Extract Recipe Scaling... Is it linear?

[thehebs]

So I just finished my first batch of beer a week or 2 ago... and somehow its almost all gone... Therefore its time for another brew...

I purchased a lot of gear from a guy locally, and it included 3 carboys and a keggle. I didnt realize until after the fact, that the carboys are only 5 gallons instead of 6 or 6.5 like most carboys. Even though there is a little bit of room in the carboys, it didnt seem like near enough head space to ferment a 5 gallon batch. My wife and I both love wheat beers so I am considering using the keggle to do a 12 gallon batch, and splitting the 12 gallons into 4 gallons in each 5 gallon carboy... which leads me to my question...

Most recipes are for 5 gallon batches... However if I want to do a 12 gallon batch, can I simply do 12/5 times each ingredient in the recipe? Does the recipe scale up linearly?

 

[JLeuck64]

I am about to test this theory out for my self real soon. And YES I've been told that these recipes do scale up real easy in a linear fashion until we get to the point of making a full barrel.

I will be just doubling my recipe which makes the arithmetic way easier than yours... don't forget to increase the hops an equal amount as well. Yeast can get spendy if your're using liquid variety, might consider looking into building yeast starters to offset costs. If using the dry yeast variety I wouldn't bat an eye at pitching in a packet per batch just to make it convenient.

 

[JR_Brewer]

In general, yes. Malt (grain or extract) scales linearly. Hops will, but keep in mind that hop utilization is a function of both boil volume and final volume. Most adjuncts will scale linearly, but there may be a few exceptions.

Best advice (especially due to hop utilization) is to use a brewing calculator. There are plenty of forums debating the merits of the various calculators (several are free online apps).

 

[CGish]

Both BeerSmith and BrewerFriend have scaling options for recipes. This feature makes it fast and easy to change the size of a recipe while keeping the hop additions at the proper level.