Why are beer recipes so uniform?

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theveganbrewer

theveganbrewer

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Been seriously pouring over recipes coming up with some new ideas to break away from clones and recipes on the net and I can't get this one question out of my head. I couldn't find the right words to express, so let me explain a bit.

I wonder the reasoning behind the uniformity in beer recipes we see. For example:

0.5oz of Amarillo
1 oz of Simcoe
12# 2-Row
2# Munich

Why not more of

0.385oz of Amarillo
0.84 of Simcoe
0.16 of Citra
11.75 of 2-Row
1.45 of Munich

Is it just insignificant to change, thus not worth trying? Does it not really change the flavor? It just seems odd that every beer recipe is so prim and proper.
 
Ask yourself the same question about a chocolate chip cookie recipe. Why not 2.462 Cups of flour? Why not 17.5 ounces of chocolate chips? Well, it may very well be better that way, but you buy chocolate chips in 16oz bags and measuring scoops are made to measure whole cups.

If you want to geek out and get more exacting, more power to you. But there are already plenty of variables available to adjust even using the recipe as specified. The ingredients are just one part of what goes into a recipe.
 
Man, when I make a recipe it always gets into the 0.0 grams for hops and 1.00 lbs for grain. I think it is silly. Why not just round off?

I think it is because everything looks so good on paper (BeeerSmith or you favorite brew calculator)


Personally, I applaude your attitude. I've never been to worried about a 1-2 degrees in mash temp. Partly because my thermometer is propbably a degree or two incorrect (it's a typical thermometer, who knows if it is actually correct)

When "Homebrewing" we give it our best shot on measurements. But I have to ask a question. How do we know our values, measurement values not personal values; are even correct to begin with? I'm sure they are close, but when a person quotes numbers in the 0.00... area. Is it truly accurate?
 
Well, if you want to get real technical about it, a recipe of mine that looks like:

theveganbrewer said:
0.5oz of Amarillo
1 oz of Simcoe
12# 2-Row
2# Munich
Click to expand...

Usually ends up looking like:

0.52 oz Amarillo
1.03 oz Simcoe
12.1 lb 2-row
2.04 lb Munich

Just going in half pound increments for my grains and half oz increments for my hops (for the most part) makes keeping an inventory very easy as opposed to not knowing exactly how much of a specialty grain I actually have down in the basement. As much as I do love visiting my LHBS, gas still does cost money.
 
Dan said:
I'm sure they are close, but when a person quotes numbers in the 0.00... area. Is it truly accurate?
Click to expand...
Exactly! Precision without accuracy is pointless. There are too many intangibles in homebrewing to make it worth getting hung up on overly precise measurements.
 
I personally stick with simple numbers to make it easy to remember. I had a "goal" (in addition to making great beer) when I got back into homebrewing that I wanted to make it as simple as possible. One of my sources of inspiration is a friend who bakes a fair bit and can just whip off a recipe for bread off the top of her head. She'll whip up biscuits just before dinner. I wanted to be able to brew like that. Having ingredients on hand I can wake up one day and just say, "I'm going to brew!". I don't need to open my laptop for BeerSmith, I have recipes in my head that are very simple and make great beer. 9lbs of grain, 3oz of hops in various additions and I have beer. I have more complicated recipes when I do a Licorice Imperial Stout but I have to plan to do those.
 
Because no one can tell the difference between 8oz of chocolate malt and 7.71oz of chocolate malt. If you don't use round numbers and buy in bulk, you will have odd amounts left over. What are you going to do with the 0.29oz of leftover grain?

These are the basic parameters I use:

specialty grains - increments of 1oz. Most of the time it is increments of 2oz.

hops - increments of 0.25oz. Most of the time it is increments of 0.5oz.

LME or base grain - increments of 1lb.

sugar - increments of 1oz.

spices - increments of 1g. It's easy to over or under spice using a more coarse unit.

water - increments of 0.5gal
 
You could use metric measurements. Then when you convert them to imperial units, you'd get recipes that look like your second example above.

I routinely weigh out hops in grams for better precision, but use pounds and ounces for my grain since that's how my LHBS measures them.
 
JLem said:
I routinely weigh out hops in grams for better precision
Click to expand...

I just started doing this, too. I don't expect any big changes, although it lets me use cheap, high AA% bittering hops while aiming for low IBU numbers.
 
Because it's a pain in the butt...

A good brewer thinks ahead and can compensate for the miniscule differences by adding more or less of something at a different spot versus getting a headache with all the odd fractions.
 
