What Is Your Batch Size Etc, Etc? Any Problems With This?

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What is your batch size?

  • My volume into kegs/bottles.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • My volume into fermenter.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • My end of boil volume.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    0

PistolPatch

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Some brewers think that batch size is how much beer they get into their keg or bottles. Others think it is how much they have at the end of their boil.

Where are you on the scale?

When trying to convert a recipe to your system, how often do you find the lack of definition a problem - especially if you are a new all-grain brewer?

When someone says I get an efficiency of %x what do you think they are talking about?
 
I tend to covert by shoving the recipe as quoted into Pro-mash.

Then the "guessing" part is about changing where I put the different figures till the recipe makes sense

for instance - if a recipe says xkg of pale malt, 23L batch size at y% efficiency - then I stick in the kgs of malt & the efficiency into the recipe page and the batch size assumed to be post boil. Then I see if the numbers match up and give me the OG stated in the recipe - if not, I massage the volume or efficiency till they do. Then I tailor for my system's efficiency after I think I have worked out what the recipe originator was getting.

If you use brewing software - and I recommend everyone does - its actually pretty easy. Because once you have the grain amounts in there, you can stop worrying about the other stuff and just worry about the percentages of the different ingredients. As long as I get the weight of grains and the OG.. Its easy to sort out.

Bitterness is a somewhat harder to nail down cat... not only do the different software packages use different IBU calculations to each other, they have different internal formula as well. Still, if you use software you can reverse engineer it most times.

Put in the hop additions
Put in the % aa of the hops etc - make sure you get it right
Now - change the formula used till the IBUs your software gives you are the IBUs the recipe quotes

Apart from that - ask or find out the assumptions behind the recipe. If you get it from a magazine like BYO or Zymurgy... they always use the same format and assumptions for their published recipes, you just have to look up what they are. Books will usually tell you too - I know for a fact that Brewing Classic Styles specifically goes through the details of this sort of stuff. And if you are getting the recipe off someone on the internet or the forums... ask them. They plainly have e-mail or forum accounts, how hard is it to shoot them a message?
 
I call the end of boil volume batch size, because that's what beersmith and the BIAB calculator call it. The industry term is brew length or something right?

Anyway, converting recipes isn't difficult if you have beersmith figured out. When I want to copy a recipe I plug the stats in, including their batch size and efficiency, and then I can see if the numbers match up and alter it to suit my own system.

When people talk about efficiency in a recipe I assume they are using end of boil because it's the only one that is important, again because its used in beersmith, and it affects the hop utilisation calcs.

One confusing thing however is beersmith has a 'brewhouse efficiency' button next to the end of boil efficiency #. Though I've seen Brewhouse efficiency is usually referred to as volume into fermenter or even volume into bottles/keg.



When copying a recipe someone posts in a thread, or from the recipe DB, usually all the important numbers are there to find, you just have to know your system and your brewing software and alter them to suit.


[edit] that's what I get for taking 20 mins to post! TB is so much more concise
 
If you use brewing software - and I recommend everyone does - its actually pretty easy. Because once you have the grain amounts in there, you can stop worrying about the other stuff and just worry about the percentages of the different ingredients. As long as I get the weight of grains and the OG.. Its easy to sort out.

I would have agreed with you in the past Thirsty but OG's on brewing software with the same inputs vary wildly - it's actually quite ridiculous. So. it is not that easy. Even if new brewers understood why having a reliable OG would make it so easy, it isn't for them. I empathise with them totally.

I have been trying to come up with an easy formula/set of instructions for how to convert recipes for the last six months or more that covers everything. Every time I think I have it nailed, someone throws another spanner in the works!

Anyway, we'll see if this thread can at least identify what most brewers are thinking and perhaps then, we can go from there to a better paradigm.
 
Nice post felten - you've provided a wealth of info there that can be either accepted or refuted. Donya! I think I better get to bed!
 
