Don't understand percentages in recipes

[five0matt]

I just copied the following part of a recipe from the Honey Basil Ale thread as an example. I have seen these percentages with alot of recipes, what exactly do they mean?

71.4 % 5.00 Light Dry Malt Extract
14.3 % 1.00 Canadian Honey Malt (Gambrinus in original recipe)
7.1 % 0.50 Wheat Malt
3.6 % 0.25 Dextrin
3.6 % 0.25 Flaked Barley

 

[MalFet]

I just copied the following part of a recipe from the Honey Basil Ale thread as an example. I have seen these percentages with alot of recipes, what exactly do they mean?

71.4 % 5.00 Light Dry Malt Extract
14.3 % 1.00 Canadian Honey Malt (Gambrinus in original recipe)
7.1 % 0.50 Wheat Malt
3.6 % 0.25 Dextrin
3.6 % 0.25 Flaked Barley

It's just the percent of the grist composed by that thing.

So you've got a total of 7.00 lb of grain, and 71.4% of it (5.00 / 7.00) is light DME. It's less helpful in extract + steeping grains recipes and more helpful in all grain recipes.

 

[five0matt]

Thanks for the reply, that was my first thought, but I noticed that the numbers don't usually add up to 100%. So I thought I must have been wrong.