Cloning, Gulden Draak: ABV & SRM way off

Found two recipes for a Gulden Draak all-grain clone.  Both grain bills very closely compare.  Both are 5 gallon batches.  Both have ABVs between 8.8% and 10.5%.  Both have SRM of 22.

When I entered the grain bill, hops, and yeast into BeerSmith it estimates the ABV to be 4.9% and the SRM to be 11.9.  The BeerSmith estimated OG and FB are also well below the recipe report.

Any suggestions why the BeerSmith readings are so much lower than the recipe report?

Greetings Golds,

My guess is the brew house efficiency in BS is set way too low for the recipe you're entering.  If you have used BS in the past and your brews have hit their marks - Pre-Boil, OG, FG - than BS Equipment Profile is set accurately for your particular equipment.  So, simply add ingredients to your grain bill in equal proportions to the recipe until the numbers match.

I have had the same thing happen to me whenever I follow a recipe I found on line and I've corrected the situation by adding grain.  Note that you will need to follow the Grain Percentage (%).  So start by entering the grain according to the recipe.  Then click on the Grain Percent button on the right.  A dialog box will come up.  Record the numbers in the dialog box, then add grain till the numbers match.

One of the other users may have a faster approach to accomplish the same goal, but that how I did it.

Good Luck!!

KellerBrauer is correct in that the equipment and process that the recipes have been written for is not the same as what you have for your process.  Different assumptions can lead to very different outcomes.

The easiest way that I have found to enter recipes from other sources is as follows:

1. Open up a new recipe with your preferred equipment profile and batch size.

2. Enter the recipe as it is written -- same grains, hops, yeast, timing of additions, and amounts as published.  Don't worry about the size of the recipe vs yours or the number which result as that will be fixed in the next steps.

3.  Once everything has been entered, click on the OG slider under the ingredient box.  Change the OG to the target OG of the recipe.  This will scale the grains to YOUR equipment profile in the ratio as given in the published recipe.

4.  Repeat this with the Color slider, set the SRM to match the target from the recipe.  This will make adjustments to the specialty malts to produce the same color and usually the same ratio with respect to your efficiency vs the assumed efficiency of the published recipe.

5.  You can then do the same with the IBU slider to adjust the boil and whirlpool hops.  To do this accurately, you really need to know both the method by which the published IBU were calculated and how you perceive bitterness vs how the calculated numbers rate the bitterness.

6. Now you will need to make an adjustment to any other misc items and any dry hops/flame out hop additions which do not add any calculated IBU.  I usually do this by using the ratio of another large hop addition in the boil and applying this same ratio to the non-scaled hop additions.

This should bring the recipe very close to the intended result of the published recipe. 

Thank you KellerBrauer and Oginme.  I appreciate your suggestions.  While reading them it occurred to me to check all my settings.  So doing, I discovered my hops setting for Belgian Strong Ale yeast was set to the default standard of 2011, woefully outdated, resulting in a yeast viability of just 2%.  Thinking this was the likely cause of the low BS ABV I updated the yeast package date to Nov 2016, this immediately increased the yeast viability to over 92%.  I was sure this was the cause of the low BS ABV rating.  It made sense.  Unfortunately, it had no effect.  The BS ABV rating remained unchanged despite the drastically improved yeast viability rating---4.9% EABV compared to the recipes ABV rating of 9-11%.  This still doesn't make sense to me.

I'll check the other settings you suggested.  But I'm anticipating the amount of added grains needed to boost the ABV to the recipe's reported number will be significant-----and WAY out of line with the recipe's amount.

It still makes no sense to me the program would be that far out of line----particularly since the recipe was written for a 5 gallon batch, the same specified in my equipment setting (10 Gal Igloo with 10 Gal boil kettle).

Greetings Golds, my brewhouse efficiancy is a piss poor 68% (I'm at the mercy of my supply house mill - at least until Christmas!  Yea!!!). so I understand your frustration. While I rarely use other recipes besides my own, I have found that because my efficiency is so low I need to add grain to make up the difference when I'm following someone else's recipe.  And, as it usually turns out, my added grain typically doesn't add up to more than a couple pounds.

I discovered my issues when I repeatedly missed my SG goals and I couldn't figure out why.  Then I believe it was Oginme who offered assistance and instruction that pointed me to my Brew House efficiency.  I made some adjustments and I've been spot on ever since.

