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Author Topic: figuring out grain bill %'s  (Read 14015 times)

Offline dzlater

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figuring out grain bill %'s
« on: February 24, 2010, 05:24:22 pm »
  I know the percentages of grain I want,
but have to adjust them for efficiency.
  I tried using the method in Designing Great Beers to figure out
my grain bill. What this did was screw up my percents by weight.
I believe the book is giving me %'s by gravity per lb. ?
  So what I did was use the gravity per lb of the base malt
for all the other grains, so the weight %'s would stay constant.
  This seemed to work but I'm not sure it's the correct way to
go about it. Are there any easier way to scale grain bills for efficiency?

I can put all #'s up if any one cares???

Thanks
Dan S. from NJ

Offline Hokerer

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Re: figuring out grain bill %'s
« Reply #1 on: February 24, 2010, 05:34:17 pm »
Go ahead and put the numbers up if you want but then you really ought to look into some homebrew software.  Beersmith has a downloadable free trial version and it'll let you scale recipes to your hearts content.
Joe

Offline blatz

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Re: figuring out grain bill %'s
« Reply #2 on: February 24, 2010, 05:35:54 pm »
Go ahead and put the numbers up if you want but then you really ought to look into some homebrew software.  Beersmith has a downloadable free trial version and it'll let you scale recipes to your hearts content.

+1 - its like 25 clams - well spent, IMO.
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Offline bluesman

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Re: figuring out grain bill %'s
« Reply #3 on: February 24, 2010, 05:41:17 pm »
+2

High mileage on that there beersmith model. Have it and love it.  8)
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Offline dbeechum

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Re: figuring out grain bill %'s
« Reply #4 on: February 24, 2010, 05:41:47 pm »
Drew Beechum - Maltosefalcons.com
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Offline beerocd

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Re: figuring out grain bill %'s
« Reply #5 on: February 24, 2010, 06:33:34 pm »
Here you go, good for starts - and it's free....

http://sourceforge.net/projects/brewtarget/
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Offline dzlater

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Re: figuring out grain bill %'s
« Reply #6 on: February 24, 2010, 08:12:06 pm »
Here you go, good for starts - and it's free....

http://sourceforge.net/projects/brewtarget/

I have brewtarget , but how do you go about resizing a batch
for efficiencies with it?
Dan S. from NJ

Offline dzlater

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Re: figuring out grain bill %'s
« Reply #7 on: February 25, 2010, 04:48:41 am »
See if this works for you.

http://maltosefalcons.com/tech/malt-bill-percentage-pound-calculator

Thanks
The spreadsheet gave me the same #'s that I calculated by hand.
So I did something right.
Dan S. from NJ

Offline dbeechum

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Re: figuring out grain bill %'s
« Reply #8 on: February 25, 2010, 10:26:40 am »
Or I did something terribly wrong when I wrote it!   :D
Drew Beechum - Maltosefalcons.com
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Offline Kaiser

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Re: figuring out grain bill %'s
« Reply #9 on: February 25, 2010, 11:24:20 am »
Why don’t you just figure out how much grain you need by assuming a standard 36 ppg for example? For this you need to know the efficiency, target volume and target gravity. If you want to be really precise with the extract potential of the grist you can calculate the weighted average by considering the extract potential of each malt and its grain bill portion.

Once you have the total grist weight the individual grain weights are easy to calculate from their percentages.

That’s how I do it.

Kai


Offline dzlater

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Re: figuring out grain bill %'s
« Reply #10 on: February 25, 2010, 02:55:28 pm »
Why don’t you just figure out how much grain you need by assuming a standard 36 ppg for example? For this you need to know the efficiency, target volume and target gravity. If you want to be really precise with the extract potential of the grist you can calculate the weighted average by considering the extract potential of each malt and its grain bill portion.

Once you have the total grist weight the individual grain weights are easy to calculate from their percentages.

That’s how I do it.

Kai

I think that is what I did by
using the gravity per lb of the base malt
for all the other grains, so the weight %'s would stay constant.
 ???

Dan S. from NJ

Offline Kaiser

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Re: figuring out grain bill %'s
« Reply #11 on: February 25, 2010, 03:43:16 pm »
I believe If you want to scale for efficiency you can simply do this for every grain weight:

new weight = (old weight * old efficiency) / new efficiency

Kai

Offline sladek

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Re: figuring out grain bill %'s
« Reply #12 on: March 01, 2010, 09:25:49 am »
get Promash!

http://www.promash.com/

great software

Offline stownson

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Re: figuring out grain bill %'s
« Reply #13 on: March 01, 2010, 11:53:01 am »
I'll second the usefulness of Promash when dealing with fluxuating batch sizes and effeciencies.

To accomplish your grain bill amounts from a base recipe, you simply enter your base recipe and then click the lock ingredients box.

You can now adjust your batch size up or down and maintain the same percentages of grainbill.

Offline redzim

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Re: figuring out grain bill %'s
« Reply #14 on: March 09, 2010, 08:05:45 am »
Why don’t you just figure out how much grain you need by assuming a standard 36 ppg for example? For this you need to know the efficiency, target volume and target gravity. If you want to be really precise with the extract potential of the grist you can calculate the weighted average by considering the extract potential of each malt and its grain bill portion.

Once you have the total grist weight the individual grain weights are easy to calculate from their percentages.

That’s how I do it.

Kai



Do you always go with the 36ppg when computing what efficiency you are hitting? Or do you try to use the extract potential of each individual malt? I've been trying to use exact numbers in my calculations but I am slowly learning that everyone's numbers fluctuate by a few points for just about every malt!  So if I would just use 36ppg, maybe that would simplify things.... but I don't want to lose too much accuracy.

-red