HomebrewandBeer.com forum

I'm very interested in the way you do your long hand Calcs.
I can't help it, I'm an Engineer who does everthing by hand Calcs, (bloody machines are only as good as the info being plugged into e'm).

Do you have these Formulae in a way that you can send me a copy?

Cheers, Mick.

Where for art' thou Speedie

I would love the calcs too if you dont mind Speedie, I would love to try and get a handle on the long hand way opf doing calculations...

cheers,
Grog

send some thing soon

The calculating mind
The flying fingers on the keyboard
Sacred geese in the Sapporo Sunset

Arcane poetry?
Madman's lunatic babble?
Fly flew in my beer

i just love that peace and good will to fellow man(women)
try to have a positive outlook for the coming year
biab or single step wtf
enjoy your families
enigma

Speedie, do you realise the term enigma is not a synonym for 'one with poor language skills'?

This is copied from my Word records. It's been copied out of various posts at different times. Make of it what you will.

MASH EFFICIENCY

1. Brew maths is really quite simple.

How it works is all malts and adjuncts etc give a different gravity.
The specifications are all written as H.W.E which is "hot water extract", with sugar being the highest at 386, so everything else is given as a % of that. ie, pale malt is around 81% which gives you around 309.
This is the total gravity you can get with 1 kilo in 1 litre but it is impossible to get this, this is 100% efficiency.
The same goes for American calculationss but its in P.P.G which is the gravity of 1 pound in 1 gallon. The same specs are used ie. 81% for pale malt gives you 37 points of gravity.

So a simple example to work out the total potential for 5 kg of pale malt in 23 litres is
5 x 309 / 23 = 67 (1.067)

Now to work out your efficiency you divide the gravity you achieved with this brew. Say you have 1.050 so 50/67 =.74 so you achieved 74% effiency.
Then next time when you do the calc. 5 x 309 /23 =you simply times this by .74 .
This gives you your expected gravity.

For your first batches I would stick to using about 65 to 70%.
So do the 5 x 309/ 23 = 67.
then times 67 by .65 = 43(1.043)

PS: the HWE numbers are usually all on the malt craft sites. Other malts like crystal malt are around 75%. Some malts can be lower and some higher.
To get the number times 386 by the percent as a decimal point ie pale malt at 81% gives you 386 x .81 =312

Ale -------81% X 386 = 312
Pilsner----------------81%
Hoepfner Munich----80% 308
Melanoiden--------- -80%
Caramalt pils---------79% 305
Crystal---------------- 75%

Well, it's the method you will see in Australia.

Say the HWE is 308 litre degrees per kilogram for a malt.
That means 5kg in 20L will give you : (308 x 5)/20 = 77. i.e. 1.077 SG at 100% efficiency. Multiply that by your efficiency (eg. 75%) gives you 77 x 0.75 = 57.75 or close enough to 1.058.

2. http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum//index.php?showtopic=45107&hl= post 13 3/6/10
Actually the Brew House Efficiency is the one truly vital number. It is the measure of exactly how much extract you have in the fermenter at the end of brewing / the potential, or what you could have got if you achieved 100 % extraction and had no losses.

This is a copy of a doc I gave out after a talk at a HUB meeting. It uses the more modern EBC method of calculating efficiency and looks at Plato, was written for a mixed audience of Kit, Extract and Mash brewers.

MHB



Gravity
In brewing everything dissolved in a wort is referred to as extract. Gravity is the term we use to define how much is in solution. Over the years there have been several ways to look at gravity the two most commonly used by brewers today are:-