Sure the learning curve for brewing software is extremely steep, and everyone starts out with SFA idea about how the brewing software works. And the terms may vary but the information in a recipe should be pretty generic unless you alter something drastically. There is only a few factors that affect a recipe, for example, the way Can You Brew It gives their recipes is probably as easy as its going to get.

New brewers may have problems figuring that out, but once they persevere and figure out the software's idiosyncrasies and how to tailor that to their own system, then everything should fall into place.


On the other note, it has been said before but the way beersmith handles some of its figures is quite flawed; such as losses to trub/chiller, top up and cooling loss %. Other than that OG and such should just be a function of a few figures such as; batch size, boil off / boil volume, efficiency and the weight / potential of the grains.

I would have agreed with you in the past Thirsty but OG's on brewing software with the same inputs vary wildly - it's actually quite ridiculous. So. it is not that easy. Even if new brewers understood why having a reliable OG would make it so easy, it isn't for them. I empathise with them totally.

I have been trying to come up with an easy formula/set of instructions for how to convert recipes for the last six months or more that covers everything. Every time I think I have it nailed, someone throws another spanner in the works!

Anyway, we'll see if this thread can at least identify what most brewers are thinking and perhaps then, we can go from there to a better paradigm.
 
On the other note, it has been said before but the way beersmith handles some of its figures is quite flawed; such as losses to trub/chiller, top up and cooling loss %. Other than that OG and such should just be a function of a few figures such as; batch size, boil off / boil volume, efficiency and the weight / potential of the grains.
Damn, just got my head around the Beersmith trub/chiller loss issue and you tell me there is a cooling loss problem as well. :unsure:

I had been allowing 3L loss to trub losses in Beersmith but after reading the thread on here and discussions with fellow brewers have now set that to 0 and upped my batch size by 3L.
This has changed all my existing recipes, IBU, EBC, OG, everything. Efficiency figure has also changed considerably although I get the same into the fermenter at the same OG.
As TB has stated, you need to know how to tweak recipes for your system but wouldn't it be nice if everyone gave recipes in the same format.
Phillip started a thread which set out a method for sharing recipes which makes real sense, percentages for grains, IBU's and OG are used.
Link to Phillip's Thread
Nige
 
Some brewers think that batch size is how much beer they get into their keg or bottles. Others think it is how much they have at the end of their boil.

Here's an admission I thought I would never make publicly. When I started doing AG the first five beers were grossly under target, and despite refining my methods I just couldnt get anywhere close. Then it dawned on me one day that there was a discrepancy between my calculated batch size and the actual post boil size. So I rushed home, adjusted my spreadsheets on those beers, and much to my joy realised that I had been hitting 74-76% the whole time, and that my technique was fine, it was the brain that let me down :rolleyes:
 
Batch size for me is volume at end of boil. This essentially equals the volume into fermenter plus the losses to kettle trub. I use this figure because I use beersmith. It may be an inherent problem with the software but as long as Im aware of it, I compensate.

For me conversion of recipe is all done in the equipment profiles of Beersmith.

As Phillip posted in the thread Scaling A Recipe In Beersmith, How to convert a recipe to suit your system acquiring the numbers for grist percentages, OG, IBUs for hop addition times and efficiency is imperative to communicate a recipe.

Thirsty Boy or others may be able to shed some light here but Ive often doubted that commercial brewers formulate recipes by weight. Ive always assumed their formulations were based more on percentages, IBUs and gravities.

So doing the same, once I have these figures I can just plug them into beersmith then scale them to my setting using the equipment profile Ive previously setup. Couldnt be easier. Much easier than guessing and adjusting weights etc.

One thing I learnt recently is to make sure I have the correct specs for the malt Im pretty sure its been source of miscalculation in the past. I recently updated the grain extensions using the specs as found on the beersmith website for each manufacturer. Some recipes I thought were in range of where I wanted to be changed quite a bit I OG, FG, IBU and EBC due to the update. So I reckon this is an important factor in converting recipes too.
 
