Scaling Recipes

[philipwebb]

Hi all

When scaling recipes is the adjustment all proportional?

Is it a different process for scaling a recipe for a change in volume as opposed to scaling for a change in efficiency?

E.g. would you only increase the amount of base malt to make up for a lower efficiency and all ingredients proportionately for a change in batch size?

Thanks in advance

Phil

P.S. I have searched and read varying discussions on similar topice but came to no definitive answer

 

[Duff]

All proportional Phil. I made a clone of Denny Conn's Rye IPA which you can read in the receipe section above around a year ago. Recently, I simply scaled the receipe back to a Pale Ale range (kegged tonight), same ingredients and schedule, just proportional to the final gravity you require. Very easy to do with brewing software like ProMash.

Cheers.

 

[blackbock]

Also, if you are scaling the O.G as well as volume, you need to account for lower hop utilisation.

 

[philipwebb]

Thanks Duff and blackbock, greatly appreciated.

Phil

 

[NickB]

Hi,

I'd suggest getting yourself a good piece of brewing software (if you haven't already). Any decent software should have a scaling function. I use BrewAlchemy on Mac OSX, and find the scale function very useful, as I tend to brew a 5 or 10L batch to test my recipe, before scaling up to a full or double batch. (I'm assuming the PC folk have this function available in ProMash, Beersmith etc.) Otherwise, from what I've gathered, if you double your batch size, double the malt and hop bills, if you halve the batch size, you halve the bills, but as above, keep in mind the reduced hop utilisation.

Cheers

Nick

 

[mika]

Was discussing this with another member a short while ago, if you're adjusting the recipe for your efficiency, do you then also change the amounts of specialty grains ? I would assume efficiency would affect the extraction of the specialities as well, but my mate reckon's he's done that with a couple and ended up darker than they should be. Just starting to doubt myself a little here.....be gentle with me...it is late...shusssshhh ! h34r: I'm uplate ordering stuff from Ross...what the missus don't know, can't hurt her...right ? :unsure:

 

[philipwebb]

Was discussing this with another member a short while ago, if you're adjusting the recipe for your efficiency, do you then also change the amounts of specialty grains ? I would assume efficiency would affect the extraction of the specialities as well, but my mate reckon's he's done that with a couple and ended up darker than they should be. Just starting to doubt myself a little here.....be gentle with me...it is late...shusssshhh ! h34r: I'm uplate ordering stuff from Ross...what the missus don't know, can't hurt her...right ? :unsure:

That is where my confusion came from. A few recipe threads from some very experienced brewers on AHB have made comments like "its for 23 litres at 75% effiency for around 65% use another 500g-700g of pale malt." No mention here about specialty grains. It was actually after reading the excerpt above I posted the question.

 

[blackbock]

No need to worry about the specialty grains in that case. You're just looking to boost o.g a few points. Probably it's because its the conversion efficiency that is the problem, not extraction? I imagine it's much easier to extract, say, the black colour from Carafa II than it is to extract maltose from Pilsner malt.

 

[mika]

So... update the base malt and things like munich and wheat, but leave the cyrstal, carapils and roast barley as is ?

Some people give this s a percentage of total grist...think we need more clarification on this.

 

[Yorg]

I also would like a few posts with high confidence, first hand experience to shed some light on this one.
Cheers.