Increasing a recipes original gravity.

[burtom]

If I was going to increase the OG of a recipe from say 1.050 to 1.060 I think I would just add more base malt and increase the hop level for balance. I was wondered if that would be the correct method if you were going from 1.050 to 1.100 or would you want to increase the speciality malts by some percent by some percentage say 5 percent and then increase the base malt to hit the OG?

Would it be the same for a pale ale and a oatmeal stout recipe?

It’s late and I’ve had some mead so if the question doesn’t make sense please accept my apology.

 

[bracconiere]

malt extract? 1.050->1.060 is wildly different than 1.050->1.100, otherwise i'd say just add a bit of table sugar...to brew an all-grain batch with that big difference you'd need a lot of different things....

 

[Vale71]

Are you asking how to scale up a recipe?
If you want to brew the same beer you obviously scale up all the ingredients, including specialty malts and hops, linearly. In your example, to go from 1050 to 1060 you'd multiply everything by 1.2

 

[bracconiere]

Are you asking how to scale up a recipe?
If you want to brew the same beer you obviously scale up all the ingredients, including specialty malts and hops, linearly. In your example, to go from 1050 to 1060 you'd multiply everything by 1.2

but to go from 1.050->1.100 you'd need to have a bigger mash tun, sparge more, and boil more off....if you expected to get near decent efficiency...i watched Wesley crusher brew a batch on youtube, got piss poor efficiency, doing a big batch......(it was a northern brewer thing)

 

[bobeer]

I'd just get Beersmith and use their recipe scaler tool. Best 30 bucks you'll ever spend.
Pretty sure the hops isomerization will be different so, for example, you can't just double the hops to double a recipe.

 

[burtom]

Are you asking how to scale up a recipe?
If you want to brew the same beer you obviously scale up all the ingredients, including specialty malts and hops, linearly. In your example, to go from 1050 to 1060 you'd multiply everything by 1.2

Yes this is the question. Scale up OG of a recipe. If you scale up everything in the oatmeal stout wouldn’t you end up with too much dark malts for a five gallon batch? Going from a pound of Chocolate 350, 3/4 pound of Roasted Barley and Crystal 80 to 2 pounds of Chocolate and a pound and a half each of last two seems that the beer would be I’m nasty.

 

[burtom]

I'd just get Beersmith and use their recipe scaler tool. Best 30 bucks you'll ever spend.
Pretty sure the hops isomerization will be different so, for example, you can't just double the hops to double a recipe.

I bought Beersmith 2 twice and it crashed and became unusable. I reached tech support and they couldn’t help and told me to buy it again I did and same thing happened. Won’t be buying Beersmith again. I am glad it works for others though. I wrote a spread sheet around my system that works for me. It takes into account hops isomerization. It’s the specialty malts that worry me on an increase in OG.

 

[Kickass]

Are you trying to go from 1.050 to 1.060 or 1.100?

Also, whats your recipe that you're trying to scale up from? It sounds like you may have, what some would consider, a lot of dark roast and caramel already.

 

[burtom]

Are you trying to go from 1.050 to 1.060 or 1.100?

Also, whats your recipe that you're trying to scale up from? It sounds like you may have, what some would consider, a lot of dark roast and caramel already.

The question is more about scaling up any recipe to any greater OG. Is there a mathematical way to treat the malts to achieve a similar beer but with a higher OG. Should specialty malts increase at all with OG?

Thanks for the replies everyone.

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

The question is more about scaling up any recipe to any greater OG. Is there a mathematical way to treat the malts to achieve a similar beer but with a higher OG. Should specialty malts increase at all with OG?

Thanks for the replies everyone.

You don't scale specialty malts linearly. In a 5 gallon batch of say a stout, going from 1.050 to 1.100 wouldn't come out right if you double the specialty malts.

Generally for modest increases (i.e. 1.050 to 1.060), you can usually just boost base malt and keep the specialty the same. You'll retain the original character.

For large increases (1.050 to 1.100), the new beer will just be fundamentally different. You should remake your recipe from scratch, factoring in the character you're trying to preserve from the smaller beer. But so many variables change with that big of a gravity difference that you can't just scale.

 

[bobeer]

I bought Beersmith 2 twice and it crashed and became unusable. I reached tech support and they couldn’t help and told me to buy it again I did and same thing happened. Won’t be buying Beersmith again. I am glad it works for others though. I wrote a spread sheet around my system that works for me. It takes into account hops isomerization. It’s the specialty malts that worry me on an increase in OG.

I'm still running 2.0 so I can't speak of what they have become. That sucks their support isn't good.
Only reason I mentioned it was because the ibu's, srm, abv, and overall character is maintained when using the scaling tool.
If Beersmith is out then I would agree with the post that said to start from scratch on a new recipe. Take what you know from the existing one and start playing with a recipe calculator and go from there. Good luck!

 

[burtom]

Thanks everyone. For a large increase in OG just completely reformulate into a new beer. I liked Beersmith enough to buy it twice!

 

[bracconiere]

i agree with what bwarbiany said, if you just want more 'sugar' to increase OG, use more base malt....but you'll need to sparge more, maybe boil for 2 hours to reduce...

 

[CascadesBrewer]

I have thought about this some. I scaled a Oatmeal Stout from around 1.060 to 1.075 by just adding 1 lb of Wheat and another lb of Flaked Oats and the beer ended up less roasty than I wanted (my numbers might not be exact).

My gut says something like...if you scale base malts by 100%, scale medium malts (Crystal, Munich, Biscuit, etc.) by 75% and dark malts (Chocolate, Black, etc.) by 50%.

 

[catalanotte]

In the spirit of keeping it simple I think you will get decent results by doubling the grain bill to go from 1.050 to 1.100. As some have suggested your hop utilization is affected by boil gravity, so a little less than double should give you the same balance. You will also need a significantly larger yeast starter for a high gravity brew. I would double your yeast as well.

 

[ba-brewer]

I think the OP's use of scale might be a poor choice of word and adds confusion, but I am not sure what a better one would be. As other have said twice the gravity makes a different beer.

May need to take a look at the yeast too to make sure it can handle the higher alcohol.

I believe higher levels of alcohol also adds sweetness and body/mouthfeel, so adjustment to IBU levels and possible mash temp might be needed if you were trying to preserve some aspects of the original beer.

You can brew what every you want but if you look at the BJCP style guideline and design your recipe to fall into the guidelines you have a reasonable chance of getting a drinkable beer.

 

[kevin58]

I use Beersmith's gravity adjustment tool. It will automatically increase/decrease other ingredients to maintain characteristics of the original recipe.