Looks like you've picked up a PR1.3T that has been unprotected and then re-protected and someone's accidentally protected those cells . Could have even been me though I couldn't think why . The two original PR1.3T files are okay and it's always best to go there for 'fresh' files.

Please do put this in the recipes forum. I reckon put it in any time that suits you as it's a rare recipe. Maybe after brew day?

Good job on your file dmk

Firstly, in Section D, change the VAW on the first line to 21.82 L as that is what the book works on. Now...

Colours Not Matching

On the left hand side of Section C, your EBC for the Crystal (120° L) should be 237 which will give you an SRM of 120 which is the same as lovibond. Similiarly, for the Special Roast (50° L), change the EBC to 99.

Your colour estimate will now be fairly close to that in the book, however, there is still a discrepancy. This will be due to an incorrect colour formula being used in the original software. The software will be basing the colour formula on the Volume into Fermentor (VIF) instead of Volume of Ambient Wort (VAW). It is a common error, even in some major software. The end result is that it makes the colour estimate higher depending on the Kettle to Fermenter Loss (KFL).

There's a secondary error that can also occur, which relates to wort shrinkage but the above is enough to do your head in for now. In fact, you better sit down for the next section .

IBU's Not Matching

There are at least five different ways of measuring IBU's, and they all give different results. For example, IBU's can be estimated using one of three formulas (Garetz, Rager and Tinseth), or they can be measured in the laboratory, or they can even be perceived (estimated by tasting). On top of all this, a lot of software uses faulty estimation formulas so things quickly become a mess.

BCS uses the 'Rager' formula and, from memory, Pro-Mash software. This post explains the problem in detail and includes a pic showing how widely, on exactly the same recipe and using the same software, that the IBU estimation formulas vary.

If you read that post and think, "That's crazy!" then pat yourself on the back as you now understand IBU estimates perfectly (seriously).

Hop Boiling Time

Yep, you'll add those 60 minute hops, 30 minutes after the boil begins. You can if you want, add them at 75 mins which will mean you'll need slightly less bittering hops. To work this out, on the right hand side of Section D, type in the AA% of the hops you'll be purchasing, and type in 75 under the Mins on the right hand side.

Malt Substitution

I'm not great at this part of brewing. One thing I do know though is that flavour is a lot more important than colour, and, no software calculates flavour. My advice would be to research the original malts and focus on their flavour, then do the same for your proposed substitutions.

Also, maybe someone else who's better at this side than me, might see our post and jump in. Off the top of my head, the only one of your subs that worries me is the Extra Dark Crystal Malt. I'm not worried about it making the beer darker if the same percentage is used, I'm worried about what the difference in flavour is between the two malts. A bit of Googling might help - not sure? Let us know if you do find an answer. If no luck, you could start a whole new thread on this part of your recipe.

FG and Alcohol Percentage

Different yeasts have different abilities to eat up your sugars. Yeasts that eat up a heap of sugar are called high-attenuating yeasts. Those that don't eat up as much are low attenuating yeasts. More info on this here. The BIABacus, as a default, assumes that your yeast is an average yeast and will attenuate to 75%. The BCS book will have given the software a more accurate estimate based on the yeasts being recommended. In Section H, if you type 72 into the fourth line down, you'll find your FG's will match. The difference in the ABV will be due to, as you suggested, rounding differences.

When you brew this beer though, you should not expect the Final Gravity to be bang on 1.011. It is normal for a FG to stray from estimates for many reasons.

Grain Bill the Same Size but Hop Bill is Bigger???

The first thing to notice, is that you ae not brewing the same size batch as in BCS. Their VAW is 21.82 L whilst yours is 26.83 L (see Section K). So that's the hop part of the question answered; you need more hops, because, you are brewing a larger batch.

