Stevedkiwi
Apprentice
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2012
- Messages
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OK Here goes !!
I am new to brewing and have just done three kit brews so far.
but I have really caught the bug as I find the whole business fascinating.
Anyway I plan to continue with kits but get into proper extract and eventually probably partial mashes before too long.
So I figure a software tool is a good idea and like the look of Beer Smith.
However ...
I am the kind of guy that needs to know how stuff works and I cannot really get my head around a few key parts of brewing calcs. Hopefully someone can help me without baffling me with jargon.
I will frame my questions based on using Beer Smith., and will post each question (Or series of sub questions of questions) seperately.
Please bear in mind that we are metric down here at the bottom of the world (Or top depending on your outlook)
1. Adding beer kits to the grains table.
a) IBU / EBC
Our main local producers package in 1.7kg cans and quote IBU's and EBC's as packaged eg the Coopers APA is quoted as being 340 IBU and 90 EBC.
Coopers state that to get the actual IBU of the brew (Assuming no further hop additions) you multiply by the weight and divide by the batch size so
340 * 1.7kg / 23L = 25.1 IBU which is just at the bottom of the range for APA. (Our standard batch size here in NZ is 23 L)
I presume that to enter this kit in BS I would enter 40.4 IBU being the US imperial equivelent of 340 g/l and BS takes care of the rest
This results in an IBU of 23 in BS which is fairly close I suppose to the Coopers calc.
For EBC I am really confused though as i am not at all sure how the calcs work. Entering 90 as the EBC gives me a predicted EBU of over 28 is way too high.
what should I be entering ? should it be 10.7 whis is 90 / 8.4 (Metric to imperial again) ? this gets me close to the bottom of the style range so I guess its right.
b) Potential SG
How do i estimate the Potential SG for a kit? manufacturers dont sem to provide it and I have seen some widely varying numbers in various spreadsheets etc
Alos if I am simply adding the kit and enhancers to the fermenter (With a little boiled water plus top up with cold as per kit instrauctions) then should I set the yield at 100% ?
PS I have downloaded an add on which lists Coopers kits but they are listed at the respective Can label IBU and EBC levels and with an SG of 1.036
PPS The beer enhancer used in my brew is Coopers enhancer no 2 which is 250g Light Dry malt, 250g Maltodextrose, 500g Dextrose(Corn Sugar)
thanks to anyone who can help me out here. I really want to understand the basics rather than just presuming that the numbers are right.
thanks Steve D
I am new to brewing and have just done three kit brews so far.
but I have really caught the bug as I find the whole business fascinating.
Anyway I plan to continue with kits but get into proper extract and eventually probably partial mashes before too long.
So I figure a software tool is a good idea and like the look of Beer Smith.
However ...
I am the kind of guy that needs to know how stuff works and I cannot really get my head around a few key parts of brewing calcs. Hopefully someone can help me without baffling me with jargon.
I will frame my questions based on using Beer Smith., and will post each question (Or series of sub questions of questions) seperately.
Please bear in mind that we are metric down here at the bottom of the world (Or top depending on your outlook)
1. Adding beer kits to the grains table.
a) IBU / EBC
Our main local producers package in 1.7kg cans and quote IBU's and EBC's as packaged eg the Coopers APA is quoted as being 340 IBU and 90 EBC.
Coopers state that to get the actual IBU of the brew (Assuming no further hop additions) you multiply by the weight and divide by the batch size so
340 * 1.7kg / 23L = 25.1 IBU which is just at the bottom of the range for APA. (Our standard batch size here in NZ is 23 L)
I presume that to enter this kit in BS I would enter 40.4 IBU being the US imperial equivelent of 340 g/l and BS takes care of the rest
This results in an IBU of 23 in BS which is fairly close I suppose to the Coopers calc.
For EBC I am really confused though as i am not at all sure how the calcs work. Entering 90 as the EBC gives me a predicted EBU of over 28 is way too high.
what should I be entering ? should it be 10.7 whis is 90 / 8.4 (Metric to imperial again) ? this gets me close to the bottom of the style range so I guess its right.
b) Potential SG
How do i estimate the Potential SG for a kit? manufacturers dont sem to provide it and I have seen some widely varying numbers in various spreadsheets etc
Alos if I am simply adding the kit and enhancers to the fermenter (With a little boiled water plus top up with cold as per kit instrauctions) then should I set the yield at 100% ?
PS I have downloaded an add on which lists Coopers kits but they are listed at the respective Can label IBU and EBC levels and with an SG of 1.036
PPS The beer enhancer used in my brew is Coopers enhancer no 2 which is 250g Light Dry malt, 250g Maltodextrose, 500g Dextrose(Corn Sugar)
thanks to anyone who can help me out here. I really want to understand the basics rather than just presuming that the numbers are right.
thanks Steve D