[flbrewer]

I'm looking at a recipe on BeerSmith and when covering from all grain to extract the ABV drops from 4.9 to 4.5. The IBU and OG remains the same. What's the easiest way to bump this up without impacting too much difference in taste of the original recipe?

[weithman5]

have you brewed the all grain version? and are you converting based on your mash efficiency or someone elses.?  sometimes those conversions are not perfect because one person's efficiency is different than another's. 

anyway. i would just scale the ingredients till you get to the original gravity intended. primarily the only thing that will affect your og  much will be the actual extract with limited contribution from the specialty grains.  you may want to adjust the specialty grains slightly by the same fraction you increase your extract but i doubt it matters much

[morticaixavier]

did the FG change? I suspect it is taking into account the relative lower fermentability of the extract. I also wouldn't worry about it. .5% ABV is not something you are going to notice.

[erockrph]

This is likely because extract tends to be less fermentable than grain. Still, this is always just an estimate. If you want, you could sub out 5-10% of the extract with table sugar to help dry it out a bit.

[flbrewer]

Just an update on this...so I don't mind that there is a small shift in ABV, what is confusing is how different the grain bill percentages are...The all grain recipe's grain bill are;
~50% Pale 2 row
~45% White Wheat Malt
~4% Caravienne Malt
~2% Acid Malt
When converted to extract the bill goes to;
98% Wheat LME
1.4% Pale LME
.6% Caravienne Malt
No Acid Malt
Also, it doesn't seem to matter what I select as my base malt. If for instance I select Pale DME, it won't even include this in the new recipe.

[erockrph]

Just an update on this...so I don't mind that there is a small shift in ABV, what is confusing is how different the grain bill percentages are...The all grain recipe's grain bill are;
~50% Pale 2 row
~45% White Wheat Malt
~4% Caravienne Malt
~2% Acid Malt
When converted to extract the bill goes to;
98% Wheat LME
1.4% Pale LME
.6% Caravienne Malt
No Acid Malt
Also, it doesn't seem to matter what I select as my base malt. If for instance I select Pale DME, it won't even include this in the new recipe.

I don't use BeerSmith, so I can't comment specifically on the functionality you're working with. But AFAIK, wheat extracts are typically made from a 50-50 mix of wheat and pale malt. I have to assume that is why you are seeing so much Wheat LME in the final recipe.

[reverseapachemaster]

I'm not sure if BS is designed to convert a partial mash recipe into extract. That might be why the pale dme disappears, although I suspect it's just including the pale dme within the wheat extract calculation because, as others have stated, wheat extract tends to be 50/50 wheat and pale malt.

I suspect BS also considers acid malt a mash adjustment, rather than a flavor adjustment, so that is why it is not carrying over into the extract recipe. If you steep acid malt you'll get the acid and I suppose some of the barley flavor out of it but beyond the acid on the exterior of the grain you need to mash acid malt to convert the starches into sugar. If you don't mash then you generally do not want to add grain that requires mash conversion to your steeping grain.

You could check on the beersmith forums, I'm sure those folks could verify this info is correct.

If you want to toss up the ABV 0.4% I'd just include some table sugar in the boil to get you to where you need. It may require slightly increasing the bittering hops to keep the IBUs.

[flbrewer]

I'm not sure if BS is designed to convert a partial mash recipe into extract.

It's all grain to extract.

[Joe Sr.]

I would assume that the BS conversion is adjusting the caravienne amount to keep the color the same. All extract will produce a darker beer especially if you add it all early and boil it.

If your looking for flavor contributions I would take the caravienne back up.

The BS conversion should only be a guide.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[denny]

I'm looking at a recipe on BeerSmith and when covering from all grain to extract the ABV drops from 4.9 to 4.5. The IBU and OG remains the same. What's the easiest way to bump this up without impacting too much difference in taste of the original recipe?

It sounds like it's because BS realizes that extract will likely have a higher FG.  You could sub 1/2 lb. of sugar for 1/2 lb. of extract and probably be pretty close.  When I've converted my recipes to extract for Northern Brewer kits, that's what I've done and it's worked great.

[reverseapachemaster]

I'm not sure if BS is designed to convert a partial mash recipe into extract.

It's all grain to extract.

That statement was in response to:

If for instance I select Pale DME, it won't even include this in the new recipe.

DME would still be extract. Not sure if you meant to say pale malt or you were trying to put DME into the recipe with other grains and tried to convert it to extract. The pale DME would probably go into the wheat extract because it's 50/50 wheat and pale malts.