Both of you guys above are both using Northern Brewer Recipes.

I'm the last person to say, "Do a search," but the good news is that on NorthernBrewer recipes, we do have some info. Your answer is already written here, several times - cool! matotato and metalhophead, you guys need to help each other out and guys like myself will tell you if you get anything wrong.

[EDIT: Blah, blah, blah. Had a heap of garabge written here so have deleted it.]


PP

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I am a BIAB newb, and over the last few weeks been reading as much of the beginner stuff on this forum as I can. Spent the last day or 2 reading the first 25 or so pages of this thread, and the last 5 or 10 pages as well. It is very interesting to me and amazes me the effort that is put into helping people get their recipes straight and the genuine helpfulness and kindness from you guys here. Thank you for doing what you do.

I am still taking in as much info as possible before I try my first batch, my 15 Gallon pot and LP burner are in the mail though... I have been doing extract kits for a while but next will be a BIAB. I have been tossing around the idea of doing the Amarillo APA that is recommeded here and I may very well do so, but I did stumble upon that Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout clone on page 67, I love that beer, and I kind of want to try it. Also, I would like to use maple sap instead of water, for an 'Oatmeal Maple Breakfast Stout' kind of thing.

I realize maybe I am a little too new to try such a thing, but the sap will be running soon, and there will only be short window of time that I can do this. If I get my equipment soon enough perhaps I will have time to do the Amarillo APA first, and if all goes well then the stout. Just wanted to get thoughts on this, and again, give a shout out to you guys who obviously take a lot of care in helping people out here, it is amazing and encouraging to see such knowledge applied with such care and commitment. Thanks!!!

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goulaigan,

Nice to hear that things are going well and we get the credit. I had nothing to do here but I will take the credit for everything that people said that made you a better brewer! Both of your beers are super. You will brew them more than once I bet. Brewing is a much fun as you can have plus you get the beer!! Cheers to you and thanks for giving me the credit that others deserve!!!!

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Thanks for the advice metalhophead, I have done several stovetop extract and extract + specialty grain batches in a 5ish Gallon kettle. For my 15 Gal kettle, I will only be shooting for 5.25-5.5 G into the fermentor, so I don't think it should be too much of a stretch will it?

Bob, your welcome hah, and do you still brew on a frozen lake? I will be brewing beside one... (Superior)

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metalhophead wrote:Ok Pistolpatch I'm going to attempt to help Matato....

Good on you Fred . Firstly mate, can I say sorry for my post above which was really crappy? Just did a big edit on it! Don't have them too often but yesterday was one of my crappy days. And, I totally missed the fact thart you were married. Good on you and nice to have you back here .

Just reading your answer above and that is great. I think what was worrying me yesterday, was that after our earlier posts, I really thought you had the BIABacus worked out well and just needed a nudge to get back on the horse. You are there. I'll try and nudge more gently next time .

Great to see you passing on the info Fred. Much appreciated,
PP

P.S. Let us know if Fred's answer makes some sense to you Matato.

goulaigan wrote:I am a BIAB newb, and over the last few weeks been reading as much of the beginner stuff on this forum as I can...

Really nice post goulaigan . Great to have you aboard .

There's just one thing I'm a bit mixed up on. Above you wrote, "...I would like to use maple sap instead of water,..." Was the water bit a typo?

I'm sure we can get you sorted though on the recipe if you choose to do it first. If you know your pot dimesnions, have a crack at altering the existing BIABacus file and we'll check it out.


PP

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PistolPatch, no the water bit was not a typo , I would like to use maple sap instead. It takes 40 parts sap to make 1 part syrup, and I'm not exactly sure how much syrup people use in maple brews, but I like to experiment anyway so figure what the heck. I have heard of people doing this in the past. I have taken the pot dimensions from the description and played around with the BIABacus file for that Samuel Smith clone, seems fairly straight forward, but I will wait until I get the pot to get the exact dimensions before I throw the file up for review. Thanks!

Bob, I am a bit north of the ice caves (Northern Ontario Canada), sorry to hear about the cancelled brew session but I know what you mean about the ice this year, last hole I drilled a few weeks ago I was on my knees with the auger and almost bottomed out, fish are biting great tho!!!

