Scaling up a recipe

[jaumixx]

Hello people!

Lately we (me and two colleagues) have been thinking in giving a try in gypsy brewing. We got a couple of recipes we've made in 30L batch and we think it's our moment to try and brew around 270L in a microbrewery and hit the market to see what happens.

For this, we have to scale up our recipe and we have several doubts, main one is that...would it be as easy as to scale up the recipe by multiplying the quantities by the correct factor? Another thing would be to find out the water parameters of the place, see the efficiency of the brewery etc, but thats another story.

Any suggestions or things to take into consideration?! We want to give it a try but every possible thing under control.

Thank you very much.

 

[Yorkie]

Hi Mate
I too will be interested to find out, as I am in a similar position trying to scale up.
I've scaled up from 55 litres to 110 (2 brews) then to 160 and things are different ..... ie stress levels being one of them !

I just scaled up quantities on the beer engine and they did seem to work as predicted , albeit on one of the brews the efficiencies were down due to mash tun being too small. Mash tun upgrade required.

But I'm happy to be corrected by them in th know.
Hope you get some knowledgeable replies
Cheers

 

[jaumixx]

Any idea will be appreciated, as far as I know the quantity of hops go down.

Could it be a good idea to design a recipe for 250L instead of directly scaling up one, knowing percentages more or less?

 

[ManseMasher]

Have you got any brewing software (I use beersmith). Scaling recipes both up and down is a doddle with such a tool as this. You have the ability to tinker with any ingredient until you get your target ABV, IBC and EBU.

 

[geetee]

Any idea will be appreciated, as far as I know the quantity of hops go down.

Could it be a good idea to design a recipe for 250L instead of directly scaling up one, knowing percentages more or less?

I work all of my recipes out by hand , not software but I do use a spreadsheet I created to do the number crunching. If it were me I would multiply your 30 litre recipe amounts by the factor 9 to get a direct upgrade to 270 litre recipe. I would also use the software you have to create the same recipe from scratch and see if there is any differences.

Upgrading the recipe is one thing but the equipment scale up will also have an effect, lost volume, heat loss efficiency etc so until you have some data you will not know how repeatable this is. If you move to different brewing kits then the equipment losses will change again.

 

[Hoppy]

Hi Jaumixx,

The main thing you will notice is mash efficiency, i have noticed on here the mash efficiency is oft quoted as 70%, in trial breweries (usually 100l, 1hl) that commercial brewers use, you would expect 85%-90%, they have controllable run off speeds (wort out of MT) and sparging speeds, you should aim for 1 1/2 hours for sparging, therefore you will need to reduce grain bill.

If you do get a more efficient mash/sparge etc, you will need to have extra hops on hand as you will have a bigger volume, rather than throw it.

Hops you need not worry as much when it comes to efficiency from a bittering point of view, but you will perhaps get more aroma, as flame out/late hops wont be losing as much aroma due to the use of a heat exchanger to cool hopped wort. If the brewery is set up correctly cooling from the copper/kettle to FV should only take a maximum of 45 mins.

As geetee says, there are other factor also, heat loss will be less, lost volume will be proportionally less too, it does vary from brewery to brewery!

WBR

Hoppy

 

[jaumixx]

Interesting point, surely the efficiency is going to change, in fact, if I'm right, at home we have a 72% efficiency aprox and the brewery I think has around 90%. Which totally changes the plan.
We have gone to another brewery, and the brewmaster has offered to help us scale up our recipe and determine quantities, but minimum production is of 1000Litres whilst the othet was 270Litres, that quantity is too risky if we dont sell as planned.

Quite lost at the moment

 

[clibit]

You need to use brewing software. The brewery should have software, and will also be able to tell you what efficiency they get get, and you can out this figure into the software. Easily resolved.

 

[Hoppy]

In all due respect clib it, any brewery worth it's salt doesn't use brewing software, maybe only for stock.
Recipes are derived from knowledge and litre degree extracts from each batch of malt.

WBR
Hoppy