Recipes don't add up.

When I put clone brew recipes from books, etc. in BeerSmith the numbers never seem to be the same as the recipe.  What causes this?

You need to be sure your equipment profile has been configured and you brewhouse efficiency matches that of the book.  Each book and author has their own efficiency base they use.

If you still have a problem, give me an example recipe or point to one in a book and I will see how it does for me.

- Joe

Hi,
  Another popular issue is the equation used to estimate bitterness - often people use "Rager" instead of Tinseth (you can set this in the Options dialog->Hops tab).

Brad

A lot of authors explain their calculations in the book somewhere. I always enter the amounts as published, then in the notes list the published OG, IBU, HBU, etc. This keeps me a clean copy of the original, as published, but allows me to tweak it to match my equipment when I brew it.
I am also helping some young brewers getting started, so I can also tweak those recipes to match their equipment profiles.
It's a great learning experience to enter recipes from a book. It shows how others formulate recipes, and how little changes can alter your beer.
It also gives you pratice with BeerSmith.
On a related note, I had 100+ recipes I had collected over the years entered to match my equipment profile. Then SWMBO bought me a new mash tun for my birthday, and, like your problem, none of the numbers in my recipes added up anymore.

Thanks for the answers guys, I will go back and check these things out and see if I can get closer to the published recipes.