blancasterb,

It looks fine to me. The rye gives it a bit of spiciness. Try using our own BIABacus spreadsheet. you can switch between metric and gallons at the mouse click. Just plug in your information and brew. I am not a expert but I am sure someone else can point you in the right direction. Good luck!

Hi there Brandon and welcome to the forum ,

The first thing we need to do is check out whether the recipe you want to copy has integrity.... Okay, just spent well over half an hour checking this recipe out as I haven't looked at the Brewer's Friend site in detail for a while.

What I'm seeing in this recipe Brandon is a combination of input errors by the original brewer plus some hop bitterness estimate formula errors by Brewer's Friend.

I've actually spent about an hour on this now because I wanted to be able to get this recipe to work for you but I just can't. The volume numbers make no sense no matter how much I play with them Brandon. And, this is the problem we currently have in the brewing world. Thousands upon thousand of recipes are out there and more are added every day that simply can't be scaled or copied.

Anyway, don't take the above as a negative, take it as a positive . Instead of brewing that recipe (if you can call it that) and ending up with some beer that could be wildly different from what you want, let us know what sort of beer you like/want and we can then see if we can go through a sensible process to design it for you and your equipment.

As for The Calculator and metric versus US, the Calculator has been replaced by The BIABacus. The BIABacus displays both metric and US but requires a metric input at this stage. This means a bit of fiddling about on some of the input numbers. I'll attach a BIABacus file of this recipe here in case you or anyone else wants to have a play with the recipe and/or try and make sense of it.


PP

P.S. Bob might be better on the intuitive side of this sort of stuff and might be able to tweak the above file to a good recipe for you.

blancasterb,

How do I contact Bob?

Send me a PM. Click the button on the bottom of the post!

The hops have all sorts of numbers on them that you HAVE to get EXACTLY right? Don't bother about it. Just match the name of the hops and you are in the ballpark. Don't get up tight on any of this EXACT stuff except temperatures. The amounts of grain are easy to get right and if you don't have the exact grain you can substitute a close or similar grain. If you can't find a close match? So what. The beer will be good and your friends getting free beer won't know the difference? This is suppose to be fun? If you are a scientist than there are other brewers here that can help you.

Horseshoes and hand grenades. Close enough is good enough! Follow BIABacus and you can't go wrong. Just don't worry about being exact unless you really have a good recipe that is winning awards around the world and you want to repeat (exactly) next time.

Relax and have a home brew!

I am a practising pseudo-scientist.

... Will be posting a file for Brandon to look at shortly.

Hey Brandon, I used PP's file, that he put so much time on. Wow, that recipe on the web, I can't see how you could get that OG out of that, impossible. To get you going on your first BIAB, I would suggest you make this beer because you bought the ingredients already and you said via PM, you would get more ingredients and wanted to make 5 gallons instead.

So what I have done...
You want a 1.072 OG beer that is hoppy, you got it. The BIABacus is a recipe designer, calculator and scaler.

I set 'your equipment' in Section B and X as per my settings. The 'capacity' limit with zero headspace is considered by me to be the welded seam.

Set VIF to 20.7 L

Set the OG to 1.072 in Section C

Set IBU to 92 Tinseth in Section D and your Mount Hood to 6.1%

Other comments...
I would mash at 150F for 90 mins. and a mash-out at 170F for 10 mins.

Reply back on this thread so we all can follow along.

Blancasterb,

Also what is EBC in the grain bill?

I am to lazy to write (type) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Reference_Method

In short it shows the color (darkness) of the beer. Look at the chart there!

BLANCASTERB - I haven't downloaded your file, so sorry if I have misunderstood, but if you mean; what are the EBC values I need to enter in section "c", then you need to fill in the values on the left with what the original recipe had, and on the right with what you have.

The BIABacus is thoroughly modern & therefore used SI units
Seriously though, if you open your file and use the tabs on the bottom & go to "unit conversion", on the right second down is "colour conversion".

