Scaling back roasted malts

houndbrewing · Joined: 17 Jun 2019 Posts: 11

I brewed 6 gallon BIAB batches for several years and have several recipes dialed in that were formulated over the years. I took all these older recipes and used Beersmith to scale them up to my new Kal clone and have noticed that the roast character is much stronger than I am wanting and sometimes overpowering.

On two of the recipes, I decided to re-brew and scaled back the roasted grain amounts by 20%, leaving all others equal. They were much better that way. I was just curious if anyone else has noticed the same thing or if it's something I'm doing.

**kal** · Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2019 1:29 pm Post subject:

A couple of discussions on it:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/regarding-specialty-malts-and-scaling-recipes-for-mash-efficiencies.573724/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Homebrewing/comments/476t3d/tuesday_recipe_critique_formulation/d0b3613/

Kal

houndbrewing · Joined: 17 Jun 2019 Posts: 11

interesting reads, thank you!

I used Beersmith to adjust the recipes. It looks like from the comments the formulas adjust the grains to meet expected OG and then try to stay at the same SRM.

My friend went from 10 gallons to 5 barrels and scaled up the recipes with Beersmith and brewed them exactly as Beersmith spit them out. His brewhouse efficiency was the same on both systems though so maybe that is why he was still spot on. In my case, I was jumping from a 6 gallon 70% brewhouse efficiency to a 12 gallon 85% brewhouse efficiency. I'm wondering if the 'double switch' of volume and bh efficiency is where things got goofed up.

If there are any Beersmith users out there, based on those threads, my plan going forward is to use Beersmith to scale the recipe and then double check the grist ratios in the scaled recipe against the original recipe and adjust from there. I played around with my dry stout recipe and it is pretty close to the 20% scale back I had adjusted it to prior.

**kal** · Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2019 7:17 pm Post subject:

Did you mean brewhouse efficiency or mash/conversion efficiency?

I don't see how brewhouse efficiency could affect anything about the actual beer as over and above mash/conversion efficency as it most just adds on losses that you incur due to packaging/etc. See this pic:

https://cdn.brewersfriend.com/understanding_efficiency_large.png

Kal

houndbrewing · Joined: 17 Jun 2019 Posts: 11

Yes, sorry - Beersmith lets you control on brewhouse efficency as an input and I was playing around with that while typing this up.