Hello this is my first post on this website. I just got into home brewing in August 2008 and have made 5 (5 gallon) batches of beer from kits and one batch from a recipe out of a book. I just got this new book from a friend called Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels. I am wanting to create a stout and I have been following the directions in the book for calculating a malt bill for the beer. Let me show what I have done so far: According to the book a classic stout has an OG (original gravity) between 1.038-48. So I assumed a 48GU for my batch. I calculated 48GU x 5.5 gallons of wort= 264GU total gravity. Then I figured I would do 80% pale dry extract, 10% roast barley, 6% crystal malt, and 4% oatmeal which I calculated = 211GU pale dry extract, 26.5GU roast barley, 16GU Crystal malt, and 11GU from oats. I then tried calculating how much of each ingredient I would need for the malt bill. For pale malt extract I calculated 211GU/(45/1.00)=4.68lbs pale extract, 26.5GU/(27/0.65)=0.64lbs roasted barley, 16GU/(34/0.65)=0.31lbs crystal malt, and 11GU/(33/0.65)=0.22lbs of oats. My question is whether this seems reasonable for a stout? It seemed intuitively not enough sugars. Can anyone who understands this tell me whether I have made some sort of error in calculations or does this seem reasonable?
Designing great beers Question?
- Thread starter acc33
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Paragraphs. Please?
mkling
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Without putting this into BeerSmith (I'm not at home), intuitively this seems a bit light on the extract to me, too. Also, whenever I've made a dry stout (like Guiness), I've always used a full pound of roasted barley -- 0.64 lbs just seems to me like it won't be dark enough. .22 lbs oats also seems like it's not enough to add much to the beer.
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4.68lbs of LME at 37ppg should result in 1.035sg.
carnevoodoo
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What Crystal malt are you using? Do you have a program like beersmith that will automatically calculate the gravity of your beer for you?
Can you break that post up into more than a single paragraph? It is really hard to read.
Also, are you planning a steep or a mini mash? I don't think any of the specialty grain you are using has enough diastatic power to convert itself into the sugar you'll need.
Can you break that post up into more than a single paragraph? It is really hard to read.
Also, are you planning a steep or a mini mash? I don't think any of the specialty grain you are using has enough diastatic power to convert itself into the sugar you'll need.
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It more about readability. Give the eyes a rest to absorb the info and lessen the chance that the reader wil just move on elsewhere. also, posting the same question twice doesn't double the potential for answers. 
Trying to be helpful here. Not crass or rude.
Not many of us bother with the long hand calcs. Most of us just plug it nto softwares. What you are trying to do is honorable.
Trying to be helpful here. Not crass or rude.
Not many of us bother with the long hand calcs. Most of us just plug it nto softwares. What you are trying to do is honorable.
Hope this helps
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Using LME you assume a 100% mash efficiency. I used teh HBD recipator to crunch the numbers. I didn't bother with the specialties as neither the roasted nor the crystal will add anything fermentable. They will increase the gravity but not fermentability. And since the last one (forgot what it was) isn't being mashed......
ya what he said.
And while Daniels has a great book there. No one and I mean no one works in gravity units. Get some software, lots of it is free. That is just too much work when I can do the same thing in 5 seconds.
Free ones off the top of my head - stangebrew (java), qbrew (might be linux only).
acc33 said:
yes you would need to add more extract if you want to raise the gravity. The reason your steeping grains have no extract potential is that the ones you picked out have no enzymes in which to convert themselves with. Throw in a half pound of 6 or 2 row and that will convert some starches.
Bob
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QBrew runs on Win98, Win2k and XP. Dunno about Vista. It's good software!
OP - oats need to be mashed. You'll get nothing out of them in a steep.
Cheers,
Bob
OP - oats need to be mashed. You'll get nothing out of them in a steep.
Cheers,
Bob
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To keep a color balance and possibly a flavor balance you would need to increase the specialties. Don't forget the hops! Need to keep that BU:GU ration consistent too.
Thanks everyone for the advice. I am trying to understand more of how the brewing process works. I have loved brewing since I started. I just picked up that strangebrew program. I actually didn't even know any of this software existed. Anyway thanks for the help. Sincerely, AC
