Gnomebrewer
Well-Known Member
A mate of mine has a very similar set-up to mine (HERMS using keggles). Recently, he had to pack his away (he's selling his house) so he brewed at my house. The first brew he did on my system was his American Brown Ale, which he has brewed many times before. We adjusted the recipe for my system - I get higher efficiency due to my sparge method (hybrid fly/batch sparge; he prefers to set a fly sparge and walk away). The beer turned out much lighter and less chocolaty, and with less hop flavour, than it ever has on his system. It got me thinking about a protocol for copying other peoples recipes, to get them as close as possible to the intended product. My mistake was lowering the chocolate malt (the key specialty malt in the recipe) based on my higher efficiency, when I should actually have increased it because I dump more trub, and calculating hops based on final volume into the fermenter rather than final boil volume (again, less late hops per unit of beer because I dump trub). My suggestions below are based on an assumption that, regardless of efficiency, you'll still extract the same flavour from specialty malts. Here goes...
1. Calculate your specialty grain quantities:
--- m = m(r) / v(r) * v
--- where
--- m = the mass of grain required, m(r) = the mass of grain listed in the recipe
--- v(r) = the post boil volume in the recipe and v = the post boil volume you're expecting
2. Calculate your base malt quantities (and extract if applicable) to achieve the desired OG based on your known efficiency
3. Calculate your late-hop addition(s), again based on final boil volume rather than volume into fermenter, using the same formula as in step 1.
4. Calculate your bittering hop addition(s) to achieve the desired IBU's based on your system.
I started to think I was over thinking all of this, until I had a side-by-side taste of the brown ale from his system vs. mine. They're totally different beers!
Thoughts? Improvements? Mistakes?
1. Calculate your specialty grain quantities:
--- m = m(r) / v(r) * v
--- where
--- m = the mass of grain required, m(r) = the mass of grain listed in the recipe
--- v(r) = the post boil volume in the recipe and v = the post boil volume you're expecting
2. Calculate your base malt quantities (and extract if applicable) to achieve the desired OG based on your known efficiency
3. Calculate your late-hop addition(s), again based on final boil volume rather than volume into fermenter, using the same formula as in step 1.
4. Calculate your bittering hop addition(s) to achieve the desired IBU's based on your system.
I started to think I was over thinking all of this, until I had a side-by-side taste of the brown ale from his system vs. mine. They're totally different beers!
Thoughts? Improvements? Mistakes?
