Paudle, your last version of The Calculator looks great . Only correction is on the grain bill sheet, you can get rid of the 3175 in Cell D6. The Calculator only needs the percentage or the weight of the grain, not both.

The only worry now is your kettle size being too small for the batch size originally proposed. There are quite a few ways around this. One is to just brew a lot less but you'd have to knock down your brew length from 11.36 L to about 7 L .

Another option is to get another 16 L pot if they are cheap and you have two burners on your stovetop capable of heating them. Make two bags and just split the entire brew in two.

Otherwise, to get the 11.36 L of this high gravity beer, you are going to have to employ about every Maxi-BIAB technique that exists - a bucket for sparging, another saucepan (large), higher gravity initial wort and dilutions during and after the boil . I think when it gets to this stage, the time, effort, mess and general fiddliness makes it an extreme brewing exercise.

So, I think the first two options are only two practical options for you, especially on a first run and with this fairly big beer.


PP

Paudle,don,t worry too much about fermentation activity for while.it can take anywhere from 3 to 36 hrs. Good luck,where are you in Wild Rose Country?

Lacombe

So, it's all happening Paudle . Congratulations . That must have been a long brew day but a sensible way to go given the kettle size . A second kettle and bag or a larger kettle will make life much easier. Hope all went smoothly enough though .

Hi there peterjim and welcome to the forum ,

That's great info you have supplied above . I want to check a few things with BobBrews first and then will get back to you so give us a day or two.


PP

peterjim,

My kettle diameter is 14 inches (36 cm) 42 quart (40 liter) and my fermenter is a 5.5 gallon (21 liter) glass carboy. I would like to finish with about 4.5 - 5 gallons (17 - 19 liter)

I finish in at about 4.5 - 5 gallons. The vigor of boil and humidity cause some differences. If I am in the mood I might add some boiled water to the fermenter to top it off? In regard to the AA% of the hops. I never look at it. I grab whatever is on the shelf at my local home brew supply shop. I also interchange hops if short on the preferred hops. I am a brewer who doesn't worry about the small stuff but seems to win the big stuff (awards)? This is a very forgiving recipe so you can look for charts to substitute hops without worry.

This recipe is the starting place for many (tweaked) recipes that I have won awards with. But please try it "as is" to enjoy a great beer. Pat will be able to help better with the technical points (that includes math, measuring, recording results) that I try not to deal with. I have killed many brain cells with this beer and aim to kill a few more today! If you have any questions that you want me to answer please ask.

Pat will help convert this as soon as he wakes up? (sobers up?)

Good on you Bob!

That's a mighty beer for sure .

Peterjim

I've made a few guesses on this due to Bob's atrocious record-keeping . But, as he says, a good recipe has lots of leeway so there is no need to be scared of doing a bit of guessing. I've put the recipe into the Calculator using typical Alpha Acid percentages of the hops in the recipe. I've also assumed that when Bob says he finishes with 4.5 -5 gallons, he means at the end of the boil.

The first sheet of The Calculator tells you how much water to use. The right hand side of the second and third sheets shouw you how much grain and hops to use.

I've set it up so that you should get 18 litres of beer into bottles. You can change this number (cell B3 on the first sheet) and everything else will scale to suit.

Maybe have a look at the file and then let me know if you have some more questions.


PP

PP,

I knew that if I waited around long enough you would fill my recipe out for me! Thanks for the download! I may have to give you my amended recipe so that I don't have to do it either. Somehow I doubt that you will fall for it again? The amended recipe is the one I used on the episode of Basic Brewing Radio with Shibolet. Wait! Maybe I could just amend the spreadsheet myself? Damn! You tricked me! Sneaky Aussie!

Hope I got the above mostly right Bob. I might even brew this monster

Crazy Aussie.

PP,

I tried the calculator with my "Black Bear Black IPA". As expected my pea sized brain didn't get it right. I added the tweaked grain bill but when you get the chance look at the recipe and tell me what I did wrong. This is the latest version of the black IPA that I originally stole from Northern Brewer's website. This is not a beer to drink when cutting the lawn. It's a drink I sip at night and let warm a bit. It is better if you let it sit a month but I can't. Oh Pat! Where is the APV on the Biabacus? Thanks!

Bob, I reckon you have done a fine job on that . And, you do realise that this is the first recipe I have seen where all the grain and hop rows have been used up!

The only things I can see that need a fix are..

