Is beersmith powerful enough to make recipes?

[shaman1204]

What I mean is, if I'm trying to clone an ipa, and I know the grains used, hops, style of yeast, ABV, SRM, OG, IBU and FG, can I punch those into beersmith and use the slides to come up with the amounts needed for recipe?

For instance, for grains input 2 row, Vienna malt, carafoam, and crystal 90 malt, set the OG to 1.065 and beersmith comes up with the amounts of each grain needed?

Same for hops (with appropriate AA input): add a FWH, then flavor hops at 15, 10, 5, and 0 and set the IBU slide to 70 and have beersmith calculate the amount of hops to add at those times?

I tried and it came up with like a 3# amount for carafoam. I'm sorta new to brewing, but wouldn't this be a lot of that particular grain? I was able to adjust all the slides (OG, color, IBU and ABV) to nail all the known recipe numbers. I'm just not sure it will turn out. Thanks.

 

[LandoLincoln]

Yes, I believe Beersmith will do what you're looking for.

You can download it and try it free for a period of time, I believe.

 

[TopherM]

With Beersmith, you will be able to put in all the ingredients and manipulate the proportions to hit the correct IBUs, ABV, SRM, OG, and FG, AND will make sure your created recipe is still within style guidelines.

However, NO program can give you the exact hops and grain amounts to clone some arbitrary beer. It's still a matter of trial and error. There is no guarantee any given commercial brew is even within style guidelines, and there are many many different combinations of hop additions and grain bills that can lead to similar numbers.

SO, BeerSmith can be used as a tool, but it isn't going to clone a recipe for you. That's impossible given the variables that go into making a beer.

If you educate yourself on what each kind of hop and grain contributes to a beer, BeerSmith is then a great tool to help clone a beer.

What beer are you trying to clone?

 

[flexmurphy]

If you can't find a clone recipe to start from, it might make more sense to work from an existing recipe for a similar style, and then modify some of the ingredients to better match the style characteristics of the beer you're working towards.

Three pounds of Carafoam seems like an awful lot to me.

Maybe post the recipe that you're working on (and name the beer that you're trying to clone) and let some of the brewers here on the forum give you some input?

 

[Oginme]

If you input the grains you want to use and the hops both with the relative proportions and times of addition, you can use the sliders in BeerSmith for OG and IBU to adjust the target values to what you want. You may need to do a little manipulation afterwards to fine tune the values. Beyond that, there is no piece of software out there that can develop a recipe without basic guidance. Any software written is a simulation only based upon your inputs.

 

[shaman1204]

Thanks. I'm trying to clone revolution brewery's anti-hero. I did some research and found that they use the following grains in a single hop ipa called citra hero. Thy also have a single hop galaxy hero. I was thinking (hoping) they use the same grain bill for all the "hero" beers.

2 row
Pale ale malt
Aromatic malt
Red wheat malt

I know for a fact the hops are:

Warrior
Centennial
Amarillo
Chinook

Known specs are:
IBU: 70
ABV: 6.5
OG: 1.068
Color: 8
ABW: 5.2

The citra hero uses an English ale yeast. So I was thinking of using s-04.

For hopping sched, warrior for bittering and the other three for some bittering and aroma mostly.

 

[youreanimpulse]

So I would think mostly pale with a small amount of aromatic for malt/color (look for another ipa recipe that used it for amount, I'm not sure) and 1/2-1 lb red wheat for head and color, unless you think it's wheat heavy. Hops will take experimentation, but all three in the last 15 mins with a generous whirlpool and dry hop will make it tasty.

 

[kombat]

BeerSmith is absolutely a great tool for designing recipes. I use it that way quite often - tweaking ingredients to obtain the profile I'm looking for. I would highly recommend that you read Ray Daniels' "Designing Great Beers"; it's a staple for understanding the various calculations that go into a beer recipe. But once you understand the theory, I don't see any benefit in painstakingly going through the exercise with each new recipe when BeerSmith will do the heavy lifting for you.

 

[redwing_al]

I've been using BeerSmith to clone and tweak existing recipies. None have I created; however, it would seem to me that you could do most anything. Be sure to build your equipment profiles and instead of trying to guess pounds of grains, etc, you look at what percentages of those grains make the most sense per the style?

Also, you can not use the sliders to make recipes adjustments as you would think, but you can certainly scale recipes and adjust them effectively with the tools in the top ribbon of the software.

download the trial and build your profiles, you may be pleased.. Also, there are hundreds of recipies in the beersmith.com site that connect to the beersmith app. This will allow you to download and scale the ones you like to your specific profile.

good luck!

