Proper conversion

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k1v1116

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As I get deeper into formulating my own recipes Ive been thinking more about the diastatic power of different grains. I can look up the enzyme power of all the grains I buy in degrees linter but does anyone know of a formula to factor in enzyme power and percentage by weight of grain to make sure that a recipe has enough to fully convert the mash?

I think this would be a good thing to figure out for beers with non standard base malts like munich or beers with a lot of adjuncts.

sorry if this has been asked before but I cant find it on HBT or in designing great beers which I thought had everything.
 
I haven't been around here as long as some but I don't think I've ever run across this one. From what I've seen though most styles have enough base malts to deal with the conversion. And with the quality of most base malts I wouldn't think it would be and issue. Are you having eff problems?
 
no efficiency problems. but im thinking about strange recipes like ones that use munich as a base malt (munich is only supposed to have enough enzymes to convert itself) or recipes with huge amounts of adjuncts, oats, rye, wheat, potatos, pumpkin, rice...
 
So im thinking I can just do a weighted average to figure this out.
Munich which I believe has just enough diastatic power to self convert has about 60 linter so this would be the minimum average I need.
so if I have a base malt with 141 linter and im mashing an adjunct with 0 enzymes I would need at least 35.5% base malt to have the minimum enzymes for proper conversion?
Anyone want to weight in on this?
 
I don't have the formula you seek (I want it too!) but from my research, 35 Lintner is what is required for a grain to be self-converting. I believe I got that from wikipedia however so take it for what it's worth.

I've checked through my brewing books and even Noonan doesn't give any information on this kind of thing. Probably a really advanced brewing book from one of the brew schools would be required.
 
alright thanks, if I do find the formula Ill be sure to post it here.
 
Ok after searching for a few days online I still haven't found anything useful. But from what I have read about the linter scale on wikipedia I should be able to use a weighted average.

so if I have a mash with
50% wheat malt with 80 linter and
20% pale malt with 110 linter and
30% rice with 0 linter.
this is just an example im not actually going to make this.
I think I can just multiply the linter of each grain by the percentage
(ex. for the wheat 80 * 0.50 = 40) then add that to the other weighted linters
(ex. (80)*(0.50) + (110)*(0.20) = 62 linter for the total mash )
any grains with 0 linter should be irrelevant.
I hope this makes sense and is correct.
 
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