thehopmason,

The link you left us has permissions that are not ours. No problem. Cut and paste will work just fine! If it is a established recipe it will work just great. BIAB is compatible with all recipes.

It looks good to me? Now brew it and let us know if you nailed it, flubbed it or screwed it up? I bet you will do just fine!

thehopmason wrote:Please let me know what you think

Welcome to BB.info hopmason ,

There's a lot of stuff to talk about here number-wise. You have to make a choice here. Brew the recipe above as you think it means or wait a week or so and know why whether using 5.44kg of pale malt is right in the recipe etc, etc.

There is no right answer here. As Bob said above, you can brew as is. You'll get a nice beer. But, if you want to repeat beers as best as possible then you will need to use a different format.

First problem I see is that a 60 minute boil is not long enough for any all-grain imperial recipe.

Sorry ,
PP

OK Folks-
I have seemed to have fooled around with BIABacus for awhile now, and I will just throw it out there for a beat down.
This is taken from Bob "Big Guy" Brews Black IPA recipe.
To be honest, I would like to do a double batch of this and toss it into a couple of 6 gal WINPAKS for later fermenting.
It would be an honor if someone took a look at this to let me know if I am tracking.....Or even close for that matter
Thank you all ahead of time
V/r
Mike

I'll answer okieseapig first and then come back to you hopmason.

Nice job on your file okie . Here's the only things I could find...

1. In section C, "Pleasted Malt" is actually "Peated Malt" and it shouldn't have an exclamation mark beside it. In othere words, get rid of your Section Y adjustment.

2. The adjustment you did above, should be beside the "Table Sugar" instead.

3. Your mash temp is a bit high. I'd go down to 66 C.

Using chinook or simcoe first won't really make much of a difference. YOu'd probably not be able to detect a difference in fact.

Your kettle is okay for double batches of a normal gravity brew (you'd still need to dilute a bit) but it's a bit too much for a high gravity brew like this one I'm afraid.

Good stuff okie ,
PP

Thank you very much PP
Everything is appreciated. Especially the advice about the Kettle
V/r
Mike

Still writing hopmason's answer okie but just noticed one problem with your file. You have 5 litres in 'Water Added Before the Boil'. Get rid of that. All your water should go in at the beginning because it will fit in your pot. Only dilute if it won't fit.


PP

Now we have okieseapig organised above, let's get into your question hopmason...

Didn't realise you had brewed this one as yet hopmason - good on you .

This site is the best place you could possibly land if you really want to understand the brewing process simply. What we found here in the early days was that available software and terminology had a lot of holes in them making them what we would call 'unsafe'. Before we go any further, please have a read of this post.

Read that? Okay...

(We'll get to the pale ale comment towards the end btw.)

The first thing I noticed with your recipe was that it came from an external source/program. Unfortunately, this is the only place in the brewing world where you will find unambiguous terminology. For example, some brewers when using the well-known program "BeerSmith" will put in an end of boil volume batch size and end of boil volume "brewhouse" efficiency figure while another user will call their volume into fermentor their batch size and their efficiency into fermentor their brewhouse efficiency". The reports make it very difficult or even impossible to know what the original brewer means. So, our first problem is working through the ambiguous terminology. (Brewer's Friend aren't to bad on their definitions btw. However, you will still get people using it in two different ways just as happens with BeerSmith).

To avoid the above, on this site we have developed easy to learn, unambiguous terminology.

The second thing is that quite a few programs have some errors in them. I've lost track of which program has what errors. Basically we gave up and ended up writing the BIABacus that you will find on this site. Checking the accuracy of other programs is extremely difficult as they usually lack critical information. For example, the most important volume figure to give when publishing a recipe is the 'Volume of Ambient Wort (VAW)'. This is the hardest name to learn here but it means the volume of wort at the end of the boil once cooled. In other words, your 'Volume into Fermentor (VIF)' plus your 'Kettle to Fermentor Loss (KFL)'. In the Brewer's Friend report, all we are given is the VIF.

One of the many features of the BIABacus is that the Recipe Report gives all critical information.

The third thing is that other software asks you to guess an "efficiency" figure. Firstly, the efficiency figure used by the software is usually an 'Efficiency into Fermentor (EIF)' which can be affected dramatically by things such as the hop bill. Rarely is the more stable 'Efficiency into Kettle (EIK)' figure used. The bigger problem though is that efficiency varies according to the gravity of the brew. Other software and forum post lead the user to believer that efficiency is a constant whereas it is far from it.

The BIABacus automatically lowers or raises your efficiency (and therefore) grain bill according to the gravity of the brew.

Anyway, onto the pale ale comment. Hold on... I actually missed the 0.91 kg of crystal malt so things aren't what I thought. What I was thinking last night was that 5.44 kg of grain is not enough to give you a 1.073 brew and 18.9 L into fermentor. 6.35 kg of grain though? Pretty good! So, that's an error of mine there.

The 60 minute boil is not long enough for a few reasons. Firstly, you need as much water as possible to be washing the grains with during the mash. The longer boil means you get to start with a bit more water. There are lots of other reason to do a 90 minute boil as well but I won't go into them here.

I hope the above has been of some help. What worries me atm is why your OG was only 1.060 when you wanted to be getting 1.073. Did you end up with more wort than expected?


PP

Thank you-
I was wondering why my TWN and SWN were not closer in volume.
I must have left it on from the previous guys spread sheet.

