Malt percentages by gravity (not weight)

I like to design my malt bills by the gravity contribution individual malts make to the recipe.  This is similar to weight, but critically different.  We add hops by their alpha acid contribution not by weight, so why not do the same for malts?

An example for 5 gallons of 1.052 OG pale ale:



Step-by-step:
[list type=decimal]
[*]5 gallons of 1.052 means we need 260 points (5 gal x 52 points).
[*]80% of those points come from 2-row (260 x 80% = 208)
[*]2-row contributes 38 points per pound of grain per gallon of water (PPPG)
[*]5.47 pounds of 2-row in 5 gallons contributes 208 points (208 / 38)
[*]Repeat for the crystal malts. Notice the same percentage gives different weights because they contribute different amounts of sugar.
[/list]

I learned this from Designing Great Beers and it has improved my recipe formulation.  Would love to see this feature in BeerSmith.

--Dean

Dean,
Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels was written in 1996 and updated in 2000. It is a great textbook full of information with a focus on the technical and crunching a lot of numbers, which may appeal to an engineer? a scientist? a math teacher?, but I my opinion, most brewers, including the fore mentioned would rather spend their time using software, than entering data into a calculator and a spreadsheet. Remember, it is just another way to ESTIMATE an outcome. If you like Ray's way, have at it. No argument form me that Ray Daniels is a home brewing icon. You will probably have to wait for Mr. Daniels to develop his own software program for you to buy!

Well now its time to walk my copy of Designing Great Beers back to my brewing library.

RiverBrewer said:

most brewers, including the fore mentioned would rather spend their time using software, than entering data into a calculator and a spreadsheet.

Click to expand...

This is exactly why I want to see the feature in BS.  So I don't have to formulate my malt bill one way, then enter it into the software.  And have to repeat the process every time I scale the recipe. (Which I frequently do.)