Designing great beers Question?

acc33 · 02-03-2009, 08:04 PM

Hello this is my first post on this website. I just got into home brewing in August 2008 and have made 5 (5 gallon) batches of beer from kits and one batch from a recipe out of a book. I just got this new book from a friend called Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels. I am wanting to create a stout and I have been following the directions in the book for calculating a malt bill for the beer. Let me show what I have done so far: According to the book a classic stout has an OG (original gravity) between 1.038-48. So I assumed a 48GU for my batch. I calculated 48GU x 5.5 gallons of wort= 264GU total gravity. Then I figured I would do 80% pale dry extract, 10% roast barley, 6% crystal malt, and 4% oatmeal which I calculated = 211GU pale dry extract, 26.5GU roast barley, 16GU Crystal malt, and 11GU from oats. I then tried calculating how much of each ingredient I would need for the malt bill. For pale malt extract I calculated 211GU/(45/1.00)=4.68lbs pale extract, 26.5GU/(27/0.65)=0.64lbs roasted barley, 16GU/(34/0.65)=0.31lbs crystal malt, and 11GU/(33/0.65)=0.22lbs of oats. My question is whether this seems reasonable for a stout? It seemed intuitively not enough sugars. Can anyone who understands this tell me whether I have made some sort of error in calculations or does this seem reasonable?

**GilaMinumBeer** · 02-03-2009, 08:09 PM

Paragraphs. Please?

mkling · 02-03-2009, 08:13 PM

Without putting this into BeerSmith (I'm not at home), intuitively this seems a bit light on the extract to me, too. Also, whenever I've made a dry stout (like Guiness), I've always used a full pound of roasted barley -- 0.64 lbs just seems to me like it won't be dark enough. .22 lbs oats also seems like it's not enough to add much to the beer.

**GilaMinumBeer** · 02-03-2009, 08:16 PM

4.68lbs of LME at 37ppg should result in 1.035sg.

acc33 · 02-03-2009, 08:20 PM

Hopefully you can forgive the improper English. I was just trying to type it out quickly.

carnevoodoo · 02-03-2009, 08:21 PM

What Crystal malt are you using? Do you have a program like beersmith that will automatically calculate the gravity of your beer for you?

Can you break that post up into more than a single paragraph? It is really hard to read.

Also, are you planning a steep or a mini mash? I don't think any of the specialty grain you are using has enough diastatic power to convert itself into the sugar you'll need.

acc33 · 02-03-2009, 08:24 PM

But when you add the other ingredients and assume a 65% efficiency for each doesn't that bring the OG to 1.048? Can you explain how you calculated this SG?

**GilaMinumBeer** · 02-03-2009, 08:24 PM

It more about readability. Give the eyes a rest to absorb the info and lessen the chance that the reader wil just move on elsewhere. also, posting the same question twice doesn't double the potential for answers.

Trying to be helpful here. Not crass or rude.

Not many of us bother with the long hand calcs. Most of us just plug it nto softwares. What you are trying to do is honorable.

**944play** · 02-03-2009, 08:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by acc33

Hello this is my first post on this website. I just got into home brewing in August 2008 and have made 5 (5 gallon) batches of beer from kits and one batch from a recipe out of a book. I just got this new book from a friend called Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels. I am wanting to create a stout and I have been following the directions in the book for calculating a malt bill for the beer.

Let me show what I have done so far: According to the book a classic stout has an OG (original gravity) between 1.038-48. So I assumed a 48GU for my batch. I calculated 48GU x 5.5 gallons of wort= 264GU total gravity. Then I figured I would do 80% pale dry extract, 10% roast barley, 6% crystal malt, and 4% oatmeal which I calculated =
211GU pale dry extract,
26.5GU roast barley,
16GU Crystal malt, and
11GU from oats.

I then tried calculating how much of each ingredient I would need for the malt bill. For pale malt extract I calculated
211GU/(45/1.00)=4.68lbs pale extract,
26.5GU/(27/0.65)=0.64lbs roasted barley,
16GU/(34/0.65)=0.31lbs crystal malt, and
11GU/(33/0.65)=0.22lbs of oats.

My question is whether this seems reasonable for a stout? It seemed intuitively not enough sugars. Can anyone who understands this tell me whether I have made some sort of error in calculations or does this seem reasonable?

Hope this helps

**GilaMinumBeer** · 02-03-2009, 08:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by acc33

But when you add the other ingredients and assume a 65% efficiency for each doesn't that bring the OG to 1.048? Can you explain how you calculated this SG?

Using LME you assume a 100% mash efficiency. I used teh HBD recipator to crunch the numbers. I didn't bother with the specialties as neither the roasted nor the crystal will add anything fermentable. They will increase the gravity but not fermentability. And since the last one (forgot what it was) isn't being mashed......