The section "C" OG, is for scaling an existing recipe, so you definately will need to know that & enter it for correct scaling.
If you then want to create your own recipe, just use "for this batch though use an OG" and enter what you would like your gravity to be.
You can also use this if you like the ingredients in a recipe but want to make it stronger/weaker etc.

blancasterb wrote: I think im trying to make this harder than what it really is.....
What I think I see:
Increasing
Pale Ale 2 row from 6 to 9.75lbs
Rye from 3 to 4.88lbs
Caramel from .5 to .81 lbs
Carapils from .5 to .81 lbs

Columbus from .75 to 1.26
Columbus from .5 to .84
Mount Hood from 1 to 1.29
Mount Hood from 1 to 1.29
Columbus from 1.25 to 2.10

That's right, the BIABacus has scaled the recipe on the right hand side of Section C and D.

blancasterb wrote: Im going start off with 8.60 gallons of water in my keggle.
I will bring it up to strike temp at 157.5f
I will put all my grains in the bag this should drop the temp to appox 150f
I will cover and mash for 90 min adding heat when necessary.
Once 90 min has passed I will pull the bag and squeeze it all out?
Then bring to a gentle boil, and start my timed hops additions.
with whirlfloc at the end.

Your strike temp. may be different, it's based on the grain temp. Enter your grain temp. in Section E

blancasterb wrote: Now here is an issue, I don't know that I can get my fermentation temp down to 62f as I do not have a converted freezer/fridge 68 is probably the best I can do.
Will that be ok?

68F F is the warmest you should go, adjust file to read 68 F.

blancasterb wrote: I also have 2 packs of safale us-05 dry yeast
I found a pitching calculator, and since im not using a starter, it showed that I needed nearly 2 packs to have enough yeast cells for this beer (with the original recipe)

More than one pack is needed, that's right.

blancasterb wrote: the water part confuses me too,
it says i need 8.60 gal for total water needed
but strike gallons is 8.78?
Mash volume is 10.24? (I assume that is water + grains)

What that is telling us is that water expands when heated from the TWN to the SWN. Mash volume, yes that's right too.

blancasterb wrote: I don't know what all the rest of the stuff is or what I do with it...
again thanks for all the assistance with this. Im glad that there are people willing to help

Remember, that I set your kettle capacity to my settings, so you can measure your starting water (TWN) to 7.5 inches of kettle headspace, as in Section T (from the welded seam).

The other 'stuff';
After you pull your bag and squeeze you should have 8.61 inches of headspace (VIB) and a gravity of 1.059 (GIB).

After 60 mins. of boiling the BIABacus is predicting, by default, an evaporation rate. Your headspace should be at 10.3 inches at flame-out (VFO), that gravity should be at a 1.072 (GAW). Grab a sample of wort at VFO, cool it and take a reading, it's the same as GAW.

If you were to take only one set of measurements, I would take the final OG and it's corresponding volume. That's the most important one of all.

Does this make any sense?

Yes, that's right. And you can then add to that, from the weld to the opening, because you can't measure down in there when it's hot.

I use a sight glass;

6/28/2013 by Mad Scientist Brewhaus, on Flickr

blancasterb,

When the beer is done and you've happy with it. We will send you our address so you can send out our share's. Good luck and many successful brews to you!

I just want to do a post here on the "Brewing Classic Styles" recipes.

These recipes are what I would regard as among the highest integrity recipes available anywhere but there could be one hiccough that we need to be aware of and that the BIABacus can easily solve.

As I just mentioned in another post, I suspect the BCS recipes are great if done as extract recipes but when we BIAB brewers convert them to all-grain, I think there is a possibility that they are coming in under-hopped. This will be less noticeable, possibly even unimportant, in less hoppy styles and vice versa.

For example, I have scored several silver medals on lazily brewed Munich Helles and Dortmunder Exports using pretty much the same recipe as in BCS. Any negative comments related to some lack of hops. I have also brewed the English IPA and this came in very under-hopped and caused me to think on this whole thing more.

