Do I trust Beersmith or this recipe from a book?

[linusstick]

See photo. I know there's a glare on the page but this recipe (in the book) shows an OG of 1.064-1.068. Beersmith says 1.089. The IBUs in the book says 70. BS says 66.2. That's not as big of a difference as the OG. Is it better to make the recipe as is or adjust the malt bill to fit the OG Beersmith says?View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1499049270.941657.jpg

 

[LLBeanJ]

The author of the recipe has no idea what your efficiency is, but hopefully you do, and it's likely to be more or less than what the published recipe is designed around. Since BS is showing a higher OG than the recipe, your efficiency must be a fair amount higher. Assuming your settings in BS are correct and proven for your equipment and process, you should drop the base malt as necessary to hit the OG in the recipe.

Edit to add: in reading the recipe, I see that it is intended to finish with 6.5 gallons in the kettle and leave 1.0 gallon behind as kettle trub, yielding 5.5 gallons into the fermenter. To match this in BS, you would have to design it as a 5.5 gallon batch, with 1.0 gallon of trub loss.

 

[JordanKnudson]

The assumed efficiency in the book is simply lower than whatever you have set in BeerSmith. Thus the same amount of grain yields a different gravity. Do you actually know your brewhouse efficiency?

Also, for your IBUs, hop utilization decreases as gravity increases. That's why the BeerSmith version (with the higher OG) estimates fewer IBUs.

As for which one you should use, ideally you should base it on your own efficiency and adjust the amounts of grain accordingly. However, if you don't know yours, I'd just try the book version, since it assumes a more conservative efficiency.

EDIT: Another thing I notice is that the book's recipe is for a 6.5 gallon batch. If your BeerSmith is set to 5 gallon (or otherwise smaller) batch, that will significantly affect the predicted OG as well.

 

[eagle23]

Ah yes, this was the first recipe i ever did. If you look on the first couple pages or on the first recipe, it tells you what efficiency all the recipes on the book are written in. They all have the same, even though i dont know what it is.

 

[linusstick]

The author of the recipe has no idea what your efficiency is, but hopefully you do, and it's likely to be more or less than what the published recipe is designed around. Since BS is showing a higher OG than the recipe, your efficiency must be a fair amount higher. Assuming your settings in BS are correct and proven for your equipment and process, you should drop the base malt as necessary to hit the OG in the recipe.

Edit to add: in reading the recipe, I see that it is intended to finish with 6.5 gallons in the kettle and leave 1.0 gallon behind as kettle trub, yielding 5.5 gallons into the fermenter. To match this in BS, you would have to design it as a 5.5 gallon batch, with 1.0 gallon of trub loss.

Nice catch. I was so busy focusing on little things that I missed the most obvious! I changed the batch size to 6.5 gallons and the numbers worked out just right. All I did was make a new equipment profile using 70% as the eff, 6.5 gallon batch size and that was it. Didn't put anything in any other field. Now after I save this recipe, if i scale it using my 1.5 gallon BIAB equipment profile I should be good right? Thanks

 

[LLBeanJ]

Now after I save this recipe, if i scale it using my 1.5 gallon BIAB equipment profile I should be good right? Thanks

Yes