I further complicate things by running only crystal clear wort into the no chill cube, but in addition to this, I run a couple of litres of what's left in the urn into Schott Bottles and no chill them overnight. Thus I end up with a further litre and a half of clear wort that I then run into a small 4L bucket with airlock and get a yeast starter happening.

I'm still getting to grips with my new urn and tending to brew a couple of litres more than I should as I'm so used to the Birko. With the Yorkshire Red I did on Sunday, Punching the total eventual brew length into Beersmith it tells me an OG of 1056 - I got 1052 which is fine, prolly the BIAB 'effect'. However now I'm going all-kegging I'm going to have to scale everything down to the idea of just getting that 19L into the keg so no more Mr Slap Happy when it comes to strike volume, trub losses etc, I'm going to have to get seriously into measuring and calculating this stuff brew by brew. Otherwise I'll be in real trouble because my plan A is to do double batches overgravity and split into 3 kegs with addition of my newly acquired RO water / deoxygenated. And that sounds a bit like herding cats. <_<
 
Generally into the fermenter for me but I design pretty much all my own recipes. If using someone else's I'd probably calculate for something in between and not get too fussy about a gravity point here or a gravity point there..

We can get too anal about this stuff.

Efficiency for me is a number of things but I tend to worry more about hitting target gravity and target final volume. That tells me I have entered my efficiency correctly into software (I use recipator) and my processes and calculations are giving me the beer I want and beer that I can repeat, all else being equal.
 
When copying a recipe someone posts in a thread, or from the recipe DB, usually all the important numbers are there to find, you just have to know your system and your brewing software and alter them to suit.

My only hangup is no mash temp outlined in the normal promash output (not trying to make this into a beersmith v promash v other thread though). :icon_cheers:
 
I would have agreed with you in the past Thirsty but OG's on brewing software with the same inputs vary wildly - it's actually quite ridiculous....

Anyway, we'll see if this thread can at least identify what most brewers are thinking and perhaps then, we can go from there to a better paradigm.

If you want to know when I have been posting after a few beers, look for big words like, "paradigm," and a little exageration B).

First the exaggeration....

Common brewing software / spreadsheets only seem to range over about three points on OG. Bitterness levels however do vary wildly. Here's the results of one brew I converted recently...

ProMash = 41 IBU's
BeerSmith = 35 IBUs
Beer Alchemy = 43 IBUs
The Calculator from BIABrewer.info = 31 IBUs (Formula based on John Palmer)

Secondly, thanks for the well-written posts above. Every now and then I bring up this topic in some form or other to see if anything has changed. Thanks for the link to Phillip's thread, Nige. It was a shame to see that it didn't gain more momentum :(. He also points out the haphazard way in which recipes are communicated but still has the same problem...

Unless brewers actually provide a lot of detail such as seen here then you do have to fiddle a lot and sometimes make some big guesses. This is a bit much to ask of new brewers who are looking for certainty. (More experienced brewers know how to fiddle and guess and have developed a healthy disregard for figures. Most of them are at a stage where they know they will get a great beer regardless.)

Nice to hear your admission Silo Ted. Don't worry, you aren't Robinson Crusoe mate :). Most new brewers would have taken far longer to find their, "problem," and why wouldn't they? The poll results here and from the ones I have done in prior years show that there is a major problem in home brewing and software terminology. Experienced brewers, if they even worry, know how to get around this. Experienced brewers interested in this subject will vehemently disagree with each other on what batch size means. Let's not even mention, "brewhouse," efficiency!

The ideal would to be have a standardised method of reporting a recipe but we all know this will never happen :D. My hope is that threads like this will save the occasional poor bugger from thinking, "I don't understand this, I must be a complete idiot! In this thread, 2+2 equalled 3 and in this one it equals 5. What is everyone else seeing that I am not?"

Nothing!

wink (no emoticons left)
Pat

P.S. For any new brewers reading this who are getting depressed, don't sweat the figures. Assuming you have the brewing basics under control and a good thermometer, it is pretty hard to make a crap all-grain beer even if you stuff the recipe measurements up by twenty or more percent.
 
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