All brewing software (besides the BIABacus) forces the user into estimating their kettle efficiency. [If you want more detail on kettle efficiency, read this thread.] To change it is often an extremely difficult thing to do as some software doesn't even allow you to change kettle efficiency, only fermenter efficiency. Because of this, most brewers using other software never change the default. The BCS recipes are no exception, they are using the same kettle efficiency for high gravity brews as low gravity brews.

The BIABacus looks at several factors in your recipe to work out how well you are going to be able to wash the grain. Your recipe is a low gravity recipe which will wash cleaner than a high gravity one. In fact, if you go to Section P, the BIABacus estimates your kettle efficiency will be 86.5%. (It will go even higher if you add a mash-out step in Section E).

The BCS book works on a generic 70% kettle efficiency for all recipes, but, with your recipe, that generic figure is way too low. This is why you should never override the auto-efficiency without a good reason.

...

Hey, I wrote all that sober!

How's your head dmk?

That's a lot to take in above so take your time and ask any questions you have. The hardest thing about taking in the above, I think, is accepting that there is so much inaccuracy in recipes.

There is very little knowledge written on any of the above, for obvious reasons, (actually, they aren't that obvious) but I think that is enough for one post.


PP

Welcome dmkelgin to the forum!

What are your sources there in Scotland? Maybe we can help you with substitutions if we knew this.

Crisp is British, so Best Ale Malt or Extra Pale Malt are the substitutions for this, if you can get Crisp products.

MS

Crisp also makes a crystal 120 °L, so go with that too.

Good to see MS is helping you to tackle your malt substitution problem. Maybe put your location in your user profile as this might help get an answer from others as well. A good question from you on SRM and Lovibond...

That's my Error on the Colour

I got this bit wrong sorry dmk. I'll explain why. Firstly, don't know why, I thought you had just changed the colours until they matched what you wanted . Secondly, I had forgotten the SRM to Lovibond conversion formula, which, is very amusing, as I wrote the Colour Conversion section of The BIABacus - see the top right on the second sheet. Here's why my brain failed me...

Hold your head on, again .

I haven't studied beer colour for about 4 years and it's a really confusing area. For a start, there's the old EBC and new EBC measurement methods, but many brewers still use the old EBC laboratory method which requires a different formula to convert to SRM - see here. On top of that, you have the situation where beer colour was measured for years in °Lovibond whereas now (but not always ), beer colour in the US is measured in SRM. Because SRM and Lovibond were almost identical visually (any beer over about 22 SRM appears black), SRM and Lovibond were often used interchangeably but the fat more precise conversion is what the BIABacus uses and what the converter you found uses.

So, a good reminder for me. Let's see if I can summarise...

As a general rule, grain colour in the US is measured in °Lovibond whereas beer colour is measured in SRM. In Europe, I don't think they measure the grain colour (not completely sure on this), only the colour the grain produces when a sample (mixed with water) is measured with a spectrometer. Beer colour is measured when a beer sample is measured with a spectrometer.

The long and short of it is that you did the right thing.

Your other Colour Question.

Firstly, stick with the colours you know for sure. In other words, leave the Crystal as 318.7 EBC and the Roast at 131.9. As for the colour of the British Pale Ale Malt, which is not given in the recipe, this could be anything but I think your 6.5 EBC might be a better average even though it is going to put you further away from the book's 'total colour'.

Put those in and you'll get 24.1 EBC / 12.2 SRM compared to the books 19.7 / 10.

I'm at a loss on this. You can try this in another program, and, assuming you are using the EBC's, weights etc,. we have, you'll get the same result or, even higher due to the VIF versus VAW problem I mentioned in my last post.

I'd have to go through some of the other BCS recipes to see if this is a consistent problem. Perhaps, °L was made to equal 1 SRM (same error I did?).

One last thing (and this isn't the answer to the discrepancy), the colour estimate formulas we use in software are very much approximations and have some obvious flaws. As I said in my last post, don't go religiously trying to match colour. For example, kettle efficiency will affect the colour that your software estimates. Look at the left and right hand sides of Section C and you'll see a difference. We have to use less grain than the original recipe to get the same amount of sugar as our kettle set-up is more efficient. Does this also mean we can also get the same colour with the lower grain bill? I don't know, however, it is not an area that is of concern or interest to me. As long as I'm getting the same amount of sugars and flavours, that is what matters.

