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Malt Bill % GU or Weight?

ryancanderson

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I have been reading Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels and realized that the malt bill percentages used in his calculations are by gravity unit (GU). In Beersmith, it is the percentage by weight. First, is there any agreement that percentages on malt bills are by GU or by weight? If GU is the correct way to list the percentages, is there a way to enter those into Beersmith or do we need to do all of the conversions for ourselves to get the percentage by weight?
 
The vast majority of recipes are given as % by weight for the fermentables bill.  Daniels does recommend and use the gravity contribution of each fermentable in his calculations, but it has never really caught on beyond his one book.  Every other recipe source I have read, and it is a lot of books and web sites,  has used percentage by weight when those percentages are given at all.  In general, it is much easier for people to get their heads around that figure.  It does not make either method correct, but does mean that the program is not conducive to entering a recipe by GU contribution of each fermentable.  As such, entering in a recipe based upon the GU contribution of each fermentable would need to be first calculated to weight percent by hand.

 
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