A basic thing with the efficiency and cloning recipes of large breweries.

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Kristoffer

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Its a question on brewhourse efficiency. So in Germany we call it Sudhausausbeute. Its calculated completly different than brewhourse efficiency but that doesnt matter for my issue. i posted that thread in another forum too, so i get most answeres and opinions. Would be intressting to see your view on that.

So going with german numbers a proffesionel brewing company goes with 70-75% Sudhausausbeute (SHA). A hobbybrewer will get arround 60-65 with "normal" fly sparge and a BIAB brewer get 50-55% SHA. That said shows for me a big issue when converting a recipe of a big company to homebrew levels. I listened to John Keeling on a podcast when he said: "That beer got 80% base 10% Crystal 10% Amber.. etc.." When he says that, he considers the SHA of his company which is 70%-75%.
So a homebrewer normaly just type in that numbers into an editor and according to HIS OWN efficiency. That is a mistake in my opinion.
Let me explain it.
Lets say you have a Stout recipe. The company which makes it uses at their high efficiency of 70-75% and the recipe lets say (at 20 Liters) is 78% Base, 10% Brown and 5% Black Malt. That would make for example: 3610g Base, 420g Brown and 210g black malt.
Thats how the Recipe looks in the brewery but nobody knows since people only give out the % values... so if i then take my own efficiency lets say i am a BIAB homebrewer and take 50% the recipe would look like that: 5410g basemalt, 640g Brown Malt and 320g black malt. So over 100g of black malt and 100g brown malt more than in the original recipe of the brewery. So a complete different beers since even at very low efficiency the black malt will not care a bit and will pumb 320g of roastiness into your brew. And 100g difference is much... Do you get my point?
The level of brewhouse efficeny is taken to see how much sugar (gravitiy) you get out of a certain amount of malt BUT that calculation system NEVER see the aromes you get form speciality malt. I did some experiment where i did exactly that. i put in an amount of black malt into a cup of water and calculated it up to lower SHA. I didnt include base or other malt. at the end the aromes of the malt tea (as we call that here) was sooooo much harsher and undrinkable when calculated on 50% than on 75%... So since then if i clone a recipe of a big company i allways see it as given that their % numbers are counted on 70-75 SHA so i trick as i would have lets say 70% SHA and put the recipe in. Then i remember the gramm numbers of each special malt (at 70%SHA) and then just reduce the SHA to my known level (50% for example) and put in the speciality malt gramm numbers of the 70% SHA. All the malt i need more for lower efficency i adjust with base malt.

Am i right here with that thinking or what you say guys ?
 
That all seems very complicated I'm afraid.
If I've understood correctly, is your theory that the adjustment for efficiency should be made by adjusting just the weight of base malts but keeping the weight of speciality malts the same?
 
The speciality malts don't add a lot to efficiency, and especially on a commercial scale. Most add the speciality malts either mash out or steep, so the figures from the fermentability of those malts will be not worth taking into consideration.
Just even out the efficiency difference with the base malt.
 
That all seems very complicated I'm afraid.
If I've understood correctly, is your theory that the adjustment for efficiency should be made by adjusting just the weight of base malts but keeping the weight of speciality malts the same?


The speciality malts don't add a lot to efficiency, and especially on a commercial scale. Most add the speciality malts either mash out or steep, so the figures from the fermentability of those malts will be not worth taking into consideration.
Just even out the efficiency difference with the base malt.



Okay guys i hope this graphic i done better explains what i mean :) But Jim: Yes its that easy :)
Since this forum won let me upload full res so you can read everything i uploaded on a host server hope that works for you. If you cant read all just tell me.

https://ibb.co/yXHdmqg
 
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Graphic? Where? (Ah, it's there now!).

All very interesting! I often attempt to brew "historical" beers and I'm aware that our "brewhouse efficiency" will skew recipes. I'd been thinking of something to untwist these recipes ... and now I've got a name for it!
... in Germany we call it Sudhausausbeute ...
For example: One of my pet hates is the (popular!) recipe for Whitbread London Porter (1850) as published in the Durden Park Beer Circle's booklet "Old British Beers...". That recipe appears to have gotten skewed (more than once?) from its original research (the recipe is >here< too). 70 grams black malt in 1290g! That's 5.5%, or more than I like. But the Whitbread brewing records (researched by Ron Pattinson - @patto1ro) suggests they never used more than 3.3% for that year. That's before I start ripping apart the 200g brown malt (which most interpret as modern-day brown malt).

[EDIT: Change "Whitworth" to "Whitbread". Screw threads on me mind it seems.]
 
Last edited:
Graphic? Where? (Ah, it's there now!).

All very interesting! I often attempt to brew "historical" beers and I'm aware that our "brewhouse efficiency" will skew recipes. I'd been thinking of something to untwist these recipes ... and now I've got a name for it!

For example: One of my pet hates is the (popular!) recipe for Whitbread London Porter (1850) as published in the Durden Park Beer Circle's booklet "Old British Beers...". That recipe appears to have gotten skewed (more than once?) from its original research (the recipe is >here< too). 70 grams black malt in 1290g! That's 5.5%, or more than I like. But the Whitworth brewing records (researched by Ron Pattinson - @patto1ro) suggests they never used more than 3.3% for that year. That's before I start ripping apart the 200g brown malt (which most interpret as modern-day brown malt).

Yeah good name for it :D

Yeah the problem with very old recipes is... how high was their efficience back then ? Nowdays with good technical equipment we can be sure how high it is. But in the 18XX ... ? Therefore we would need some info maybe written down somewhere. I guess Ron is the right guy for it. I emailed him some days ago and ask about efficiency today and he said he doesnt know certain but would guess 90% . Convertes in Germany Sudhausausbeute its like i wrote 70% if we take the aporx number of /0,8 . So you go in with 70% SHA / 0,8 and get 87,5% and if you with 75% SHA you get 93%... so 90% like Ron things is perfectly right!
 
Don't believe me? I've nicked these two tables from Ron's Blog site (hope he doesn't mind):

1645965862380.png

1645966128102.png
 
No. I think those tables are the most complete that Ron could deduct from the brewery records. I would not dare to ask Ron for more detail as I suspect I'll get copies of the original records with a suggestion to figure it out myself (which I won't want to try!).

I was shamelessly using your thread to push my belief to the wider audience that the "popular" DPBC recipe for Whitbread London Porter was faulty (too much black malt). The form of brown malt used by individual breweries is also impossible to determine for the 19th century (currently). I think the technique of "best guess" offers the only way forward at present.
 
I did the DPBC recipe, or a Slid interpretation, and it was excellent, so I care not one fig whether it was authentic.

Though, to be fair, if you like dark and fairly strong beers, they are quite hard to cock up.
 
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