calculating plato

I'm unsure how to calculate degrees plato if I have a known volume of water in liters and a known amount of extract in kilograms. Could someone please help me out?

If you want to calculate plato before you add the extract to the water, then you need to know how much gravity your extract will contribute. For instance, say your extract contributes 40 points per pound per gallon. This means that 1 lb dissolved in 1 gallon of water will yeild a gravity of 1.040. Once you know what your gravity will be degrees plato is easy. Lets say your gravity is actually 1.040. Degrees plato = 40/4 = 10. If the gravity is 1.055, degrees plato = 55/4 = 13.75. In your case, you'll have to convert liters to gallons and kilograms to pounds. I use a handy conversion calculator for such things. http://www.onlineconversion.com/

Well, I'm having someone write me a custom brewing program so I think I want the formula to look like this - Plato= Malt(kg) X Extract Potential % X Efficiency % / Liters. This makes sense since plato is the weight of sucrose/weight of water. But this doesn't seem to be the case when comparing that to what BeerSmith gives me. I guess I just don't get it, but do you see what I want to do?

You don't need the efficiency factor w extract

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