Another point to keep in mind - water makeup, water temperature, pH, sparging technique and mash technique all play a roll in wort extraction.

So, my point, if you want to hit the marks indicated in the recipe, increase your Brew House efficiency.  However, doing so will cause you to be light on your SG goals.

Let's try this: If you can point me to the recipe, I would be happy to see the results while using my profiles just to see how the numbers work out.

Golds said:

It still makes no sense to me the program would be that far out of line----particularly since the recipe was written for a 5 gallon batch, the same specified in my equipment setting (10 Gal Igloo with 10 Gal boil kettle).

Click to expand...

While it may be written for the same size of equipment, the assumed process losses of the written recipe may be very different from that of your system. The amount of process losses and boil off rate might be totally different from what you experience.

Your best bet is to scale the recipe as has been described by KellerBrauer and I to fit your process.

Thanks again for your input.  This has been quite the learning experience.  One of the two clone Gulden Draak recipes comes from Brewtoad: https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/gulden-draak-clone-3.  The other comes from Tess & Mark Szamatuiski's book "Clone Brews" (older edition), page 54 (copy atchd).

FYI.  My BeerSmith program is set for a Total Efficiency of 72%.  The Estimated Mash Efficiency for the Gulden Draak recipe entered into my BeerSmith is 82.8%.  Even changing my program's Total Efficiency setting to 83%, the Est ABV only went from 4.9% (at 72% efficiency) to 5.6% (at 83% efficiency).

You're probably familiar with Gulden Draak, it fits a unique category of beers, VERY smooth----and both high in alcohol and high on the top shelf price list.  Not the beverage I'd choose watching a football game or after lawn mowing.  But, for a nice snifter full in the right environment and company. 

My intent in the secondary fermenter is to add a vanilla bean or two, and possibly experiment with adding small amount of bourbon infused oak wood blocks.

Never tried it before and it looks pretty good.  If you get a chance, post up your recipe from beersmith (highlight recipe, click on 'file' > 'export selected' and save it as a .bsmx file.  Post the file here and I can look to see if something else is going on.  Entering it into my recipe template as I described it above it seems to come in OK with the exception of the color, which seems low on my version entered in from looking at both recipes.

Thanks Oginme.  File attached.  You'll note the grain bill in the program does not match perfectly the recipe grain bill---my supplier (Adventures in Homebrewing, www.homebrewing.org) does not stock the exact grain, so I made the closest substitution, I doubt these substitutions would have resulted in the large ABV difference.

One other note: my intent once I got the numbers in line for a 5-gallon batch was to use BS to scale the recipe to 3-gallon.

I looked at your recipe as typed in.  Then I adjusted the OG for the recipe target in brewtoad and likewise for the IBU and Color (not successfully).  There are not enough dark colored malts to adjust for the color, as the program has some limits on how much it can scale any individual ingredient to obtain a color target. 

One of the first things that I noticed is that your batch size is for a 10-gal batch, whereas the recipe is written for a 5-gal batch.  This pretty much effectively halves your OG reading.  So when I looked at the recipe the first thing I did was scale the recipe to the 5-gal batch size.

From here, if you have a separate equipment profile for your 3-gal system, you can scale to that.  Otherwise, you can scale down leaving your process losses the same.

One of the reasons that I enter recipes using the method that I outlined previously, is that I most often brew a 10 liter batch size.  Doing BIAB with a fairly high efficiency, trying to guess at what someone else has for process losses and efficiency was driving me crazy.  Entering by grain percentages and using my equipment profile works fairly well, but requires me to do the maths before making my entries.  Much easier to just enter the amounts as published and then allowing the program to adjust the amounts using the slider bars.  I do have to do a check on things, as the program tends to make a first cut at simple sugars -- zeroing them out initially and then ratioing the grains to further lower the gravity. 

DOH!  I feel like such an idiot.  I checked everything except the batch size.  OF COURSE----the incorrect 10 Gallon batch size using only a 5 Gallon grain bill caused the low readings.  Thanks for gently pointing out my error.  Now that I've fixed that, I'll do as you suggested and use BS to scale back the 5 Gallon batch to 3 Gallon.  I appreciate your extra set of eyes.

I might have also have missed it except for the fact that I deal in metric units.  So looking at the figures, I automatically do the conversion in my head.  I am the worst when it comes down to proofing my own work, it comes down to seeing what you expect to see and not what is actually there.