Specific Gravity (SG) Is simply a comparison between a sample and the the weight of the same volume of water, (working in metric makes this all so easy) we know 1 Litre of water weighs 1 Kg, if a Litre of wort weighed 1.050 Kg we can say it is 1.050 times heavier than water or it has a SG of 1.050.
Plato (Po) - (there is a good overview in Wikipedia)
Plato is a more refined version of Brix which is an even more refined version of the earlier Balling scale, and is simply a comparison to a known sugar solution. If a wort has the same density as a 10% w/v (10% weight/volume i.e. 100 g in a litre) solution of common white sugar it is referred to as being a 10 Plato (10 Po) wort.
It's important to note that the density is dependent on temperature and that you must know the temperature at which your equipment is calibrated (in Australia it's mostly 20o C).
In brewing everything that goes into solution is called "Extract" that includes sugars, proteins, minerals and fatty acids.
Density measures everything in solution; it doesn't tell you anything about what is in solution, just how much.
It's very important to note that water included in anything added to a wort doesn't add to the extract, just the volume.
Given that there are two common scales, I suppose the obvious question is why two and how they are used, but first how they relate to each other.
Unfortunately the exact relationship is fairly complex but across the common brewing range (1.006-1.060 ish) there is a pretty good approximation – roughly: -
SG = (Po * 4)/1000 +1
Or if you want be really precise these equations are good to more than 5 decimal places.
Po = - 616.868 + 1111.14(SG) - 630.272(SG)2 + 135.997(SG)3
SG = (668- (6682 – 820(463 Po)2)/410
Let's say you are making a fairly simple kit beer with just a 1.7 Kg can and 1 Kg of dextrose
What would the O.G. be? (OG being the term for the gravity at the start of fermentation or Original Gravity)
First up the kit is going to be about 80% solids and 20% water so the kit will add 1.36 Kg of extract to the wort.
Dextrose is roughly 10% water (dextrose monohydrate) so 1 Kg will add 0.9 Kg of extract.
In total you are adding 2.26 Kg, if the wort is made to a standard 22.5 Litres the Po of the wort is going to be (2.26/22.5) * 100 = 10 Po
Using the quick formula above the O.G. will be:-
OG = (10 * 4)/1000 +1 = 1.040
Frankly that's piss weak, I want an O.G. of 1.055 so I have to add 0.015 to the gravity. By running the equation in reverse we can work out how much to add.
Or just look at the Po we want
1.055 = (Po * 4)/1000 +1 = (0.055* 1000)/4 = 13.75 Po
Just taking the simplest possible single malt All Grain (AG) recipe say you want an O.G. of 1.050, you want to make 22.5 L and there will be 2.5
Lleft in the bottom of the kettle with the trub.
All the extract that doesn't end up in the fermenter is lost and is accounted for as part of "Brewhouse Efficiency" (BhE) but is important to highlight the fact that it contains extract to, once you have established what your losses are you can just use the Brewhouse Efficiency.
1.050 SG is about 12.5 Po so we need 12.5% of 22.5 or 2.8125 Kg of extract into the fermenter.
If our BhE is 70% we need to make a total of
2.8125 /70*100 = 4.0178 Kg of extract
If our malt had a potential yield of 79% we would need
3.65625 /79*100 = 5.0859 Kg of malt
So you will be buying 5.1 Kg won't you?
Plato obviously makes a lot of sense and people often ask why it isn't the only scale we use. Well its great before fermentation, it stops being so sensible after the yeast gets to work.
Alcohol has a lower density than water, obviously much lower than Wort, trying to relate the amount of residual extract, alcohol and water really isn't the job for Plato but it's where SG excels!

That was absolute gold. Except the last calculation you say "If our malt had a potential yield of 79% we would need
3.65625 /79*100 = 5.0859 Kg of malt" = where did that 3.65... come from?

edit: Pretty sure it's a cutnpaste error since 4.0178/79*100 = 5.0859
We have 10 Po so we need to add 3.75 Po (or 3.75% w/v) to 22.5 litres 22.5*0.0375 = 0.84375 Kg of dextrose?
Not quite, remember dextrose is 10% water so to get the right amount of extract we add 0.84375/ (90*100) = 0.9375 Kg of dextrose
Having met just a few brewers I reckon most of them would dump in the whole kilo and be done.
It's fairly clear that a basic knowledge of SG and Plato gives you very good idea of what you will get when you are designing a beer.
If you are a mash brewer it goes a step further and in practice you work backwards from what you want to what you need.
Just taking the simplest possible single malt All Grain (AG) recipe say you want an O.G. of 1.050, you want to make 22.5 L and there will be 2.5
Lleft in the bottom of the kettle with the trub.
All the extract that doesn't end up in the fermenter is lost and is accounted for as part of "Brewhouse Efficiency" (BhE) but is important to highlight the fact that it contains extract to, once you have established what your losses are you can just use the Brewhouse Efficiency.
1.050 SG is about 12.5 Po so we need 12.5% of 22.5 or 2.8125 Kg of extract into the fermenter.
If our BhE is 70% we need to make a total of
2.8125 /70*100 = 4.0178 Kg of extract
If our malt had a potential yield of 79% we would need
3.65625 /79*100 = 5.0859 Kg of malt
So you will be buying 5.1 Kg won't you?
Plato obviously makes a lot of sense and people often ask why it isn't the only scale we use. Well its great before fermentation, it stops being so sensible after the yeast gets to work.
Alcohol has a lower density than water, obviously much lower than Wort, trying to relate the amount of residual extract, alcohol and water really isn't the job for Plato but it's where SG excels!

That was absolute gold. Except the last calculation you say "If our malt had a potential yield of 79% we would need
3.65625 /79*100 = 5.0859 Kg of malt" = where did that 3.65... come from?

edit: Pretty sure it's a cutnpaste error since 4.0178/79*100 = 5.0859

touce
I await a response

Speedie, whats the go mate ?
We're all waiting...
You on holidays ?

Cheers
Grog.

Grog, did you not find Warra's post useful? I doubt that speedie is going to explain it any better.

Absolutely, Warra's post is well done and very informative.

Am still keen to see Speedies version though, it seems he's pretty quick to post rambling notes about nothing, but not so fast when given the chance to post something really informative.
Anyone that brews as much as Speedie and does all their calcs manually, has something real to offer I would think.
He must have a nice system worked out, it would be great to see it.

Thats just my observation.

Cheers,
Grog

pretty much what warras post said is what i use
and as stated it all comes down to your system efficency
speedie

What about calculating IBU then??

mick.

Billy I use a formula from a book that randy mosser put together
It is titled the brewers companion
There is a graph that depicts the expected ibus in varying degrees of extract using either pellet or flower this guy has done some major investigation with his brewing
With colour it is more of experience as to what grain does what this is usually done under a ratio type assessment ie 5% of crystal yields from straw to copper etc
If you look at any style guide for a particular beer it has a broad range for ibu,colour,etc for you to hit the mark
Sort of like playing darts good to hit 180 but above 100 is pretty good also
Ps I will definitely get that bottle of wicked ale in the post
speedie