Scaling a Published Recipe in Beersmith - The Easy Way

[geoffm33]

Hat tip to iaefebs for this tip. When a poster asked how to scale down a recipe from an 8bbl system without knowing the specifics of the original system, the answer was "You just need to know your system".

I used to create an equipment profile to match the recipe, enter the recipe, then scale to my equipment profile. Maybe I'm the only one who did that, but at any rate, this way is easy.

If you need to scale a recipe up or down in Beersmith from a recipe you've found in a magazine or online, follow these simple steps.

1) Start a new recipe in Beersmith and set the style appropriately

2) Choose your equipment profile

3) Enter the grain/hops exactly as instructed in the recipe

4) Click Adj Gravity and enter the gravity from the recipe. This will scale the grain to match your system.

5) Click Adj Bitterness and enter the IBU's from the recipe. This will scale the hops to match your system.


*** NOTES ***

* I am sure this method would work in any software that allows scaling.

* If there are other item in specific quantities that are not hops or fermentables, then this method won't work for those additions.

* I've tested scaling several recipes with this method and it works great. If there is a flaw in the methodology, please let me know and I can update the process above.

 

[iaefebs]

Thanks for the Hat tip Geoff, this is the method I use for grain bills in percentages also. If a grain bill is 75% base grain I enter it as 75#, 15.5% crystal is 15.5#, 2.6% is 2.6# etc.... This is why I prefer grain bills in percentages. With so many different recipes for different batch sizes with different efficiencies the only info needed is grain pct., SG, and IBU. I can adjust the hops to AAU of the hops I have.

 

[farmskis]

Thanks for the Hat tip Geoff, this is the method I use for grain bills in percentages also. If a grain bill is 75% base grain I enter it as 75#, 15.5% crystal is 15.5#, 2.6% is 2.6# etc.... This is why I prefer grain bills in percentages. With so many different recipes for different batch sizes with different efficiencies the only info needed is grain pct., SG, and IBU. I can adjust the hops to AAU of the hops I have.

These are the values you enter into the Beersmith and then use the adj gravity and adj bitterness buttons to scale to your batch size like the original poster?

 

[iaefebs]

These are the values you enter into the Beersmith and then use the adj gravity and adj bitterness buttons to scale to your batch size like the original poster?

For grains yes.

Hops are a little more work since AAU vary by the years since the recipe was published and I'll swap out certain varieties. But if you get a decent recipe you can get pretty close with the percentages and then make the adjustment with the adjust bitterness button.

 

[Croyzen]

How do you "create an equipment profile to match the recipe?" I have a few different equipment profiles defined depending on different batches sizes and methods (BIAB vs MLT). There is no thought of any recipe when creating this profile but rather values for volumes, boil off, losses, specific heat, dead space, etc. The equipment profile is created and tweaked with brewing experience on that system.

When finding a recipe I either enter it, pull one from the beersmith cloud, import it, etc and then simply scale the recipe by selecting "scale recipe" and then selecting one of my defined equipment profiles. Everything stays the same and it's scaled down to whatever size is defined in the selected profile. I always thought the adjust gravity and bitterness were an after the fact to tweak on your system? I'm probably reading this wrong! I think I'm doing it your original way or "hard" way. I like having a copy of the original recipe, size and all, for reference so I save the original in BS and then scale down the hard way and save that also.

 

[iaefebs]

Croyzen, I don't "create an equipment profile to match the recipe." I use my system to scale a recipe to fit my profile. I just played a bit with the "scale recipe" feature you mentioned. I'm going to have to check it out more. It looks like BS may have added the feature in 2.0 and I never noticed it. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[iaefebs]

So far from what I see is that I would need to create a new equipment profile to match the recipe. Then convert it to my profile. Check the original post https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/beersmith-scale-down-467167/

Can you make it work with the scale button? I'm multi tasking so I can't do it complete justice at the moment.

 

[geoffm33]

How do you "create an equipment profile to match the recipe?" I have a few different equipment profiles defined depending on different batches sizes and methods (BIAB vs MLT). There is no thought of any recipe when creating this profile but rather values for volumes, boil off, losses, specific heat, dead space, etc. The equipment profile is created and tweaked with brewing experience on that system.

When finding a recipe I either enter it, pull one from the beersmith cloud, import it, etc and then simply scale the recipe by selecting "scale recipe" and then selecting one of my defined equipment profiles. Everything stays the same and it's scaled down to whatever size is defined in the selected profile. I always thought the adjust gravity and bitterness were an after the fact to tweak on your system? I'm probably reading this wrong! I think I'm doing it your original way or "hard" way. I like having a copy of the original recipe, size and all, for reference so I save the original in BS and then scale down the hard way and save that also.

That was the way I used to do it. Likely entirely unnecessary.

When you import from the BS cloud, it already includes the recipe creators equipment profile and efficiency, so scaling it works well. Without knowing what efficiency the recipe creator used, you may not end up in the same place. By using the adjust OG/IBU, you will use your systems efficiency to land at the exact amounts of grain/hops as the recipe.

As I mentioned in my OP, I may not have been doing it the right way to start But this does seem easier. And it's flexible enough to use bare minimum of info to get the recipe.

Like:

43.5% 2 Row
34.8% Maris Otter
8.7% Crystal 20
8.7% Crystal Rye
4.3% Dextrine

OG 1.054

You can enter

43.5lbs 2 Row
34.8lbs Maris Otter
8.7lbs Crystal 20
8.7lbs Crystal Rye
4.3lbs Dextrine

Then Adjust OG to 1.054 to get the grains weights needed for your system/efficiency.

 

[Croyzen]

That looks interesting. I'm stuck in my ways. Once I think I know how to do something I don't like to jinx it! I will look at this process the next time I enter something in manually which I do a lot.

While I can make the recipe parts work out for me, the mash and strike temp data is something I check against with other online calculators. I batch sparge using Denny's method and it's easier for me to just manually calculate it than to get bs to work for me. No matter what I set in my equipment profile and mash profile I just can't get it to work as easy as onebeer's batch sparge calculator. For instance, no option for mash infusion water and no option to display equal first and second runnings.