Hey there
BYO replied; below is the email chain. I fear it will set Pat off

But it is insightful for us all.
Dave at BYO seems like a nice guy but obviously is a bit RDWHAHB when it comes to recipe exactitude. He indicates their recipes are more for Extract and so their 5 gallons is VAW. They use Rager for IBUs.
I guess for me the morale of the story is take BYO recipes with a pinch of salt and understand their areas of low integrity.
*** Here's the first reply to my question above, then my reply, then his reply ***
On Wed, Sep 6, 2017 at 1:00 AM, Dave Green wrote:
Hi Nick,
This is a great question and one I can partially fill you in with, but maybe not able to answer fully. First off I will say you that our recipes are standardized so that you can take a recipe that runs in the magazine and easily convert it to your system and what numbers you get on average when brewing.
Now I’m mainly an all-grain brewer, I always try to get end up with about 6.25 gallons in my kettle at the end of the boil (once the rolling boil has stopped). I don’t want the trub in my fermenter and want to get 5.5 gallons in my fermenter. You lose 4% volume to thermal compression during cooling...so I’m now down to ~ 6 gallons of wort & trub. I leave roughly 2 quarts between the trub and my chiller...so that gets me my 5.5 gallons in the fermenter and hopefully 5 gallons when the beer is finished.
Now oddly I find that my efficiency for my system works out nicely with those quantities found in the BYO recipes since BYO all-grain recipe standards are set at 65% extract efficiency and I typically achieve 75-85% efficiency (depending on starting gravity typically). So despite the discrepancies, those grain quantities work out surprisingly well for me to hit starting gravities.
Now for extract brewing...those numbers are meant to be a cold 5 gallons of wort. That means there should be roughly 5.2 gallons at the end of the boil or should be topped up to 5 gallons with water after chilling.
We use Rager formula. Hope that helps somewhat. Brewhouse efficiency though is something that is every brewer should eventually start to calculate on their own.
Cheers!
Dave Green
Advertising/Sales Manager/Assistant Editor
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Brew Your Own and WineMaker magazines
5515 Main St.
Manchester Center, VT 05255 USA
***
Hi Dave
thank you for the response. I brew All Grain via Brew in a Bag (BiaB) and have been puzzling over the BYO recipes with some more experienced brewers on the
http://www.biabrewer.info/ forum
The reason we're especially keen to understand the Volume of Ambient temperature Wort (VAW) after the boil in BYO recipes is more to do with the hop bill than the grain bill. As you said knowing the OG and grain ratios you can convert a recipe to your own system no problem.... But for the hop bill, to reproduce someones recipe you really want to know at least the IBU method (Rager/ Tinseth) and more preferably the VAW as obviously 6 gallon VAW would dilute the hop flavour and bitterness differently to say 5 gallon VAW (which would have more pronounced flavour & bitterness).
I've seen Jamil Zainasheff reply to a member in a forum where he indicated he always submitted his recipes to BYO in the format of "...each recipe be for 5 gallons at end of boil and 65% efficiency."
So I was a bit surprised in your reply above where you mentioned for AG you tend to get 5 gallons Volume into Packaging (VIP) but for extract it's 5 gallon VAW, with the same OG and hop bill (which means extract brewers would end up with less beer into packaging and presumably more hop bitterness & flavour)!
I appreciate you taking the time to answer but I'm afraid I'm still a bit puzzled about the best interpretation of BYO recipes with regards to hops.... If there isn't a more clear answer from the people submitting the recipes(?) then I suppose the anecdotal evidence of your own brewing of these recipes which equates to 5 gallons VIP is something. I take it your beer hopping tastes right? :-)
The Biabrewer community takes a lot of pride in spelling out all aspects of a recipe clearly. If you're interested take a quick glance here where VAW and other terminology at every stage of a brew is defined.
http://biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2685
Point taken on calculating your own Brewhouse efficiency. Your 75% is better than mine incidentally!
best regards and cheers
Nick Grunseit
**** Dave's last reply ****
Well as to the fitting pieces in the puzzle...I’ve been brewing for 18 years, at Brew Your Own magazine for 10 years now, and Recipe Editor for 3 years...and the BYO recipe standards were handed to me.
The only pieces I was allowed to move was to add whirlpool hopping IBU calculations and a correction on our SRM calculation. We’ve got over 1,000 recipes in our archives and to change standards now would be a monumental task. I’ve got my own system and calculations which is based on my reality when in the brewhouse and not on a recipe standard that was established 16 years ago. Personally when I post my recipes in online forums, I use percentages for my grain bill and IBUs per addition from my boil additions.
That said...I know how to take those numbers from the BYO recipe and convert them to my system. So the crux is to use the recipe specs found at the top of each recipe. Then it’s time to de-construct the recipe by using a calculator you trust (I have a few favorites including BeerSmith & BrewCipher, but we have in-house calculator here at BYO), and find the percentages in the grain bill and IBUs. Now it’s time to convert to your efficiencies and intended VAW. The step-by-step found in the BYO recipes, including volumes are really just rough guidance since every brewer has their own techniques and efficiencies. Unless otherwise stated I’ve always assumed it should be 5 gallons VAW since that is the way we calculate the extract recipes, but honestly we have not really focused on this aspect for all-grain brewers.
Finally, I hate to say it, but hopping is actually one of those areas I don’t get hung up by. I feel like there are so many variables that go into the bitterness of the beer like water chemistry, grain bill, yeast effects on the iso-alpha acids, etc...that when it comes to watching my IBUs, I more have an ‘acceptable range’. To be quite honest these days, I don’t even enter my hop additions into a calculator unless I’m posting it in the magazine or online. I just eyeball it. Personally feel like the IBU thing was been blown way out of proportion back 15-20 years ago when all the IBU calculations wars began (Rager v Tinseth v Garetz) and homebrewers are still feeling that ripple effect. Sure the difference between 1/2 oz of Warrior hops vs. an 1 oz at 60 minutes will make a difference in a 5 gallon batch, but 14 g vs 12 g...that one I’ll shrug at. That’s my personal take anyway. I tend to focus my efforts elsewhere in the brewing process including water calculations, volume control, yeast health and fermentation.
Guessing not the answers you’re looking for, but hope it helps with the basic premise behind the recipes in the magazine. Focus on the recipe specs and percentages and you should be good.
Cheers!
Dave Green