 

[shaman1204]

So I would think mostly pale with a small amount of aromatic for malt/color (look for another ipa recipe that used it for amount, I'm not sure) and 1/2-1 lb red wheat for head and color, unless you think it's wheat heavy. Hops will take experimentation, but all three in the last 15 mins with a generous whirlpool and dry hop will make it tasty.

It's not wheat heavy, so the wheat is what will give it head retention and body? I was wondering since there was no carapils or anything.

I tried it in beersmith:

This is a for a 4 gallon recipe, I do full volume BIAB, so that's my max capacity at the moment.

4lbs 11oz - 2 row
2lbs 8oz - pale ale malt
1lbs 10oz - aromatic malt
1lbs 6oz - wheat malt

.52oz warrior - FWH

.52oz Amarillo, centennial & chinook - 10 min

.31oz Amarillo, cent & chi - steep/whirlpool 20 mins

.50oz Amarillo, cent & chi - dry hop 7 days

Ferment with safale English ale yeast s-04.

That hits all the above specs published about the IPA.

 

[xpops]

If you can't find a clone recipe to start from, it might make more sense to work from an existing recipe for a similar style, and then modify some of the ingredients to better match the style characteristics of the beer you're working towards.

Three pounds of Carafoam seems like an awful lot to me.

Maybe post the recipe that you're working on (and name the beer that you're trying to clone) and let some of the brewers here on the forum give you some input?

Hey Shaman,

I was trying to do the exact same thing looking for help yesterday

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/first-double-ipa-recipe-500754/

and people were very helpful. For example, I also learned that 3 lb of carafoam would definitely be excessive. good luck with your clone and I hope you get the help you need!!

cheers,

 

[m00ps]

What I mean is, if I'm trying to clone an ipa, and I know the grains used, hops, style of yeast, ABV, SRM, OG, IBU and FG, can I punch those into beersmith and use the slides to come up with the amounts needed for recipe?

For instance, for grains input 2 row, Vienna malt, carafoam, and crystal 90 malt, set the OG to 1.065 and beersmith comes up with the amounts of each grain needed?

Same for hops (with appropriate AA input): add a FWH, then flavor hops at 15, 10, 5, and 0 and set the IBU slide to 70 and have beersmith calculate the amount of hops to add at those times?

I tried and it came up with like a 3# amount for carafoam. I'm sorta new to brewing, but wouldn't this be a lot of that particular grain? I was able to adjust all the slides (OG, color, IBU and ABV) to nail all the known recipe numbers. I'm just not sure it will turn out. Thanks.

If you want a free web version, I use this site and its awesome. Its got a database with every malt, hop, and yeast I've ever used and you can even adjust stuff like a hops AA% or yeasts attenuation. I also like how it spits out the color estimation, and calories
https://brewgr.com/homebrew-recipe-calculator

 

[IslandLizard]

BeerSmith is wonderful for designing and tweaking recipes. Once you get used to the interface (that will take a lot of clicking and trial and error), and you know where to find all your controls, your imagination is the limit. I like the way you can manipulate the %-ages of each malt (or hops) so easily, or relative to each other, if that's what you prefer. Then scale the whole shebang up to the gravity or size batch you want to brew.

This is not to discourage you, in contrary, but to make you aware of what cloning and clone recipes are about, at least in MHO.
Some clones or clone recipes are close ingredient wise to the real thing, yet, many are close or not so close interpretations, often derived or developed by someone on his/her system. The one thing they all have in common, is that each process is so unique to a brewer's system, ingredients used, handling of the various parameters, and environment. In other words there are as many clones as there are brewers. And yours becomes another variation on that. You may very well discover you like your brew better than its commercial "master" it was derived from.

 

[youreanimpulse]

It's not wheat heavy, so the wheat is what will give it head retention and body? I was wondering since there was no carapils or anything.



I tried it in beersmith:



This is a for a 4 gallon recipe, I do full volume BIAB, so that's my max capacity at the moment.



4lbs 11oz - 2 row

2lbs 8oz - pale ale malt

1lbs 10oz - aromatic malt

1lbs 6oz - wheat malt



.52oz warrior - FWH



.52oz Amarillo, centennial & chinook - 10 min



.31oz Amarillo, cent & chi - steep/whirlpool 20 mins



.50oz Amarillo, cent & chi - dry hop 7 days



Ferment with safale English ale yeast s-04.



That hits all the above specs published about the IPA.

Looks good except I think the aromatic is high. I feel like I see people use like 8oz in these kinds of recipes, but again I haven't used it for an ipa. You could also just use 2-row rather than the two base malts. I would also double the steep and dry hop, just my preference for ipas, since I haven't had the beer in question I can't really be sure what it should be. Good luck!

 

[TopherM]

Check out this thread...no reason to recreate the wheel!

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/anti-hero-clone-attempt-467150/