Scaling recipes

[Barnbrews]

Hello all, I am wondering about how to scale recipes up or down. I assume there is more to it than halving or doubling a given recipe. At this point I am doing extract brewing and would like to scale 5 gallon recipes I find to 2 1/2 gallon batches. Thanks in advance for helping out a rookie!

 

[govner1]

Your best bet is to use some brew software. Some is available online others require a small investment. BeerSmith, for example, will cost you under $20 but will give you considerable flexibility as your brewing demands grow.
With BS you can enter your equipment profile and adapt recipes to your needs.

 

[andy6026]

As far as I'm aware, it is as simple as scaling it to the same ingredient ratios of the original recipe.

The only thing that will be a little different is your water-supply, since your boil off rate is the same whether you're making 10 gallons or 2.5

 

[pshankstar]

Your best bet is to use some brew software. Some is available online others require a small investment. BeerSmith, for example, will cost you under $20 but will give you considerable flexibility as your brewing demands grow.
With BS you can enter your equipment profile and adapt recipes to your needs.

I would agree! I recently purchased beersmith & love it. I like being able to scale recipes & convert them from extract to all-grain or vice versa.

 

[alexacuna]

I use Brewers friend and it has a scale function. It's probably no where as smooth as beer smith but works.

 

[slym2none]

I make 2.5G versions of 5- and 5.5G batches all the time. I just divide the main ingredients in half. No calculator necessary!