I have just brewed something close to the BCS American IPA but have done the correction explained below. More feedback and brewing will be needed to know what the right way to go is. I think my suggestion below is probably a very safe one though...

Converting BCS Recipes

Depending on which BIABacus version you are using, type in 22.7 litres for EOBV-A (PR1.3) or VAW (later versions such as PR1.3I - see here) found on the first line of Section D. Now look at the IBU value given in the book. Type that value into the second line of Section D. This will almost always increase the weight of hops in the 'What you will use...' column on the right hand side of Section D.

To Cut A long Story Short

Copying the IBU value of Brewing Classic Styles recipes into the 'Please just set my Desired IBU's (Tinseth) to:' box on the second line of Section D is probably the best way to go.

Rager versus Tinseth

It is often said that the Rager IBU estimation formula (as used in BCS) works better for extract and that Tinseth works better for all-grain. I have never seen anything written on why though. Here is what I suspect...

Rager tends to give a higher value than Tinseth on almost all recipes and, if you stop and think about the difference between an extract and all-grain brew, there actually should be a big difference in hop utilisation. Extract brews are much cleaner boils than all-grains. In our all-grain brews we have a lot of solids that hop compounds can attach to and be pulled out of the wort. In other words, any extract recipe we are asked to brew as all-grain, we should be using more hops.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the last sentence above is absolutely correct and there could be a very big difference in hop utilisation - possibly 25-30%.

Anyway, many of you know here already that all of the hop estimate formulas are very primitive. The above though adds yet another layer of primitiveness I never thought of before.


PP

[EDIT: I recently listened to a podcast by Jamil and John that mention that all-grain recipes will have lower hop utilisation, so there you go.]

Looks like you filled out most of it properly to me.

- co2 volumes for this style are 2.3-2.6 (quick google search). Enter this in Sec H., then fill out keg volume in sec. Q. Then it'll spit out a psi number for you, which is close to 8. My guess is the 8 you entered is for psi.

- You'll need to fix the temps in sec. G. Minor data entry errors on your part there, the BIABacus wants C not F.
- Maybe add the colour information.
- Note that torrified wheat has higher moisture content than the default setting of 4% (Briess says it's 8.5%). You adjust this in Sec. Y. Not that it changes much, it's just good habit to always look at these things .. IMO.
- my gut tells me your kettle efficiency will be better than the predicted 75% on BT. I assume they mean Kettle Efficiancy, considering when I override the BIABacus in sec.X the grain bill matches the original recipe. The BIABacus is telling you 84% for this gravity beer @ full volume mash. This is why your grains are less than the original recipe.
- Mashing at 150 might increase attenuation, but this is just a guess as I have no experience with that yeast. I generally get well over 80% for US-05, and about 80% for S-04 when mashing at 149. Just mentioning this for consideration, not a huge deal.

With all of that said, I don't really see a recipe with great integrity here, but you're doing well for all the available information. Seems like a decent starting point, if anything.

Assuming Batch Size on BrewToad typically means EOBV-A (or VAW in the newer BIABacus versions), and that GI is using tinseth to calculate IBU's ... I'd say you're good to go.

bworek1 wrote: First off thank you. I adjust the information in section Y like you stated. Also, you stated that my grain totals were less than the original recipe. I am showing the opposite in section D.

I think you mean Sec. C? This is because the original batch size is 5G. Yours is 6.12G, scaling up needs more ingredients.

- Delete tinseth information in Sec. D. Type in 18.93L in Sec. D's I'm copying recipe from external source in its place.
- Type in 16.21L in Sec B's Desired VIF. (This brings EOBV-A to 5G "batch size")
- Erase Sec. Y information.
- override kettle efficiency (set it to 75% in sec. X to match recipe, predicted 84% will need less grain.)

Now you'll see that all of the hop information is balanced from one side to the next although IBU's go a bit higher than you had them. Trivial amount, IMO.

You will also see that the grain bill matches the original recipe now that the volumes are the same. Whether intentional or not, you scaled the recipe to produce more beer, correctly. This is why the BIABacus is awesome.