Stop Worrying About Your Weight

[Poopsmitherson]

Brewers often use the weight of malt and hops when writing recipes, but this sometimes makes for confusion due to varying brewhouse efficiencies, batch sizes, and even units of measurement. I propose a different way to write recipes so that they may be universally understood and utilized.

https://brewublog.wordpress.com/stop-worrying-about-your-weight/

 

[sixhotdogneck]

History, recipe calculators, etc... have used the batch size/ingredient weight method.

Recipe calculators use this as it eliminates the ever present remainder when specifying percentages (i.e. specify first grain 75%, how is the remaining 25% calculated until it is specified, chicken/egg syndrome and really a computer user interface problem as the total weight must be known).

Historically homebrew recipes are 5 gallons (5 gallons fermentation buckets, mash/sparge setup with holes in the bottom of 5 gallon bucket) so many older recipes simply specify the weights due to history. Even today the when final volume is known, the weights of the grains are specified instead of percent.

Weights may also be easier to visualize for some and definitely needed when going to the homebrew store (can't just say I need 95% pilsner without getting a puzzled look).

Finally, when working with percentages the total weight of the grain bill must be known. 15 lbs of grain on your system might produce an 8% beer where on my system it might produce a 2% beer.

 

[mongoose33]

It's not just weight--it's water, amount of water, mash temp, pH--there are many things that make the same recipe produce different outcomes.

And from a bittering perspective, I don't think it's news that people should adjust hops for alpha acids.

On a homebrew front--and especially for newbies for whom there are already a lot of variables to consider--one can go too far with this efficiency approach. It's a more advanced element of brewing, and certainly something with which those brewing for profit must concern themselves, but for the rest, is it all that important? Probably not so much.

I just brewed a hazy IPA with a codged-together recipe based on something I found online, trying to clone Sierra Nevada's Hazy Little Thing. I changed the malt bill (added some Maris Otter where the original said only 2-row), and the hop bill is different due to lack of availability here as well as personal taste (I don't care for Mosaic hops much, cut down the proportion by 50 percent). But I still expect the beer to turn out, and be good, even though it might not perfectly match the flavor expectations I have for it.

If repeatability is the goal, then some of the measurement things are important. But at my local level, I *can* repeat. It's the portability of a recipe that's the issue, IMO, given differences in malt, hop availability, AA%, water, etc. etc.

If this IPA turns out, I'll probably post the recipe, with my caveats.

 

[bleme]

If someone wants to write all their recipes in % format, that's fine for them but it really bugs me when someone tries to tell me how I should write my recipes. If something isn't clear to you, then ask!

The argument that some brewers are too stupid to convert pounds to kg in the age of Google is ridiculous.

I also think it is silly to require recipes to be written with such precision that they can be replicated exactly. It is NEVER going to be exact on any other system. 'Close enough' counts in hand-grenades and homebrewing.

When I see a recipe that looks interesting, I plug it into BeerSmith, which is tuned to my system. I look at the predicted results and tweak if necessary to get my desired results. A newbie might not be able to do this, because they are going to have trouble envisioning an outcome. That's why we always recommend that newbies brew a recipe as-is first, and adjust from there. We actually learn more from failures (or not-quite-perfects) than we do from our successes.

 

[charger]

Calm down, nobody is requiring anybody to change anything, ha. Some of the complaints in the above comments were directly called out in the blog, so I’m not sure some of y’all actually read it or not. Maybe you did.

I think for the purpose of sharing recipes, it makes perfect sense to utilize percentage, IBU, oz/gal type units. From there, one can easily plug in their typical efficiency (however they calculate that), volume (either end of boil or in the fermentor), etc that matches their system and get a closer representation of the shared recipe. Instead of building someone else’s recipe then scaling it in terms of efficiency, volume, etc.

No one would expect you to walk into a shop and say I need 75% this malt. The intent is to use the shared recipe and fit to your system, then locate ingredients. Brewersfriends has added this approach in recipe calculation and it can help depending on how a recipe is shared.

Sure we don’t want to change because this is how we’ve done it and we are used to this way on converting recipes. But there appears to be an easier way, and that is how the blog laid it out. I don’t expect that to catch on, but IMO the attempts to knock it fall short on a practical standpoint.

I like sharing recipes in the manner the blog laid out because it mitigates further questions. You don’t need to know how much water I used or my efficiency. No need to hit google for conversion calculators.

 

[GoeHaarden]

I don't know why, but I always hate opening a thread and its someone who wants me to go to their blog.

Sorry, your opening statement wasn't strong enough for my traffic...

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

tl;dr? Interesting idea, but perhaps the wrong audience.

Like @charger notes, I could see this as an approach for that recipe software would use to help people exchange recipes. @charger notes that Brewersfriend already has this (I'll trust him on this as I don't use brewers friend). So selling the idea to other providers of recipe software may speed up the use of this technique for those who wish to share recipes this way.

Beyond that, one of Gordon Strong's books has a chapter that offers advice on how to identify and attempt to fix missing recipe information. And John Palmer has a whole book on how to identify missing brewing information (aka learning how to brew).