Yank Malt To Oz Malt/extract To Grain - How Do You Convert?

[HoppingMad]

Hi guys,

This question has been bugging me a bit.
I often open a recipe in a brew book and it looks like a ripper. Trouble is I can't do half of them 'cos the quantities are listed either in yank speak, pom speak or the recipe is an extract one. Does anyone have a good 'cheat sheet' that can show the Aussie grain equivalents for terms like these and then some?:

2 row pale
6 row pale
40o Malt
60o Malt
80o Malt
90o Malt
Lovibond
Klages Malt
British Pale Malt

I have a supply of mostly Joe White Grain and get some Weyermann from time to time, so these terms do give me some grief. I understand that 2 & 6 row relate to how they're grown (but are both like JW pils or is one Trad Ale?), and that the numbered grain & Lovibond is crystal, but what would we use here in its place in Weyermann or JW? Also if anyone has a sheet for coverting extract amounts to grain and types or can point me in the direction of some good links that would be great.

Cheers & Beers :icon_cheers: ,

Hopper.

 

[raven19]

Can you check the yank grain specs in Beersmith, then work out the equivalent amount of grain that is available here?

You should be able to find a close equivalent grain here, however the colour and extract potential may change.

 

[drsmurto]

Type lb to kg into google and it will give you the conversion.

Same for ounces and any other of the Americans outdated measurements.

 

[katzke]

Hi guys,

This question has been bugging me a bit.
I often open a recipe in a brew book and it looks like a ripper. Trouble is I can't do half of them 'cos the quantities are listed either in yank speak, pom speak or the recipe is an extract one. Does anyone have a good 'cheat sheet' that can show the Aussie grain equivalents for terms like these and then some?:

2 row pale
6 row pale
40o Malt
60o Malt
80o Malt
90o Malt
Lovibond
Klages Malt
British Pale Malt

I have a supply of mostly Joe White Grain and get some Weyermann from time to time, so these terms do give me some grief. I understand that 2 & 6 row relate to how they're grown (but are both like JW pils or is one Trad Ale?), and that the numbered grain & Lovibond is crystal, but what would we use here in its place in Weyermann or JW? Also if anyone has a sheet for coverting extract amounts to grain and types or can point me in the direction of some good links that would be great.

Cheers & Beers :icon_cheers: ,

Hopper.

2-row and 6-row are types of barley, not how they are grown. 2-row is the basic pale malt used in the USA. 6-row is different but I have never used it so have no comment. One difference is the Diastic power is greater in 6-row then in 2-row. Here is a link to some info. http://brewingtechniques.com/bmg/schwarz.html

The crystal malts are based on color. You should be able to find a reasonable replacement.

British pale would be Maris Otter or Golden Promise.

Lovibond is a measure of color. Crystal 40 is lighter then crystal 80.

As a loose guide any of the malts that start with a C should be the same. Like Crystal or Cara.

I do not have a chart handy but you should be able to find one that converts extract to grain. It only works for pale extract as what goes into darker extracts can be a mystery. Any brewing program should do it. I would think the color is the same thing. Here is a link to a post on color. http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...?showtopic=1472 Can not vouch for them Aussies as they do things different then us Americans.

Hope this helps some.

 

[HoppingMad]

Helpful Katze, thanks. Have had a big bag of Marris Otter for several months and didn't realise this was British Pale I am a dunderhead.

Smurts yep already do all the imperial conversions no sweat using convertunits.com, more concerned with making sense of different grain types and extract types and translating them to local form.

Unfortunately Raven I don't own Brewing Software. Am seriously considering my options on this though. In terms of extract, does a software program convert this? Like say if it mentioned a certain amount of Amber extract, you could convert to a certain amount of grain? Or is there no surefire way to do this?

My understanding of Crystal Malt is that there's pretty much Light, Medium and Dark here? Then your Caras? So it's tricky to get the different degrees to fit to what's available at a local store. Might have to check it all by colour as you guys suggest and sketch up my own table.

Just annoying to have American and English Brewing Books and only be able to utilise half the recipes. There's some interesting stuff out there.

Hopper.

 

[raven19]

Unfortunately Raven I don't own Brewing Software. Am seriously considering my options on this though. In terms of extract, does a software program convert this? Like say if it mentioned a certain amount of Amber extract, you could convert to a certain amount of grain? Or is there no surefire way to do this?

Katze's post was gold.

You can use Beersmith for a trial period to have a play with.

Not having access to it at work, but going from memory I am certain it will calculate the amount of extract potential from a particular grain, but am not sure on its conversion abilities from extract to grain weights.

There are a lot of tools in Beersmith that I rarely look at, it would not suprise me if something like this was in there... will have a look tonight if i remember.

Cheers!

 

[bum]

My understanding of Crystal Malt is that there's pretty much Light, Medium and Dark here? Then your Caras? So it's tricky to get the different degrees to fit to what's available at a local store. Might have to check it all by colour as you guys suggest and sketch up my own table.