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In order, gouulaigan, metalhophead,paudle, patrick.danley and cweir60*...

goulaigan wrote:PistolPatch, no the water bit was not a typo , I would like to use maple sap instead.

Sorry goul, that's stepping out of my field of knowledge. It sounds worthy of a thread on its own though! I'm sure that if you were able to educate me on what this whole thing means, I might be able to help on the number side of things in return. I'm sure there would be many others interested in hearing what this sap instead of water thing is all about .

metalhophead wrote:Here is my Petite Saison recipe conversion. Do I look good?

Fred, be more confident in the BIABacus. It can't turn a crap recipe into a great one. It can't turn dodgy figures into real figures. In any Northern Brewer recipe,you are dealing with low integrity. You have done everything you can to "guess" your way through the recipe - good stuff! Only think you missed was it should be 2.75 lbs not 2.7 lbs of Vienna. I'm assuming that you put in average AA% for the hops. Nothing more can be done with a recipe like that so, all is good.

paudle wrote:Instead of Maris Otter I am going to use 2-row and instead of the caramels they are using I am going to use a different one. I would like to get the color and maltiness close to the "original" etc...

Great question Paudle . I think a good answer will take some time because I think there are actually several things to deal with. It's the sort of question I'd prefer to deal with when my brain is working at full potential as well. Can you leave it with me please? It is unlikely that I will forget it but if you don't hear back from me on this by Tuesday , send me a PM please or bump the thread again.

patrick.danley wrote:I think since its already in the BIABacus format, the conversion should be pretty easy. i've added the details about my kettle to optimize it for my equipment (I will also be using a 2gal primary fermenter, not in BIABacus). I had to make some substitutions based on what is available from my supply store...

Hey there Pat . PM mally and BobBrews and ask them to check your file. They will do so. mally will see if anything obvious is wrong number-wise and Bob will see if anything is obviously wrong ingredient-wise. I'll leave that to them. [Bob check the Briess Extra Special sub. I'm unfamiliar with that malt.]

Apart form the note I wrote to Bob above, I think you grain subs are great. I'd like to see the colour values though filled out on both the left and right hand side. Doing this would give more integrity to the recipe.

On the hop side of things, nice job . But you could have been lazier Pat. On the right hand side, no need to write FL as FL (flowers) were used in the original recipe. If you decided to use pellets though instead of FL then you would need to type in...

Hold on! You have just found a BIABacus bug!!!!!!!!!! (It's more a terminology one, thank God. Will post in bugs.)

Anyway, still no need to write FL on the right. If you wanted to substitute pellets for flowers though, then you would need to type in "PE" on the right. (The bug is that there is nothing to tell you the shorthand of pellets.)

...

Pat, I am also a bit worried about this massive level of dilution. I can't remember if it was you or someone else I wrote to recently on this but, on high gravity brews, we need more people taking measurements. I just had a skim through your posts and see we haven't had a full report on your first brew. Did you manage to record any numbers?


PP

*cweir60 - you posted while I was writing the above. Might be a few things above that are also relevant to you. Main thing for now to learn is, "You can't tell anything from a single brew." Hopefully some of the above guys or other forum members can give more detail on this. You could also do a search on that phrase and probably come up with some interesting stuff. If you see this PS please let us know. If not, we'll come back to it. Best though if the others can help you out.

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paudle wrote:Bumping for PP.

Another question that I came across with my last brew is how to determine the volume at end of boil. I just got a chiller that worked great but having it in there makes the calculation difficult.

You would take the evaporation in secktion k and divide it by boil time in section b. If for example, the IC goes in 15 mins. before EOBV PR1.3 or VFO PR1.3I, then multiply 15 mins. times the evaporation rate per minute.

A standard brew length might be 26.55 L (VFO) which is 24 cms in section v on MY BIABacus file. I played 20 questions and found that I would put the IC in when the volume is at 25 cms.


MS

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Measuring VAW

Paudle, sorry it has taken me longer than thought to get back to you. Busy times . I'll do your original question after replying to this...

paudle wrote:Another question that I came across with my last brew is how to determine the volume at end of boil. I just got a chiller that worked great but having it in there makes the calculation difficult.

