beer math

I want to learn bear math. Bobby_M's website was very useful in understanding and learning about efficiency and the math to figure it, but I would also like to learn how to calculate what FG should be for a given recipe. I know a lot of people just plug the numbers into a beer program. I would rather learn how to do the calculations than have to buy a program to do them for me. Can anyone point me in the right direction or provide a link to a site I could learn from?

findthefish said:

http://www.moorescott.net/marc/homebrew.htm

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Thank you Kevin

Get yourself a copy of Designing Great Beers, can't recommend it enough!

beerthirty said:

...but I would also like to learn how to calculate what FG should be for a given recipe. ...

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Let A be the rate of attenuation of your yeast.

Then FG is approximately equal to OG x (1 - A).

Example: suppose OG = 1.050 and the yeast you are using has an average attenuation of 75%. Then your FG will approximately be 50 x (1 - 0.75) = 12.5, or 1.0125.

This is only an approximation, since numerous other factors affect final attenuation, like mash temp and time and fermentation temp.

Here is an article from the wiki about all the various factors that affect attenuation.

bradsul said:

Get yourself a copy of Designing Great Beers, can't recommend it enough!

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This was probably the single most important source of information for me. Here are some others

http://www.rooftopbrew.net/ibu.php
http://realbeer.com/hops/
http://www.weekendbrewer.com/brewingformulas.htm

thank you all for the links, looks like I have some reading ahead.