1. The bit I put in on "Dry Hops" (Hop Bill - Row 16) has an AA% of 11.0%. That doesn't really matter as they are dry hops but it doesn't say what those dry hops were. (Is the Cascade below the dry hop used?)

2. On Row 17 (the last Cascade entry), the time needs to be changed to 0.1 and the AA % needs a value in column K so as the hop will scale properly. I'm assuming this might be the dry hop addition. If so, we need to get rid of the "Dr Hops" line above it.)

I've changed these on the attached sheet. Everything else looks great. You sound though as you think you have made an error somewhere. I'm wondering what bit is worrying you?

Oh, and what's APV?


PP

PP,

Thanks for the help. Oh, and the APV was suppose to be ABV (Alcohol By Volume) However I can't type as well as spell. I always wanted to find out the ABV of this beer. I have resorted to taking readings. I have two fermenters sitting with this beer. One came in at 1.092 and the other 1.087. I boiled one slightly longer. Be interesting to see where they bottom out?

You sure, you aren't worried about anything else? You didn't sound too confident in your other post . Once we have that cascade/dry hop question sorted, all will be great.

As for ABV, there is no calculation in the existing Calculator sorry . It is in the BIABacus though .

The formula is a nice easy one...

(Original Gravity - Final Gravity) * 1000 * 0.129

So, if you started at 1.075 and finished at 1.018 then your ABV would be estimated as...

(1.075-1.018)*1000*0.129 = 7.4%

A nightcap in other words ,
PP

Hi there cazadoro and welcome to the forum ,

Lots of good questions there. I'm heading out the door shortly but will try and get a few out of the way now.

Doubling the Ingredients for a Double Batch

This is sort of right but some adjustments are needed. We can come back to this later.

Maxi-BIAB

Maxi-BIAB can be thought of as one or more of the following techniques...

1. Diluting the wort - This can be done anywhere from pre-boil to the fermentor. Some limits apply. Depending on at what stage you add it and how much, you don't necessarily need a second vessel. Any wort dilution means some sort of loss in efficiency.

2. Sparging the Grain - This generally requires a second (sometimes a third) vessel and more mucking around/labour. The advantage is that if you sparge instead of dilute, there is no loss in efficiency.

For example, in the case of this recipe which you want to get 10 gallons into the fermentor from a 10 gallon kettle, you could add 2.5 gallons pre-boil and then dilute the two fermentors by another 1.25 gallons each. This is easy however, instead of using say 21 pounds of grain, you will need 25 pounds.

If you sparges with those 6 gallons (2.5 + 1.25 +1.25), you have the extra work and need a second vessel and heat source but you'll only need 21 pounds of grain. (In fact, you couldn't sparge with the whole 5 gallons as your kettle wouldn't handle the resulting volume.)

So, the first question is, "Do you want to sparge, just dilute or a bit of both?"

The Northern Brewer Recipe

These lack some details unfortunately. Can you look up their site and see what Alpha Acid values they have for their Goldings, Liberty and Williamette hops? We'll need to know this to scale the recipe to some degree of accuracy.

...

Once you have the answer to the above two questions, we can work out some numbers for you to work with.


PP

Okay cazadero, that's perfect info to get us under way .

This recipe raises a few interesting points so I'll have to write a bit here...

The Recipe Itself

The recipe itself lacks a lot of critical information required for copying/scaling. For example, there is no easy way to work out the End of Boil Volume (EOBV) of the original recipe which is the most critical figure of all. There are no volume figures at all in the PDF. If an Efficiency onto Kettle (EIK) figure was provided or perhaps some defined total IBU figure, we could take a guess at what the EOBV figure is. As you've seen. not even the individual hop AA%'s are provided.

There is no need to get hung up about this, it's just a good thing to be aware of. I've had a play around and I believe that 5.5 gallons makes the most sense for the EOBV for this recipe.

How I Have Scaled this Recipe

Because this is a Maxi-BIAB recipe, the easiest way for me to work all this out is to use the beta version we have of the BIABacus. Unfortunately I can't publish the spreadsheet here as yet as some reports and the help have to be completed before publication. I can however give you a recipe report which is the main thing you need.

Your Brew Management

The first thing is to reduce your trub as much as possible. The easiest way to do this is to rinse your BIAB bag after the mash so as you can use it as a hop sock during the boil. This will lower your trub losses considerably. (See last pic of this post)

Assuming you use the hop sock, to achieve a Volume into Fermentor (VIF) of 10 gallons (2 x 5) from your 15 gallon kettle, there are two choices...