IBU's

Looks like your brain is having trouble accepting the many problems we have with IBU estimations. Did you see that pic in the post I linked? Here is the link again as it sort of gets lost in all the text I wrote.

Look at the Burton Ale recipe. If you use Rager to estimate the IBU's, you get 45.3, whereas if you use Tinseth, you get 34.6. Same recipe, same equipment and same software. Crazy eh?

Given that alone, let alone all the other possible problems that are mentioned in that link, and a few I didn't mention, 29.4 Tinseth versus 32 Rager is perfectly acceptable.

So, don't read more. Instead, just read that link slowly, with a beer, and let it sink in.

Hop Boiling

No advantage apart from what you said. In some recipes, you may only want bitterness and no flavour from the hop, so you would consider moving it to 75.

One Final Really Important Thing

It's very easy to hold numbers up as Gods or, to try and copy a recipe perfectly. Given some of the problems we've already explored, you also have poor terminology or a lack of information. Crystl 120L from Briess might have different characteristics from Crisp's for example. Those individual maltsters also might have one batch of their pale ale malt being 5.5 EBC and the next 7.5 EBC.

Also, hops can vary, not only in AA percentage, each year but, also flavour.

Even with all these so-called 'worries', the real truth is that even though you're ingredients will never be identical to the recipe you are trying to duplicate, even if one or two of your substitutions are 20% off say, you will get an excellent beer!

You have your numbers, so just choose one shop, and then get the most appropriate malts. And, if it is a knowledgeable shop, they'll be able to help with your substitutions.

It's time for you to brew ,
PP

Dmk
Many people get hung up on colour. PP mentioned this in his posts but I want to highlight it incase it got lost in all the knowledge.
We can't taste colour. It is much more important to try and match flavor than colour. Briess has an excellent site listing their grains and describing the flavors. I don't know if the company you will be looking at will as well. I was hung up on colour as well when I first started and don't think I've given it much thought in the last couple of years.

Nice summary dmkelgin, quite succinct.

Oh.. good luck BTW

Before getting to CarminieM74's question, mally wrote pretty much the exact reply I was going to write to dmkelgin's last post . (Pedantic as I am, one correction... Lovibond isn't equal to SRM, but on paler colours isn't that far off). The main thing is that dmk has discovered that a lot about colour and IBU's doesn't make much sense which means he's got it!

CarmineM74 Strike Temp Question

Forget the 0.2/0.4 business. That advice was based on a much earlier version of the BIABacus. To make things far more user-friendly, later versions of the BIABacus changed the formula so that you could just type in whole numbers from 1 to 5. 1 is for heavy equipment such as a thick-based kettle sitting on a heavy base and 5 is for light equipment such as an urn. (You can even use non-whole numbers if you want). If this doesn't make sense, I'll dig out the old and new formulas.

For you with the RIMS, I think from your pic in this thread, that the re-circulated 'liquor' can be heated as it is pumped??? If so, I think stick with 1 or 2 as your heater will soon stabilise the mash temp; the main thing is not to strike too high. If your RIMS didn't have a heater, from the look of your pic, I'd probably start at 3 (and on alter brews, expect to go higher) as the kettle is thin-walled and has no base so the thermal capacity is low.

Make sense?
PP

Before I forget, 1 Coopers Carbonation drop/lolly in a 750ml bottle, will be a bit flat. An an APA or a lager/pilsner, two drops work really well. Let's say that gives 2.5 Vols CO2. In your BIABacus, you have typed in 1 Vol CO2 however the style guideline say between 1.3 and 2.3 Vols CO2*. 1 lolly (3.5 grams of sugar/glucose) will probably get you 1.3 volumes but if you want to go for 1.8 Vols, maybe add an extra 1.5 grams of table sugar per bottle - don't know how you'd measure that easily though - maybe something like these? Shame those lollies are impossible to snap in half. (As a matter of interest, I once had an American Pale Ale where the brewer had primed half the batch with lollies and the other half with white table sugar. The difference was amazing! I definitely preferred the lolly beer.)