There's several options here. Yeaty and MS have mentioned a few and the displacement thing mentioned can be dealt with in the last two lines of Section X but...

The volume measurement we really want and that is most important is the VAW or 'Volume of Ambient Wort'. In PR1.3 this was called EOBV-A which meant the end of boil volume once chilled to ambient temperature. VAW is EOBV-A and it's pretty easy to measure later in the brew day once things have been transferred to a fermentor (or no-chill cube).

Hot measurements, even without a chiller in the way, are difficult to take with much accuracy. Too much swelling occurs, lots of steam etc. They are a PITA. The easiest way to do it is once the beer is chilled. You can either trust in the measurements on the side of your fermentor to get VIF and, if you have say a five litre jug that you trust the graduations of, you can pour your KFL into that to measure it.

KFL + VIF = VAW

If you have bathroom scales, you can weigh the wort and it won't matter if it is hot or cold. So, if you no-chill, this could be an easy option. I'll add this into the next BIABacus but there's how it would go...

[I'm using metric because 1 litre of water at ambient temperature weighs 1 kilogram.]

If your fermentor weighed 500 grams before adding your wort and 2300 grams after, this obviously means your wort weighs 22500 grams (22.5 kilos). This does not mean you have 22.5 litres of wort though as the gravity of the wort affects this. For example, if your GAW (usually the same as OG) was 1.050, then this means that the wort is actually 5.0% heavier than the same volume of water so...

The real weight of the wort would be 22.5 / 1.05 = 21.43 litres.

Hold on! That was meant to be the easy, quick answer out of Paudle's two questions . I honestly thought that would take about 10 minutes. One of these days I think I will knock myself on the head with a beer bottle - lol.

Paudle, I'll post the above now so it doesn't get lost amongst the next answer.


PP

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Paudle, the post immediately above deals with measuring end of boil volume. This post deals with...

paudle wrote:Hi all,

I have been brewing a few batches and think I have a handle on the BIABacus.
I am basing this recipe from the Brooklyn Brewshop's beer making book which has interesting recipes but not all the details that make for a precise recipe.
I have a question about the grain substitutions.
Instead of Maris Otter I am going to use 2-row and instead of the caramels they are using I am going to use a different one.
I would like to get the color and maltiness close to the "original"
I know that the 2-row is lighter than the Maris Otter and that my caramel is darker than what they say.

If I want to use less caramel and more 2-row percentage wise how do I do this in the BIABacus?
As it stand in the recipe it seems close enough but if I wanted to change the percentages how do I do this?


Thanks!

Okay, I think this might be faster to answer than your last question even though it is a 'greyer' question.

I know what you want to do here but I'm not sure I have the knowledge/experience to advise you on this. Some guys have a real knack for knowing different grains and hops and knowing how to get the 'recipe' just right. I am not a recipe designer, I just pinch recipes from brewers I know or sources I trust.

I think your intention here might be based on a wrong premise. I suspect you are thinking, "If I can use different grains but end up with the same colour estimate, all should be pretty close to the original recipe."

Firstly, colour estimate formulas, even the one we us in the BIABacus, are really crap. It's a bit like years ago when a space satellite was going to crash to earth (Skylab). They said it would probably land near such and such place but don't be surprised if it lands anywhere in Australia. So, take that on board first.

The second thing is that specialty grains are nearly always used to add flavour. Colour should really have no importance. You drink flavour, not a colour. So, it is important to really understand that if you change a crystal for another crystal, what it will actually do. I think this takes a knack or a tremendous amount of experience.

Craft breweries do well at this because they are brewing (or trying to brew) the same recipe over and over again. We don't get to do that as home brewers.

So, what I am saying is don't expect our substitutions to work out if the colour balances in the BIABacus. But, then again, don't be scared to play around with an existing recipe. I think you need to be very conscious though of why you are making the substitution and what effect it will have.

Your File

All looks good mate except, I am wondering why your crystals are reading so high in colour. For example, Caramel 60 should be 118 EBC or 60 SRM. I'll attach what I think they should be in the file below. Just double-check where your original colour numbers came from. They are not looking right.

All else, excellent ,
PP

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