Scaling with Beersmith.....

I had originally intended to brew a 5 gallon batch of an original IPA I created, but have not had time to pick up a 10 gal kettle. So I decided to split this batch up....I used the scale tool in beersmith and scaled it from 5gal to 3.5gal....should I just split this to 2.5gal??

Seems as though using 3.5gal puts some of the hops in off amounts like .53 and .17oz. So I just rounded these out.

Just trying to get some reassurance that flavor and such will be as the intended with the 5gal would have been, before I brew in a couple hours.....

If it is an extract or partial mash then there is no reason you couldn't do a partial boil to still get the full 5 gallons you wanted.

I don't think rounding the hops will make much difference to the flavor. I scale recipes occasionally and usually just round the hops out to weight that is easily measurable.

Scaling from 5 gallons to 3.5 gallons should be ok, especially if you're letting beersmith do the math. Scaling to much larger batch sizes (hundreds of gallons) is where you need to take additional consideration.

brentt03 said:

Seems as though using 3.5gal puts some of the hops in off amounts like .53 and .17oz. So I just rounded these out.

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Personally I hate working with ounces when it comes to hops. My postage scale measures in 1/10 ounces and grams. Considering that 1 gram is 0.035 ounces it is easier and more accurate if you just convert the fractions of ounces to grams.

I use the feature all the time. What I have found is that when making small batches and getting those odd hop weights is to convert them to grams and measure them on my digital scale. My scale seems to be able to get closer in grams than ounces to those numbers. It may not be dead on but gets me close enough.