What the heck am I doing wrong?

[MDB]

This is a continuation of my problems with numbers from beersmith with a porter recipe. Really, I have 13lbs plugged in total for grain, 9lbs of pale extract and 4 lbs specialty grains and with 2.25 oz hops -- only 1.75 oz of which is during boil rest at flameout out yet I have IBU at 48. That's not even the recipe I came up with converting from an all grain which had more hops. Does that sound way off to you pros or what? This is on top of my OG/FG problems posted earlier ... I need a mentor......

 

[lumpher]

first: what hops, what alpha? second: how long on the boil?

 

[mmonacel]

also what's the OG?

 

[Draken]

This is a continuation of my problems with numbers from beersmith with a porter recipe. Really, I have 13lbs plugged in total for grain, 9lbs of pale extract and 4 lbs specialty grains and with 2.25 oz hops -- only 1.75 oz of which is during boil rest at flameout out yet I have IBU at 48. That's not even the recipe I came up with converting from an all grain which had more hops. Does that sound way off to you pros or what? This is on top of my OG/FG problems posted earlier ... I need a mentor......

Full boil or partial? What are your hops you are planning on using? Amount and time? I see your other thread, but how about you post the full recipe here so others don't have to go searching.

 

[MDB]

SOrry -- here's the whole recipe, and I put back in hops that I had taken out previous to the post. Backstory is this is a conversion from an all grain that I did on beersmith, and I have a feeling that while converting may be as easy as hitting the convert button, converting and then adjusting to make sense in an extract environment is not so easy.

Boil Size: 3.10 gal
Post Boil Volume: 2.60 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal
Bottling Volume: 4.60 gal
Estimated OG: 1.069 SG
Estimated Color: 47.8 SRM
Estimated IBU: 68.0 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 0.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
1 lbs 8.0 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (3.0 SRM) Grain 1 11.3 %
1 lbs 3.0 oz Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM) Grain 2 8.9 %
1 lbs Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 3 7.5 %
6.1 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM) Grain 4 2.9 %
4.0 oz Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM) Grain 5 1.9 %
0.99 oz Nugget [13.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 6 28.2 IBUs
9 lbs Pale Liquid Extract [Boil for 30 min](8. Extract 7 67.6 %
0.74 oz Hallertauer [4.80 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 8 4.7 IBUs
0.74 oz Willamette [5.50 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 9 5.4 IBUs
0.25 oz Hallertauer [4.80 %] - Aroma Steep 0.0 m Hop 10 0.0 IBUs
0.25 oz Willamette [5.50 %] - Aroma Steep 0.0 mi Hop 11 0.0 IBUs
1.0 pkg English Ale (White Labs #WLP002) [35.49 Yeast 12 -

 

[sudsmcgee]

What bitterness units: Rager; tinseth?

 

[duboman]

When you are doing your conversion are you also taking into account a possible change in your equipment profile and any changes that need to be made to that set up. Everything that Beersmith calculates directly correlates to the equipment set up and if you do not make those changes your conversions will be off. In addition, in the conversion process there are certain default settings that can be changed as well like type of base malt to use instead of extract, etc.

As stated above you need to differentiate between full boils and partials, top off water, etc. In addition, just because you select a certain hop in the recipe you need to verify the actual AAU values being used as what you are seeing in the recipe may be different than the default value in Beersmith for that ingredient.

 

[MDB]

Re what bitterness units -- whatever the beersmith default is.

As for conversion equipment adjustment, I thought I dialed it in fairly well but who knows?

 

[Draken]

So the issue is you are doing a partial boil. If you were doing a full boil it calculates to about 60 IBU. With a partial using the volumes you've listed it's only coming in around 37 IBUs. The issue is the hops utilization with a smaller boil is lower. So you will need to step up to a larger boil or add more hops.

 

[yancydc]

I've never tried a beersmith conversation before, but is it possible the original recipe was contemplating a mash of your 4 lbs of specialty grains, so the OG would be higher? That would balance out the bitterness, I'd imagine.

Why not just cut down on the nugget until you reach the IBU you're trying to hit? That's a pretty high AA, so I don't see any reason to use a full ounce. I did a porter recently with a half ounce, and I think the AA was even lower (but your OG is higher).

 

[duboman]

Re what bitterness units -- whatever the beersmith default is.

As for conversion equipment adjustment, I thought I dialed it in fairly well but who knows?

In other words: if the beersmith default for a particular hop is different than the actual than the IBU calculation will be off

For equipment: if you dialed in your normal equipment profile and then converted the recipe the software may have changed the equipment profile to the default for the converted type of recipe instead of your dialed in profile, something to check as well

Third is the efficiency settings may have changed without you realizing it also.

In short while the conversion feature is a great tool there are a lot of things that happen in the background that you may not be aware of. For example, I brew larger than 5 gallon batches so if I take someone else's 5 gallon recipe I need to enter it in with a different profile corresponding to the size of the batch, then scale it but also have to change the equipment profile so it scales properly. If I were to enter the recipe under my equipment profile then scale it, some items don't scale properly because my profile is different, hope that makes sense