Just started listening the archives of the Jamil Show and have a newbie question. All the clone recipes are given at 75% efficiency along with percentages. I run around 85% and was wondering if I should use the same amount of specialty malts in the given recipe and scale back the base malt. Or should I just use the percentages and play around with the amounts until BeerSmith gives me the same OG?

Thanks!

You just want to scale back the base malt. You overall volume will remain the same so if you change the amount of the specialty malts, the flavor and color will change a little.

Wayne

I enter it into ProMash as it is given in the show and then just scale everything to fit my typical efficiency. Bug has an interesting point about specialty malts that I never really thought about. I guess I just assume that my difference in efficiency will effect flavor and color extraction in the same way that it effects sugar extraction. Or at least close enough!

I enter it into Promash, change the efficiency and then adjust just the base grain until I get the starting gravity back where it is supposed to be. It probably doesn't make a significant difference in actual practice, especially on the small batches we do. I don't think anything that does not need to be mashed will be affected by changes in efficiency. For example, a given amount of chocolate malt will give the batch a certain SRM. Cutting back the amount to reflect increased efficiency will give you a lighter color of beer. I would think the taste would likewise be affected.

Wayne

Fair enough, though I wonder if the biggest source efficiency differences is due to lautering efficiency (assuming that most mashes see close to 100% conversion), wouldn't that also effect the efficiency of rinsing the color and flavor compounds from the grain as well? If you assume that all the color is dispersed evenly throughout the mash along with the sugars, then I would think that the efficiency of rinsing sugar from the mash would correlate to the efficiency of rinsing color and flavor as well.

Question: I am wondering if your effeciency is increased if that would increase your SRM extraction and flavor extraction as well. So if you are getting 85% would you not change the volumes of all grains. to keep flavor and color constant. I know the effenciency purely relates to sugar extraction, but I am wondering if not all are affected in a linear way.

Another thing is I think by only change the base you are likewise changing the flavor as you are reducing the ratio of base to specialty malts. You're base malts contribute the most to the flavor profile of the beer as there is the most of it. Now it is not the most overwhelming flavor in the beer by any means as the specialties produce stronger flavors but the base is the largest contributing flavor, if that makes sense. Hope you can see what I am getting at with above statement.

I would love to hear Gordon Strong, John Palmer, and Jamil debate this subject. Could be quite interesting.

Wayne

WHAT? you doubt my wisdom! Wow you are smart. I would love to see some white papers on this subject with some solid data (must admit, I haven't looked around). Maybe someone from staff will read this and decide it is a good topic of discussion for Brew Strong.