Damned BYO Recipes

Do any of you subscribe to BYO and do extracts or partial mashes?

If so, have you noticed they'll have recipes formulate for AG, PM's and extract.

The AG recipes are straight forward. Its the partial mashes or extracts w/ grain recipes that annoy me.

You'd think they would call out standard quantities of malt extract, like to the whole pound or as packaged. You would vary the pale malt and the specialty grains to get the balance right, heck you order it to weight anyhow.

Instead they tell you need 1lb, 5oz of DME and 2lbs, 14oz of LME. Its stupid. You either split of the packages or go heavy or light according to the recipe. I don't like the idea of storing partial packages of extract.

Not until just recently have I had a good scale to weigh out stuff. The only reason now is that I'm going AG and I'll want to buy grains in bulk.

What do you guys usually do? Modify them or do you avoid those recipes?

Thanks!!

i've never brewed them, but i always have DME on hand. it stores great unless you get it wet.

When I did extracts, I usually just modified them. It's tough, because different places will package different sizes of extract, but it's easy if you use a brewing program.

I always do recipes by percentages, for example I usually use 5% Munich in a hefe. It comes out to around 9oz, sometimes I only need 2oz of Carafa Special, luckily my LHBS sells by the oz and I don't have to buy by the pound. It's always good to have a scale to measure out precise weight.

hell just put it all in there,itll make for a higher gravity and probably better head to boot ,i do ,ive had no problems with my mini mashes ,rock on ,bull

If you have a 3.3 lb can of LME and the BYO recipe calls for 2 lbs 14 oz of LME, I wouldn't hesitate at all to use that entire 3.3 lb can.

I enter their recipe into Beer Smith, adjust the extract/grain amount to what ever is in my inventory, then adjust the hops and specialty malts to get back to the proper IBU and color for the recipe. Works great and really lets you see the effect of small changes to a recipe

I haven't tried any of their recipes, but Corvallis Brewing Supply has LME in bulk, so I can get exactly what I need. When I started, The Oak Barrel in Berkeley also had drums of LME. I found a baby scale at Goodwill for $4. It's good for 22 lbs.

ScoutMan said:

I enter their recipe into Beer Smith, adjust the extract/grain amount to what ever is in my inventory, then adjust the hops and specialty malts to get back to the proper IBU and color for the recipe. Works great and really lets you see the effect of small changes to a recipe

Click to expand...

I've got Promash so I could enter the recipe in and adjust it so I can use whatever amount of DME & LME I want and adjust the pale malt acordingly.

You'd think BYO might do that to make it easy on the readers.

Thanks All!

Yeah, the BYO recipes frustrate me sometimes too. I'm usually reading them somewhere other than in front of my computer (the porch, the throne, etc.) so then I have to remember to take the mag to the computer and adjust according to BeerSmith.
I wouldn't be able to brew any of them if BeerSmith and I weren't so friendly.