

[Tony]

I think posting recipes in % is far better.

It doesnt mater what sizee brew you make, what your efficiency is etc etc...... you can get the percentage right and scake up and down from there.

Probably more difficult to add into brewing software but if you cant do that.......... give up!

cheers

 

[Phoney]

Before beersmith 2 came out, working out percentages when plugging in figures was a right royal pain in the arse. Havent used promash so dunno how the other side do it...

If i was given an option; i would prefer my recipes given to me without percentages. Just grain & hop weight and a batch size, and then i can use the scale tool in BS to match it to my system. Much less fiddling around.

 

[Tony]

Havent used promash so dunno how the other side do it...

We do it the same as we have done it for 10 years............. Bloody Promash dodgy "wont release an update" morons

I tell ya...... I have got to know promash very very well and its got to the point where i couldnt be bothered trying to learn a new program....... but sometimes........

Im promash all you can do is enter the malts and up and down the amounts to get the percentages right. Would be awsome to just enter the % i want..... i formulate recipes by % in my head mostly.

cheers

 

[stl]

Right. i can totally pay that. I guess i thought that mash efficiency was one thing, and flavour and colour extraction efficiency was another. Along these lines, someone was saying how Jamil uses a "no-sparge" so he gets a lower efficency and can use more grain to get a bigger flavour. If what you say is true he's got a lower efficiency but also a lower colour and flavour extraction, so a case of one step backwards and no steps forward. Interesting.

i like the percentage thing, i just thought flavour and colour were independant of mash efficiency.

I reckon you could be onto something. The colour seems to "come out of" (e.g.) dark roasted grains quite easily and may happen independent of mash activity, so any given amount of it in a specific volume batch should produce the same colour wort regardless of whether it's brewed by someone who gets 60 or 90% efficiency. On the other hand, the brewer achieving higher efficiency probably has a different sparging technique which might affect how much colour is leeched from the grain in the same way it affects the efficiency in the first place. And on the third hand, I really couldn't give a shit if the beer is 40 EBC or 80 -- I'll drink it! :icon_cheers:

 

[wraith]

I Also prefer recipes as a %.

Wraith

 

[Bribie G]

Great comments so far, but I think my original point has been lost. Sure it is probably most effective to post as percentages, but just posting a recipe as raw percentages is as useful as



At the risk of thrashing this to death, here is the grain bill for the following recipe:

Mega Pakibasher Lager:

50% BB Pils
50% Weyermann Vienna... etc





If I just post this recipe without OG then this is all you have to work with, at the end of the day. My point was that this is a common fault with guys posting percentage recipes.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

So your point was simply that they should include the OG then?

Tony - re entering percentage figures into promash

enter the percentages as Kilgorams. so 80% goes in as 80kg etc etc
adjust the batch size up until you get the right OG figure
lock ingredients to batch size and reduce the batch size to your normal batch size.