For most applications, such slight differences would mean absolutely nothing in a 5-10 gallon sized batch. If you see recipes with numbers that have random configurations after the decimal, especially for the grains, you're probably looking at something make by a pretentious individual. Round it off, brew it like you normally do, and you'll probably have a better beer than they ever had anyway. ;)
 
Airborneguy said:
If you see recipes with numbers that have random configurations after the decimal, especially for the grains, you're probably looking at something make by a pretentious individual.
Click to expand...

Or you're looking at the recipe generated by software like Beersmith. Even if I start with a recipe someone has posted in nice round grain & hops weights, by the time I have scaled it up to 6 gallons and adjusted for my efficiency I get those crazy precision weights that is your sign of pretention. Granted, I don't post recipes with those numbers but when I go to buy my grain I simply pass off the recipe to the LHBS. They of course round it off to the precision of their scales.
 
AnOldUR said:
You're trolling, right? Because this is just being silly.
Click to expand...
nope...my scale weighs in 1/8 ounce or 1 gram increments. when using a high alpha hop, 1/8 ounce makes a big difference. 1 gram, not as much.
 
Brewing is not as exact as baking, but not as loose as cooking. Your water treatments are the most important thing when it comes to measuring extreme exactness. I wouldn't stress out about the rest too much.
 
MichaelBrock said:
Or you're looking at the recipe generated by software like Beersmith. Even if I start with a recipe someone has posted in nice round grain & hops weights, by the time I have scaled it up to 6 gallons and adjusted for my efficiency I get those crazy precision weights that is your sign of pretention. Granted, I don't post recipes with those numbers but when I go to buy my grain I simply pass off the recipe to the LHBS. They of course round it off to the precision of their scales.
Click to expand...

Why not just round it yourself? I get the same thing with Beer Alchemy when uploading someone else's recipe. If they don't use the exact same amount of water as I normally do, it will adjust based on that.

The thing is, it is almost impossible to make a recipe taste exactly the same on two different systems anyway, especially when we're talking about homebrew and not large scale, commercial brewing with scientific precision in all aspects of the brew. So why fret over .003 of this or .051 of that? No one could possible taste the difference at our level, even if there was one.

:mug:

PS.. Since I literally just saw it for the first time and it being highly apropos to the topic, I'm giving myself 1/2 of a star for this post. :hs:
 
Airborneguy said:
So why fret over .003 of this or .051 of that? No one could possible taste the difference at our level, even if there was one.
Click to expand...

Well, it also will depend on the batch size. I brew 3.5 gallon batches and an 1/8 of an ounce of an 18% AA hop at 60 minutes equates to 13-14 IBUs. That's a pretty big difference.
 
JLem said:
Well, it also will depend on the batch size. I brew 3.5 gallon batches and an 1/8 of an ounce of an 18% AA hop at 60 minutes equates to 13-14 IBUs. That's a pretty big difference.
Click to expand...

I'm referring to grains. With hops, I can actually see small fractions being understandable. Not to mention, I know you of all people are doing something right! ;)
 
JLem said:
I routinely weigh out hops in grams for better precision, but use pounds and ounces for my grain since that's how my LHBS measures them.
Click to expand...
JLem said:
nope...my scale weighs in 1/8 ounce or 1 gram increments. when using a high alpha hop, 1/8 ounce makes a big difference. 1 gram, not as much.
Click to expand...
So, what you meant to say is, "I routinely weigh out hops in grams because my scale is less precise in ounces . . ." And you didn't mean to imply that grams are some how more precise than ounces?







Oh no! Not this discussion again. :eek:
 
Airborneguy said:
I'm referring to grains. With hops, I can actually see small fractions being understandable. Not to mention, I know you of all people are doing something right! ;)
Click to expand...

I still measure grain in pounds and ounces since I agree that precision is less crucial (though I've had a few beers where I'm dealing with 2 ounces of a dark specialty grain being too much and 1 ounce not being enough).

And thanks - right back at ya. This reminds me,...I think I still have one of your Brett'ed Porters stashed away somewhere. Might need to dig that out one of these days :mug:
 
KISS Brew said:
Absolutely not silly if you're shooting for 15-20 IBUs but want to use a cheap, high AA% bittering hop.
Click to expand...
Between unknown amounts of loss of AA% during storage and shipping and the fact that the stated AA% is just an average of that crop, you're only fooling yourself if you think that you're being accurate by using overly precise numbers.
 
AnOldUR said:
So, what you meant to say is, "I routinely weigh out hops in grams because my scale is less precise in ounces . . ." And you didn't mean to imply that grams are some how more precise than ounces?







Oh no! Not this discussion again. :eek:
Click to expand...