I find that Ross' site has lots of good info about the products that helps you backwards engineer some recipes from Ethnia. Can take a little head scratching sometimes but you can usually work out the local counterpart. Working out how to convert SRM to EBC can help too.

 

[katzke]

Here is a link to an explanation of converting. Unfortunately the chart is in pounds so you will have to do some conversion. I think it is a factor of .25 one way if that helps. http://www.allaboutbeer.com/homebrew/extract.html . I did not read it all so can not say how good it is.

One problem is converting from extract as I posted before is the malts used to make extract are mostly a mystery. The recipe needs to have a final color and the use of brewing software is helpful to make adjustments. There are some free programs out there that work about as well as the pay ones. One thing that will help is to look at lots of recipes. Most are not too much different in a given style. You have never had the beer from the recipe so a good guess at substituting grains is acceptable.

 

[bconnery]

Helpful Katze, thanks. Have had a big bag of Marris Otter for several months and didn't realise this was British Pale I am a dunderhead.

Smurts yep already do all the imperial conversions no sweat using convertunits.com, more concerned with making sense of different grain types and extract types and translating them to local form.

Unfortunately Raven I don't own Brewing Software. Am seriously considering my options on this though. In terms of extract, does a software program convert this? Like say if it mentioned a certain amount of Amber extract, you could convert to a certain amount of grain? Or is there no surefire way to do this?

My understanding of Crystal Malt is that there's pretty much Light, Medium and Dark here? Then your Caras? So it's tricky to get the different degrees to fit to what's available at a local store. Might have to check it all by colour as you guys suggest and sketch up my own table.

Just annoying to have American and English Brewing Books and only be able to utilise half the recipes. There's some interesting stuff out there.

Hopper.

Beersmith has entries for light, amber and dark liquid and dry malt extract. They will be approximations as you don't know for sure what the various brands you are using will come out too but they should be close enough.
It is also has the option of choosing whether to calculate adding your extract for the full boil or just the last 15 minutes so it's a great tool for calculating extract recipes.
At a one of cost of $25? (ish) it's a great investment.

A lot of stores just sell Light, Medium and Dark crystal but you can compare colours based on the recipes you have and then what sites like Craftbrewer have on their specs to determine the best match crystal, but I believe someone has covered that earlier...

 

[RdeVjun]

Hi Hopper,
FWIW, if you're wanting to try any of the free software applications out, I can recommend StrangeBrew. It isn't perfect by any means but works well enough for me and has most extracts, malts, specialty grains, adjuncts, hops, yeast etc, even salts/ water profiles plus can handle mash profile/volumes, dilution, carbonation, costing, inventory and even has a observation/fermentation log (no, that wasn't a sales pitch!). The tables of ingredients are just comma separated, so you can add your own with ease, but so can just about any other app worth its salt (although I'm not sure if some of them have a proprietary format?).
Another app is QBrew, but it is no where near as sophisticated as StrangeBrew and although I used it for quite a while with no real hassles, it was just fairly limited in terms of functionality.
Both QBrew and StrangeBrew are cross- platform, so if you have multiple computers and operating systems, this can be handy movng between various systems, I use Ubuntu and XP so this is very helpful, although I did have a trial Promash running under Wine in Ubuntu.

As others have mentioned, Ross' website has heaps of colour data, Coopers is another if you use their kits, just divide the can values by 23 and multiply by the mass (usually 1.7) to get rough colour and bitterness values. There was a table of these values somewhere, just can't find it at the mo'. Be careful of colour units, there's EBC, Lovibond and SRM, but we have the AHB converter. When it comes to extract potential, if you come across something that's not listed, most base malts would be around 1.035- 40, crystals low 30s and dry malt low 40s. I've even just taken a rough stab at some, didn't seem to get it majorly wrong as they usually came out as expected.

Attached a malt comparison table, might be useful too.

View attachment Malt_Comparisons.xls

 

[HoppingMad]

Enormous help guys, thanks heaps.

Downloaded Strangebrew a while back so should dust it off and go through it. Seriously considering Beersmith (I'm on a mac though but have access to a pc so still an option) hence why I haven't got onto a software program yet - downloaded a trial version of Beer Alchemy but it gave me the irrits.

RdeVjun, that chart is fantastic - so thanks heaps for that. Had no idea that AHB had an SRM converter either so thankyou, that's awesome.

Thanks guys - looks like I have a bit of research on SRM/Grain types to do and reverse engineering to get a 'cheat sheet' that works for me (or consider some software that can help), but your comments have been huge.

Cheers, :icon_cheers:

Hopper.

 

[katzke]

Downloaded Strangebrew a while back so should dust it off and go through it. Seriously considering Beersmith (I'm on a mac though but have access to a pc so still an option) hence why I haven't got onto a software program yet - downloaded a trial version of Beer Alchemy but it gave me the irrits.

Take a look at SUDs. It is a spreadsheet so you should be good on the Mac.