Efficiency

[jeffpn]

It all comes down to how much grain you need to buy to get the gravity you want in the volume of desired wort in your fermenter.

 

[Yooper]

I was thinking about what a better scaling script should do

1. lock OG, IBU, boil time, fermentable %'s, IBU contribution of each hop addition
2. user input desired batch size and use OG to calculate total sugar content in fermenter
3. add back transfer losses/dead space for water and sugar based on equipment profile
4. add back boiloff based on rate in equipment profile, calculate diluted preboil gravity
5. use the new preboil values to scale amount of each hop addition to maintain IBU contribution
6. add back lauter dead space losses for water and sugar based on equipment profile
7. Use sparge effectiveness (new profile variable) plus grain absorption setting in a formula to work out: grain weight, water and sugar losses to grain. Add water and sugar to running totals
8. Use mash efficiency (new profile variable) convert total converted sugar to max sugar potential
9. scale fermentables using %'s and PPG to meet max sugar potential

It is a little complicated but certainly feasible. I may even try it out in excel on my recipes if it can save me some time from rewriting every one.

We decided to try to implement this as soon as we can. I'll keep you posted!

 

[Rea Valley Brewery]

What would be really useful in the efficiency calculations is some kind of "local efficiency" variable. Experience shows me that for pretty much any given recipe, my OG comes out about 3 or 4 points lower than the calculator suggests. I'm not bothered by this - at the scale I brew at, I know that I just have to "aim high" to get the results that I want, but it does mean that all my recipes are "wrong".

What would be great for me would be some kind of "local efficiency" coefficient which we could use as a multiplier for the calculated numbers which I could adjust down from 1.0 to 0.98 (or whatever it needed to be - I'd be happy to work that out empirically for my particular set up and process).