Been awhile, here's a short walkthrough on how to use the "autoscale" function
Outline on how to use my advanced calculator to match your process and equipment.
Example: 5.5 gallon batch size, 0.125 gal/lb absorption rate, no losses at kettle or mashtun. Batch sparge with a mash thickness of 1.75 qt/lb. Typical brewhouse efficiency = 75% for a 1.060 recipe.
Enter equipment information as above, enter 1.060 as target OG, hit the green "AUTOSCALE RECIPE" button.
With the current variables, it predicts a grain bill of 11.06 lbs is needed, and will get a brewhouse efficiency of ~80%.
Ideally you will have some recordings of your first runnings / mash gravity, and can use that to determine your typical CONVERSION efficiency. Lets say it is usually 90% (my default is 95%, typical values are 85-95%). Set it to 90%.
Brewhouse is now 76.5%. To get it to 75%, now change the sparge coefficient to 90%, and hit the autoscale recipe function again. You should be near 1.060 and 75% brewhouse with 12 lbs of grain.
Now your efficiency models are set up properly. Double check that mash thickness is still set to 1.75, then just hit the autoscale recipe button again, and double check mash thickness one last time.
You're now set up
correctly in my software.
Lets say you want to change to a 1.090 recipe now.
- Set target OG to 1.090, hit autoscale. Done. Expected brewhouse is 63%, mash thickness is set to 1.21, grain bill is 21.38 lbs. You can manipulate mash thickness and grain bill and re-run the AUTOSCALE function as desired to set your preferred process.
If you switch to the "efficiency evaluation tool* in Other calculators, you will also see a graph near the bottom that shows your efficiency curves for lauter, mash, and brewhouse, as well as how it would look if you decided to switch to no-sparge brewing. X axis is grain bill weight, Y axis is percentage. Mouseover tooltips are used to show values.
Going to take some pics of the process and upload to my blog later, but thought you might want to see this in case