To make things comfortable, you'll have to hold back about 3.5 gallons from the mash. You can either dilute or sparge this. If you dilute, you will need a grain bill of 353 ounces versus 323 ounces if you sparge that 3.5 gallons.

I would definitely just go the dilution method. You should be able to fit that entire 3.5 gallons into your kettle before the boil starts. Easy . I am going to assume you will take this route.

If You Did Choose to Sparge

That is very handy that you have a few different size kettles . Let's say you wanted to double-batch a recipe with a much higher OG. Then it probably would be worth going through the sparging process. If your 7.5 gallon kettle has a tap on it, then you could simply heat the 3.5 gallons up in that and after the mash, dump your grain bag into that kettle and then just drain it via the tap into your 2.5 gallon kettle and then pour that into your main kettle. (You might have to read that twice - lol!). Not too hard a process in theory but I reckon that 8 inch opening would be damn hard to get the bag through let alone back out .

The Scaled Recipe

Here is a BIABacus Beta recipe report based on you just going the dilution method and using a hopsock...

[center]BIABacus 1.0 (Beta) RECIPE REPORT[/center]
[center]BIAB Recipe Designer, Calculator and Scaler.[/center]
[center](Please visit http://www.biabrewer.info" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; for the latest version.)[/center]
[center]Caribou Slobber Brown Ale[/center]

Recipe Overview

Brewer: cazadero
Style: American Brown Ale
Source Recipe Link: Northern Brewer

Original Gravity (OG): 1.052
IBU's (Tinseth): 28.9
Bitterness to Gravity Ratio: 0.55
Colour: 19.4 SRM
ABV%: 5.03

Efficiency into Kettle (EIK): 73.8
Efficiency into Fermentor (EIF): 66.5

Note: Maxi-BIAB adjustments have been made. (See 'Mash Steps Below').

Times and Temperatures

Mash: 90 mins at 67.3 C = 153 F
Boil: 90 min
Ferment: 14 days at 19.50 C = 67.1 F

Volumes & Gravities

Total Water Needed (TWN): 56.24 L = 14.86 G
Volume into Kettle (VIK): 51.97 L = 13.73 G @ 1.044
End of Boil Volume - Ambient (EOBV-A): 42.01 L = 11.1 G @ 1.052
Volume into Fermentor (VIF): 37.85 L = 10 G @ 1.052
Volume into Packaging (VIP): 35.05 L = 9.26 G @ 1.016 assuming apparent attenuation of 70 %

The Fermentables Bill

Note: If extracts or sugars are not followed by an exclamation mark, go to http://www.biabrewer.info" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

84.7% Rahr 2 RowPale Ale (2 SRM = 3.9 EBC) 8468 grams = 18.67 pounds
7.1% Briess Caramalt 60L (60 SRM = 118.2 EBC) 705 grams = 1.55 pounds
4.7% Briess Caramalt 80L (80 SRM = 39.4 EBC) 471 grams = 1.04 pounds
2.3% Fawcett Pale Chocolate (215 SRM = 423.6 EBC) 234 grams = 0.52 pounds
1.2% English Black Malt (550 SRM = 1083.5 EBC) 117 grams = 0.26 pounds

The Hop Bill

Based on pellet hops and Tinseth IBUs.

17.1 IBU US Goldings (5%AA) 57.8 grams = 2.04 ounces at 60 mins
8.3 IBU Liberty (4%AA) 57.8 grams = 2.04 ounces at 30 mins
3.4 IBU Williamette (5%AA) 57.8 grams = 2.04 ounces at 15 mins

Hop Management

Hop Sock Used: Yes

Mash Steps

Maxi-BIAB (Part Volume Mash) for 90 mins at 67.3 C = 153 F
Hold back 13 L = 3.43 gallons from the mash. Add prior to boil.
Mashout for for 10 mins at 76.7 C = 170 F

Fermentation

Ferment with Danstar Windsor Ale yeast for 14 days at 19.50 C = 67.1 F

...

Fair bit to read there cazadero. Let me know though if anything doesn't make sense.


PP

Ah no, that is my error. I over-wrote a recipe I already had in the BIABacus but missed over-writing that field. I'll edit my last post now to correct that .