Recipes by ratios

[petemoss]

Hey guys,

So I watched a youtube video interview of a pro brewer. This guy said that he won't even talk to someone if they describe a recipe in terms of pounds and ounces of grain. Rather he likes for the recipe to be described in terms of ratios or percentages. Like 84% 2 row, 10% Vienna, 6% Chocolate, or whatever. This way you can compare what you are getting as far as the recipe goes and you can scale it to whatever size you want.

This made a lot of sense to me as far as thinking about a recipe. What I don't get is how you evaluate the parts of the recipe that are not grain. For example, if you have x amount of hop1 and y amount of hop2. Those are specific amounts (ounces in a five gallon batch for example). When you put it in terms of this ratio based recipe I don't understand how you could describe the hops or any other additions that you may be doing. At least I don't see how you could do it and maintain this generic batch-size-less way of describing a recipe.

Does anyone have any thoughts on describing recipes by percentage and/or how you would describe the full recipe in these terms, including hop additions?

Thanks

 

[saltymirv]

Boil hop additions are often described in the time added and IBU contribution. For dry hops, its described as the ratio of pounds/bbl. That way its scale-able to other systems

 

[petemoss]

Thanks saltymriv, that makes sense.