Al grain recipes: weight vs extract

So I've been thinking about this in the design of all grain recipes. How do ya'll do your all grain recipes? Once you determine what percentage of the grain bill you want each malt/grain to be does that malt/grain now compose that percentage of the total weight of grain you are using or does each grain now account for that percentage of the sugar/gravity you're shooting for?

Hope that makes sense. I've done a lot of reading about styles and appropriate malt/grain and such and haven't found a clear reference to this. It seems that when using some of the darker grains or some of the others that don't contribute much if any gravity it wouldn't make sense to calculate their quantity in terms of what gravity they would contribute. But when thinking about some brewing sugars and such it would make more sense to think of them in terms of how much gravity they will add.

Honestly, I use software like beersmith. It breaks everything down to percentages (grain and hops included).

Germelli1 said:

Honestly, I use software like beersmith. It breaks everything down to percentages (grain and hops included).

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Yeah, I have Beersmith and am about to start using it but I would still like to know what the percentages in a grain bill are referring to between percent of weight or percent of extract just so I know exactly what I''m reading when I see someones recipe or appropriate quantities of grain for certain styles.

Ah I misunderstood but now I get it. If I am bored I like to mess around converting things from extract to all grain and noting the grain substitutions

In the book Designing Great Beers, the way he says to do it.
Is to use % based on total gravity points, the grains extract potential , mash efficiency, and batch size.
I would suggest buying Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels it really explains it well and lays out all the math involved.

dzlater said:

In the book Designing Great Beers, the way he says to do it.
Is to use % based on total gravity points, the grains extract potential , mash efficiency, and batch size.
I would suggest buying Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels it really explains it well and lays out all the math involved.

Click to expand...

I've got that one and I agree, its great. However, if you look in John Palmer's How to Brew he calculates his by weight. I also see referenced in books and such that a grain will traditionally compose X% of a beers grain bill by weight and was wondering how to account for that