I guess, though I would argue that the gram unit is more precise than the ounce unit since you would need to measure out to at least two decimal places in ounces to get the same level of precision of a a measurement made in grams. If I am off by 1 gram, I'm not that far off. If I'm off by 0.25 grams, I'm off by quite a bit.
 
And if your aunt had balls, she would be your uncle. But a little chin hair shouldn't matter :)
 
JLem said:
I guess, though I would argue that the gram unit is more precise than the ounce unit since you would need to measure out to at least two decimal places in ounces to get the same level of precision of a a measurement made in grams. If I am off by 1 gram, I'm not that far off. If I'm off by 0.25 grams, I'm off by quite a bit.
Click to expand...
But it wouldn't be a good argument because it all boils down to the precision of the scale you're using. My cheap Escali scale measures in whole grams, but in two decimal places for ounces (although the last digit is rounded to .05 increments.)
 
AnOldUR said:
But it wouldn't be a good argument because it all boils down to the precision of the scale you're using. My cheap Escali scale measures in whole grams, but in two decimal places for ounces (although the last digit is rounded to .05 increments.)
Click to expand...

Yeah, as soon as I wrote that I realized it didn't hold water. It all comes down to the number of significant digits one is able to measure accurately. If I had a scale that measured in 1/100ths of ounces I would probably use ounces instead of grams for my hop measurements (though at some point the number of significant digits would have no practical implication).
 
AnOldUR said:
Between unknown amounts of loss of AA% during storage and shipping and the fact that the stated AA% is just an average of that crop, you're only fooling yourself if you think that you're being accurate by using overly precise numbers.
Click to expand...

I don't claim my IBUs are exactly what Beersmith spits out. My IBUs are, however, more consistent between recipes.

My scale measures to the gram or to the tenth of an ounce. If I put 15 grams of ahop in 3 different recipes, I'm adding 14.5-15.5 grams each time. If I put half an ounce of a hop in 3 different recipes, I'm adding .45-.55 ounces each time. Being off by a tenth of an ounce can make a difference in lower IBU recipes, and being off by at most a gram can help these beers be more consistent. This is obviously specific to my scale, which isn't the best to begin with, but it makes sense for me.

I don't understand why you're hostile to measuring hops in grams. For my scale in particular, it can't hurt, it can only help, and it takes zero extra effort. You can make great beer either way. I'm not trying to convince you to change your process. We might as well just agree to disagree on this one.
 
Sometimes it doesnt even matter with hops. Ive found ive usually always needed more,probably do to the age of the hops.And the AAUs not being exactly what they say they are anyway. Ive tended to add more.The only more exact amout that i care about are the dark malts which can be overdone more easily,even said i still dont care about a few more grams with those malts. As far as small-batch brewing.

If you know particular grain tastes in beer than you will know the range to work with that you have with them. Depending on the yeast/and mineral content, the small grain amount may or may not matter as well. Its just like cooking and chefs who dont measure things out all the time.
Sorry if this is repeated info,didnt read through the whole thread.
 
KISS Brew said:
I don't understand why you're hostile to measuring hops in grams.
Click to expand...
This really has nothing to do with the topic of precision vs. accuracy, but I apologize if I come off as being hostile. It's just suppose to be a little friendly discussion. And you misunderstand my position. There are no issues with using grams or ounces, it's saying that one system is more precise than the other that I would argue against.
 
AnOldUR said:
And you misunderstand my position. There are no issues with using grams or ounces, it's saying that one system is more precise than the other that I would argue against.
Click to expand...

Thanks for clarifying - I guess we actually agree. Damn interwebs.

Grams are more precise on my crappy scale, but not as a unit of measure. YMMV.

Cheers! :mug:
 
Talk about uniformity, pulled this up today and there were 38 views and 38 posts on this thread. Of course I was the one that came in and made it nonuniform, go figure. Now 39/38.
 
For me it all comes down to asthetics, really. I like round numbers. From a more logical standpoint I will make two arguments for using uniform measurements:

1) Repeatability: I might not hit my goals exactly, over or under shooting a grain by hundreths or tenths of a pound, but I'm always shooting for the same number. Taking note of exactly how badly I missed the mark leaves me with only a more akward number to aim for next time.
2) Understanding the components: Everytime you complete any step of the brewing process you are building upon your previous experiences. Over time you can learn how different ingredients taste, how they interact with each other, and how strongly a change in quantity will affect a brew. Using nice round numbers helps me better quantify an ingredients impact on my beer. Adding a half pound of chocolate malt will stick in my brain much better than .637 lbs would.
 

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