*Just noticed in the book it says 1.0 to 1.5 Vols so ignore the above if you like .

Your BIABacus

You've done a fantastic job on this .

Only changes beside the carbonation mentioned above are:

1. First line of Section D - change to 21.82 L. That is the VAW we have worked out for the BCS recipes.
2. 14 days fermentation with this beer and that yeast, is quite long. It will be finished in seven days, no problem.

Other Notes

Use a blow-off tube as SO4 gets violent. I know the book says ferment at 20C but I would pitch at 17C and let it find its own way to 20. If you pitch at 20, it will want to go higher, quickly. It's always a good rule to pitch a few degrees under anyway.

Rather than rehydrating, aerate your wort vigorously so as there are lots of bubbles on top and then sprinkle the yeast on top of that. For me, this is a safer method than rehydrating. For example, yeast does not like chlorine so rehydrating in crappy water will do more harm than good. It's also easy to get temps wrong when rehydrating. Sprinkling on the top of the foam, in my mind, allows the yeast to adjust to the temperature and gravity. I've never heard of any "sprinkler" having any problems.

Nice job!
PP

Does Charlie have an efficiency listed for this one or all of them in his book?

Sent from my XT1053 using Tapatalk

That's what I was thinking too, MS. Looks like Charlie is getting some really lousy efficiency. Evanspa, I'd say go with the 5 something pounds the BIAB specifies and see what happens.


---Todd

Brew it and let us know....

---Todd

Evanspa wrote:I noticed the original grain bill was 19+ lbs. for a 5.5Gal batch...

I noticed your post yesterday Evanspa and just did a bit of research on it.

Just quickly, on the left hand side of Section C, never type in a "percentage" sign. For some reason, once you do, you can never get rid of the damn thing, you basically have to load up a fresh BIABacus file.

Okay, here's what went through my mind...

Firstly, why would an imperial porter ("imperial" means high ABV) have such a low original gravity? I then Googled "Denny Conn's Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter Recipe," and the first thing I saw on the Google page was, "Originally created by Denny Conn and spread around the various internet forums." Uh oh .

I checked that link and the OG was 1.079. Next, I looked for the earliest link I could find as often that will be the one with the least distortion. I found a 2004 post written by Denny Conn.

You'll see there that the OG is 1.087, grain percentages, mash schedules etc are totally different between those two versions and also yours . See how the recipes become distorted over time?

The First Question

The first question to answer is which "version" do you want to use? There's the one above or there's one here with some notes from Denny but I can't find the date of that version.

There might be other versions out there that also have notes from the original author?

Once that's Answered

Once that is answered, the key bit of info to find is the Volume of Ambient Wort of the recipe you have chosen to copy which can often be hard to work out in some recipes.

In the first recipe (tastybrew) it says that the Batch Size and Wort Size are both 5 gallons (18.93L). In this case, I can see the author also means that the Volume of Ambient Wort is 5 gallons (there's a few easy ways you can investigate this in the BIABacus).

In the second recipe (brew365), it just says "6 Gal" so we have no idea what the author means by that. Once again, using the BIABacus to investigate, I would use 6.21 Gal (23.5 L) as the Volume of Ambient Wort. This also tells me that the original author probably meant Volume into Fermenter when they said "6 gal).

....

Let us know what version you choose. I'd definitely start a fresh BIABcaus file so as to get rid if that percentage problem.

If you choose a version not listed here, one of us will be able to help or show you how to "investigate" the VAW of the original recipe although, sometimes that can be impossible.

Please put your new file up regardless. We can not only check it but maybe we can also post it up in it's own thread in the recipe forum.

,
PP