Beer Alchemy

I am using Beer Alchemy and I am currently an Extract brewer.

Whenever I enter a recipe in Beer Alchemy I am never able to hit the projected gravity from the recipe. Not even close. My boil volumes are spot-on. What could be causing me to miss the gravity marks.

I brewed this weekend and the software said I should hit 1.075 and I only hit 1.064. This is pretty consistent. I never hit the mark and it's not even close. I also used the temp differentiation calculators to make up for calibration, wort temp, etc.

Anyone else having these issues with extract brews?

Are you weighing your extract yourself, or trusting the packaging to be correct? You may not be adding as much extract as you think you are.

I've been trusting the weights on the packaging.

I have been buying locally at my LHBS store. They are priced pretty high compared to what I see online, even with shipping. You're scaring me about the weight now. I think I'll give it a run on the scale next time I make a purchase. Good advice!

No problem. I bet that's your issue. Unless they are selling some cheap extract that doesn't yield as much, its probably your weights.

I'm planning to go all grain as soon as I build the mash/lauter tun and hopefully this won't be an issue any more.

I'll have new efficiency problems to deal with after that, lol.

Are you doing partial boils? Maybe you dont have everything thoroughly mixed when you are taking the reading?

Also, what temp are you taking your reading at?

No, I am doing full boils. I even go back into BA and add the actuals that I had on brew day. Actuals for boil volume before and after etc.

I enter in the gravity readings using actual temp and calibration temp from the hydrometer. I even used separate calculators with no change. Even the temp differential only makes a point or two difference in readings, not 8 or 10 points off like I am missing currently.

I am also steeping specialty grains before the boil. Maybe BA calculates the additional grains funny for steeping. I'll delete the steeped grains from the recipe and see if that puts the expected gravity down to what I am actually seeing in real life.

I've used BA for a while now and found it to be accurate, that said I've only used it for all grain never for extract so I can't comment there. That said I would definitely weigh the grains out yourself as has been mentioned here. If you want to post your recipe file here I'll take a look at it as well.

Thanks for the help. I couldn't see how to export a specific batch/recipe file. It would only let me export the entire database. Here is the text version of the recipe. Notice the expected OG is 1.085 and I only reached 1.064 @ 82 degrees calibrated at 60 degrees. Comes out to 1.067 OG. Not even close to the expected OG


Recipe: Sculpin - North Star IPA - DME Copy
Style: 14B-India Pale Ale(IPA)-American IPA

Recipe Overview

Wort Volume Before Boil: 6.50 US gals
Wort Volume After Boil: 5.25 US gals
Volume Transferred: 5.25 US gals
Water Added: 0.00 US gals
Volume At Pitching: 5.25 US gals
Final Batch Volume: 5.00 US gals
Expected Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.011 SG
Expected OG: 1.085 SG
Expected FG: 1.020 SG
Expected ABV: 8.7 %
Expected ABW: 6.8 %
Expected IBU (using Tinseth): 88.9
Expected Color: 7.0 SRM
Apparent Attenuation: 75.0 %
Mash Efficiency: 75.0 %
Boil Duration: 60.0 mins
Fermentation Temperature: 68 degF

Fermentables
US Caramel 10L Malt 1.25 lb (11.1 %) In Mash/Steeped
US Carapils Malt 1.00 lb (8.9 %) In Mash/Steeped
Belgian Caramel Vienna Malt 0.50 lb (4.4 %) In Mash/Steeped
Extract - Light Dried Malt Extract 8.50 lb (75.6 %) Start Of Boil

Hops
US Amarillo (5.0 % alpha) 1.00 oz Bagged Pellet Hops used In Mash
US Warrior (15.5 % alpha) 0.50 oz Bagged Pellet Hops used 60 Min From End
German Northern Brewer (8.0 % alpha) 0.50 oz Bagged Pellet Hops used 60 Min From End
NZ Pacific Hallertau (6.0 % alpha) 0.25 oz Bagged Pellet Hops used 60 Min From End
US Columbus(Tomahawk) (15.5 % alpha) 0.25 oz Bagged Pellet Hops used 60 Min From End
US Simcoe (13.0 % alpha) 1.00 oz Bagged Whole Hops used 30 Min From End
US Crystal (3.5 % alpha) 0.25 oz Bagged Pellet Hops used 30 Min From End
US Centennial (8.5 % alpha) 0.25 oz Bagged Pellet Hops used 30 Min From End
US Amarillo (5.0 % alpha) 1.00 oz Bagged Pellet Hops used At turn off
US Amarillo (5.0 % alpha) 2.00 oz Bagged Whole Hops used Dry-Hopped
US Simcoe (13.0 % alpha) 1.00 oz Bagged Whole Hops used Dry-Hopped

Other Ingredients
Whirlfloc Tablet 0.50 oz used In Boil
Polyclar 0.50 oz used In Fermenter

Yeast: DCL US-05 (formerly US-56) SafAle

Mash Schedule
Mash Type: Extract with Steeped Grains
Schedule Name: No Chosen Schedule

Recipe Notes

Yeah, one downfall of BA is that you can't export a single batch, only the parent recipe. However, you CAN select that batch and select File >> Promote Batch to Recipe (CMD-R), then select that new recipe and export just that. It's a hack but it works.