You got there bworek1 ,

I have just written some notes on the integrity of the original recipe in this post. Some of that applies here. As for your file, here's a few things of interest...

Always do a 90 minute mash with BIAB otherwise, for most recipes, you will need to use more grain than necessary. I BIAB, you are mashing and sparging simultaneously. Allow enough time for the goodness to lech out of the grains.

A 90 minute boil is preferable for all-grain brews. See here.

When you are copying another person's recipe, don't copy their efficiency figure even if you know if they mean kettle or ferementor efficiency. Thier efficiency will not be the same as yours. In other words, let the BIABacus handle that side of things. After you have done five or so brews and taken measurements, you might choose to adjust the BIAbcus's aut-efficiency number. Until then, no touching .

Your hop bill differs form the orignal recipe. First hop addition is 1.0 oz not 0.5 oz. Also you have added in UK GOldings that wasn't in the original recipe. That is fine as long as they are conscious decisions.

Good job bw ,
PP

Just saw and replied to your post in the integrity thread. As mentioned there, I think your changes are sensible.

There are several ways to maintain heat during the mash. Unless your brewing outside in extremely cold conditions, I think the best way, especially when starting out, is to check the mash temperature at about 15, 40 and 75 min. Before checking the temperature, agitate the mash so there won't be any hot or cold spots. If it is too cold, turn on your heat or flame and make sure you keep agitating the mash while the heat is being applied. This avoids burnt bags as well as over-heating the bottom of the mash.

On heavy bottomed kettles, the heat can continue to rise for a bit after you turn the flame off so watch for that.

Some guys like getting the temperature right and then wrapping insulation around the kettle and then just leaving it even if the temp does drop a few degrees. You can make a decision on that later down the track. The above method though will give yo a feel for your system.

One More if I may Folks-
I took another Recipe that Bob had suggested and tossed it into BIABacus.
Brickwarmer Holiday Red from Northern Brewer
I was originally going to do (2) 5 Gallon Batches and pitch the (2) different Yeasts that Northern Brewer suggested for this particular recipe.
(My own Newbie expermint to determine fermentation times and taste differential between Safale S-04 and Wyeast 1028)
And then......
After reading and re-reading PP's Posts with regards to "The Liquor Shop", I thought why not combine them into one Brew session.
I honestly blame you guys for my woes.
If you had not made this program so darn user friendly, I would not be playing with it so much
Anyway, if someone would be so kind as to take a look at my (Double), as always, it will be more than appreciated.
I just included the Single 5 Gallon Batch spread sheet for reference.
Thank you as always.
V/r
Mike
P.S. I have really enjoyed being on this site these last few weeks. Thank you to all that contribute and the professionalism you show to us who are just starting out in this hobby.

Ah! A nice easy question [EDIT: Famous last words as you'll see ] in this thread where I can just ramble while having a beer. I'm going to grab this while I can Okie . (Also, nice comments above - good on you ).

You've got the sweet liquor shop part well under control okie. That will work out perfectly well.

There's two other problems I just noticed though and these two things occur in both files...

No Need to Fill in Section Y

In an all-grain recipe, don't chew up your time filling in Section Y. Why not? Well, for a start, unless you have access to the malt specs that you have bought, then you are taking a guess. Grain specs can vary from batch to batch significantly. (Even within the same batch, the specs can vary.)

Secondly, the BIABacus default is pretty good. (Btw, in section Y, under English Dark Crystal, you have an FGDB of 0%. Probably a typo. Let's make it say 79%.) If you fill in Section Y, you will need 10330 grams of malt. If you leave it up to the BIABacus default, you'll need 10552 which is a difference of about 2%.

Don't waste your time on this on an all-grain brew.

Missing Value in Section D

You have no VAW or IBU's in section D. You must have one of these fields filled in otherwise it's a bit like not telling the BIABacus what OG you want. That is why there are no hop weight on the right hand side of Section D.

When copying a recipe from another source, working out whether to put a VAW value in the first line (EOBV-A in older BIABaci) or an IBU value on the second line is very hard to work out as the original recipe will very rarely tell you either of these things clearly*. Northern Brewer recipes fail in several areas.

Hold on! This was meant to be an easy answer . But, I've just noticed that there are no AA% values on the left hand side of Section D. This is not your fault. It just reflects a poor original recipe. I'd totally forgotten that Northern Brewer doesn't supply those .

If you are giving another person a recipe you want them to copy (as Northern Brewer are doing), for the hop bill to be copied with any degree of accuracy, you need to provide the AA% of the hops you used in the original recipe. Hops vary from year to year. Some years a hop variety can be very potent and the next year it might be extremely weak. If you just tell me to use 1 oz of hops, my beer could be 40% more or less potent, hop-wise, than yours.

This thread might have some more details.

So basically, your original recipe lacks a lot of integrity. Let's get you under way though ....

What you Need to Do...

On the first line of Section D, for VAW, write 20.83 litres (5.5 US gallons).

On the left hand side of the BIABacus, in the AA% column, look up each hop here and then type in the average alpha acid percent for each hop.

After that, post your file back here and myself or one of the other guys will be able to help you Okie.

Getting your head around this stuff.

Okie, if you are asking yourself, "How can it be that big sites publish recipes that can't be copied accurately?" then you are asking the right question - you aren't going mad! I have some answers on this but that's for another day. The main thing for you, or anyone else, is to see what the important numbers are in a recipe and understand why they are important.

I think this is the only place currently where you'll learn that unfortunately.

Let us know if the above makes any sense,
PP