Scaling beers up and down.

[joshesmusica]

Just started thinking about if scaling is an exact science or not. I've got a "pilot" brew in bottles right now for a beer I'm planning on brewing for a friend's wedding. I originally made the beer as a 25L batch. Thinking I would just multiply by 5 when I go to brew, and then just round off the numbers. My test batch was 8L, so I just scaled it down using beersmith.

But now I'm wondering if I can even do this scaling down and still get the same product since beersmith doesn't technically scale by the amount in the ingredients, but by the numbers that the ingredients should output (gravity, ibu, color, etc.). I know one aspect of scaling a recipe is knowing your new system's numbers, but as far as the ingredients go, how far off could the beer be if I simply multiply the 25L batch numbers by 5? Or should I take the time to make a new system profile at the larger scale, and just use the "stock" numbers from beersmith? which idea will likely get me closest to the actual beer I'm wanting?

I've never brewed on this system, although the guy I'm brewing with has done so for many years. But because it's not my system, I can't simply plug the numbers from the system into beersmith.

 

[Weezy]

What you're talking about is the efficiencies of the different systems, and your concerns are correct that brewing the scaled up recipe on the new system could result in a different beer if the efficiencies vary much.

Beersmith is right. Scaling the recipe for a larger batch, is as simple as increasing the quantities of ingredients, but you'd really need to also adjust the assumed efficiency of the brewhouse. Since your friend knows the bigger rig, ask what his efficiency % is and compare that to yours, then adjust in the software using the big rig number,