Scaling Recipes in Beersmith

When scaling a grain bill to equipment profiles, the grain bill percentages are getting changed. For instance if I scale a recipe with 90% pale 10% crystal at 60% efficiency to my system which is 80% efficiency...it is giving me 93% pale 7% crystal just as an example.

Is this not going to change the flavor of the final product? I understand it is doing it to maintain the original recipe color/IBU's but would it be better to scale it manually as a percentage until hitting the original recipe SG?

If you want to maintain the original grain percentages, then unclick the options to match original color. With most recipes, the scaling from one size to another size is not linear.

Oginme said:

If you want to maintain the original grain percentages, then unclick the options to match original color. With most recipes, the scaling from one size to another size is not linear.

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I guess what I am wondering is, which method will result in the recipe tasting the closest to the same, keeping the percentages the same or scaling the other way?

I always check the "match original gravity, color, and bitterness" box. I have no idea under what circumstances you would not want that when scaling a recipe. Checking it seems to always keep the percentages the same.

chickypad said:

I always check the "match original gravity, color, and bitterness" box. I have no idea under what circumstances you would not want that when scaling a recipe. Checking it seems to always keep the percentages the same.

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Hmm interesting. That is the issue I am seeing, I keep that checked but grain percentages/ratios are changing.

arnobg said:

Hmm interesting. That is the issue I am seeing, I keep that checked but grain percentages/ratios are changing.

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Huh. My efficiency is the same on my two different size systems so maybe that's the issue. I guess it scales base grain differently to match efficiency, though I've always just kept percentages the same when using someone else's recipe with different efficiency.

Good points!

The only thing I can think of would be that the extraction efficiency of crystal, roasted, and other non-diastatic malts remains the same when scaling for different efficiencies, so yes, the (relative) percentages change. Now a mashtun's deadspace is a linear loss across all malts used, and independent from batch size.

So if someone posts a recipe without extraction efficiency and other non-linear losses, it's difficult to replicate on someone else's system. Now imagine that recipes have gone through numerous brewers each adding their conversions, tweaks and adjustments...

I scale recipes often between doing my 10 liter BIAB inside, 16 liter BIAB outside or 20 liter mash tun set ups. Each system has a different efficiency for me and different losses to dead space and trub losses. Using the scale recipe feature in BeerSmith and making sure to match color, OG and bitterness, I have been successful at making batches across all three systems of the same recipe and come out with essentially the same results. I say 'essentially' because I have never had enough people do side-by-side tastings to have someone discern any differences. I certainly could not.

Oginme said:

I scale recipes often between doing my 10 liter BIAB inside, 16 liter BIAB outside or 20 liter mash tun set ups. Each system has a different efficiency for me and different losses to dead space and trub losses. Using the scale recipe feature in BeerSmith and making sure to match color, OG and bitterness, I have been successful at making batches across all three systems of the same recipe and come out with essentially the same results. I say 'essentially' because I have never had enough people do side-by-side tastings to have someone discern any differences. I certainly could not.

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Well good to know, I guess I will just carry on checking the box, and deal with the odd percentage changes.

Anyways, here's the recipe that made me question this. It is a Grapefruit Sculpin' clone from Northern Brewer. When I put it into Beersmith I have to set it at 63% efficiency to match the recipe specs of 1.065 OG

13 lb Rahr 2-row (94.55%)
8 oz Dingemans Cara 20 (3.64%)
4 oz Briess Caramel 20L (1.82%)

Once I convert this to my system with the same color/IBU's box checked ,which has an 80% efficiency I get this:

9 lbs 13.7 oz Rahr 2-row (90.54%)
11 oz Dingemans Cara 20 (6.31%)
5.5 oz Briess Caramel 20L (3.15%)


As you can see it is way off how can 5% of crystal not affect the overall finished product?

Also the Crystal increases!!

I've tried tinkering more with it, and adjusting the percentages to match instead of the rest puts it at quite a lower color. This doesn't make much sense to me since the crystal/base grain stay at a constant ratio, but it gets lighter as you remove both.

arnobg said:

I've tried tinkering more with it, and adjusting the percentages to match instead of the rest puts it at quite a lower color. This doesn't make much sense to me since the crystal/base grain stay at a constant ratio, but it gets lighter as you remove both.

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No, this doesn't make any sense to me either. Maybe you can send this to Brad and ask him why that happens?

Color and sugar extraction are likely not proportional, so one needs to give? I find color to be the easiest to sacrifice. It's so qualitative and subjective anyway.

When you are scaling the recipes, is there a large change in efficiency as well as in volume? If you were going from a very low efficiency recipe to a very high efficiency profile, the percentages could change greatly to accommodate the increased sugar extraction.

Oginme said:

When you are scaling the recipes, is there a large change in efficiency as well as in volume? If you were going from a very low efficiency recipe to a very high efficiency profile, the percentages could change greatly to accommodate the increased sugar extraction.

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The volume is same, but looks like their recipe is based off of 63% efficiency according to the target OG they are providing and the grain bill. My efficiency I am scaling to is about 80%.

Post the question on http://www.beersmith.com/forum/. Brad is pretty active and helpful there.

I think I have your answer. When you are scaling recipes (especially for different mash efficiency), you are actually scaling the sugars extracted from each ingredient and not the straight weight of the grain. BeerSmith scales using the 'extract potential, for each grain and then makes an adjustment for color. Thus when scaling up in efficiency (as you have done in your example), BeerSmith will adjust the grain amounts to keep approximately the same amount of sugar coming from each fermentable ingredient. 2-row, having the higher potential extract (1.037), will be cut more than the specialty grains (potentials of 1.032 and 1.034, respectively). This would lead to a lesser weight percentage of the base malt and give you a higher percentage of the specialty malts.