As for the off readings you're getting, I dunno. I've used BA for almost two years now, and I haven't seen anything this far off. I enter in recipes from, say, BYO Magazine, and they hit the projected numbers from there to within a couple of points.

Try doing the above steps and post the recipe file. I'll see what I can come up with in the meantime.

OK, I put your recipe into my BA, and the numbers definitely match, so there's nothing wrong with your ingredient database. I then took one of my own recipes, which I put in from Brewing Classic Styles ("Hoppiness is an IPA") and matched it up. The recipe calls for the larger boil which all of JZ's recipes call for (6 gallons out instead of 5, but he likes to leave lots of wort behind for clarity purposes). Once I downsized the recipe in BA to a 5 gallon output, with your numbers, the recipe showed at 1.069 with 8.5lbs extract, as well as 0.5lbs Pilsen extract. Odd...

At least, odd until I realized that JZ's recipe used LIQUID extract. I changed that to 8.5lbs of DRIED extract, and the OG went up to 1.079.

So my question to you is, did you in fact use LME when you brewed this recipe? THAT would definitely account for the low readings you're getting.

Sorry, I have to ask the stupid questions in order to "know what I don't know".

Definitely using the dry extract. I think I may have found the issue...or a solution at any rate. In Beer Alchemy you can adjust ingredients extractability (if that is actually a word) in the master ingredient list. I looked at the default setting for the light dried extract and it showed Extract at 95%. On my LHBS website, the dry extract description states:

"3 pounds of DME is roughly equivalent to 4 pounds of malt extract syrup.

Each pound of DME will increase alcohol by .8 percent. "

Taking that .8 percent, I created a new Extract ingredient and listed it at 80% Extract in BA. Plugged the new extract into the BA recipe and POW, Target OG = 1.069!

I'm not sure if this is logical thinking or just a random result. I'll plug the 80% into a few more of my older recipes and see if the target OG is a lot closer to those actual readings as well.

I can still post the recipe file if anyone wants it, just let me know, and thanks for the help.

I was just listening to a Live Q&A from July, I think, from Jamil and John (BrewStrong), and they had a question come in as to what the dry-to-liquid conversion ratio should be. John did some quick back-of-the-napkin crunching and, based on Breiss numbers, his ratio was 6:7. If you do a quick calc, that's about 85-86%. That might get you a bit closer...

Anyone know when BA 2.0 is supposed to come out, BTW? Haven't heard jack since, I dunno, before the beginning of the year, when new pics were posted.
EDIT: Never mind, I actually bothered to visit the blog site: http://news.kentplacesoftware.com/

Yuck, not good news. You will need to install Lion in order to run BA 2.0. That's a dealbreaker for me. I'm an Apple support specialist, and even I won't upgrade to Lion. It's Apple's Vista.

I plugged 80% in to several recipes and it seems to hit +/- 2 points on OG. I did the 85-86% rate and it was calculating a little high, but it could just be me. I'm still a noob in brewing and on my earlier recipes I was tweaking my water volumes and boil off rates. I think I have most of that down now and my new recipes should be pretty consistent. Will try the 80-85-86 on the next few batches and see where I come out. Still need to weigh the DME packs from my LHBS store. That's probably the easiest check to accomplish and here I am working on ratios and formulas, lol.

Funny on Lion, I am new to Mac too and only had Snow Leoppard for 6-ish months before upgrading to Lion. I don't recall ever having any lockup issues, unresponsive apps, hung browsing, etc on Snow Leoppard. I've had issues on Lion, and they are noticeable.

golphur said:

Funny on Lion, I am new to Mac too and only had Snow Leoppard for 6-ish months before upgrading to Lion. I don't recall ever having any lockup issues, unresponsive apps, hung browsing, etc on Snow Leoppard. I've had issues on Lion, and they are noticeable.

Click to expand...

Agreed, my test boot drive of Lion is fresh, hardly any apps installed, and it crashes apps quite a bit. My MacBook Pro, with hundreds of apps and almost 400GB of assorted data, music, pictures, virtual machines, etc. has virtually zero app problems. Occasionally it takes five minutes to go to sleep, but that's probably because I have 8GB of RAM and ten programs open at a time...

Oh well. Here's hoping 10.7.2 will help iron out most of these issues.