Beersmith, Promash - what about pen/paper?

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hayabusa

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I know that tools like beersmith and promash can give me my strike water temperature, and mash adjustment volume/temps with the few clicks of the mouse... it can even tell me my boil off requirements.

I'm the type of person who loves those tools but I like to know the magic behind them, in this case the formulas used. The internet has yielded no single place (that I found) for all of these formulas (at least from a "trusted" source) so I was wondering if anyone had these formuals available so I can run thru at least 1 batch on pen/paper just to enhance my knowledge.
 
I made my own 'Full Recipe Calculator' spreadsheet about 10-11 years ago and I'm sure I used only the stuff in two books: The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing and Designing Great Beers. I'm pretty sure either one or both has an appendix section for doing these calculations. I'd be shocked if Palmer didn't have the same sort of stuff in his book.

Here is Palmer's page on hop utilization.

The grains are easy but you need a chart to tell you the points per pound per gallon of different grains/adjuncts/sugars/etc. It is in those books somewhere. Then you just multiply the points per pound per gallon number by the number of pounds of that grain and then divide by the number of gallons (your batch size)...this gives you total possible points contributed by that grain. But we never hit 100% efficiency so multiply this number by your efficiency (in decimal form...so 75% is .75). Do this for every grain/adjunct/sugar in your brew and then add them all up...that's your Total Points. Say your total points was 50...then the gravity of your wort should be 1.050. It's really that easy.

I can't remember how I did color but it's in the books (it's almost just like the grain fermentables). My spreadsheet numbers are not dead on some other calculators (like Tastybrew for example) but they are really close.

EDIT: Oh yea, here is Palmer's pages on Strike Water and Infusion Water.
 
Designing Great Beers includes a lot of formulas for working this stuff out.

Me, I just skipped past those, as I'm far too lazy to crunch numbers by hand - that's what software is for! :)
 
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