Scaling a recipe for bad efficiency

A little over a year ago I did my first all-grain. I adapted it from some recommendations for a good Christmas ale. I listed the grains below. It was a huge success except for one problem. We ran out Christmas morning. I hit a fairly high gravity, 1.072. However I had a very low yield. With successive batches I learned that my problem was in the brew kettle. I have a very large heel. I need to boil roughly 7.25 to 7.5 gallons of wort to get 5 gallons. Roughly a gallon of that is evaporated, the rest is heel.

The brew kettle is on my short list to be replaced. Until then I've been making due with what I have. from recent batches I know that with 15# of grain and my typical efficiency, I get an OG somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.052 to 1.056 for five gallons. I'm going to be brewing another batch this weekend and I would really like to hit an OG in the neighborhood of 1.072.

  • Should I expect this ratio to be a linear scale?
  • How much grain should I add to scale this?
  • Should I add a proportional amount of all the grains or just the base grains?

Recipe:

  • 13# 2-row
  • 1# white wheat
  • 1# crystal 40L
  • 0.25# special roast malt
  • 0.25# roasted barley

Edit: Based on this recipe that gives me an OG of 1.052 - 1.0156, how should I scale up the recipe to achieve an OG of about 1.072 ?

Topic recipe-scaling homebrew

Category Mac

1
answered at

You can try to fix your efficiency issue first (as suggested by EZ).

Regarding scaling the recipe, yes you can increase all grains to keep the same ratio.
As mentionned here the main thing that could be different is the hops utilization.

** Edit **

I entered your recipe in Beersmith to get scaled quantities:

  • 15.5 lbs 2-row
  • 1.25 lbs white wheat
  • 1.25 lbs crystal 40L
  • 0.3 lbs special roast malt
  • 0.3 lbs roasted barley

It should get you close to your goal of 1.072 given your efficiency.

1
answered at

Yes you scan scale and adjust your recipe to fit your brewhouse efficiency.

Programs and apps do this very easily. One simple free Android app is BrewR.

I think you would benifiet more from fixing the efficiency issue though. If you feel the poor efficiency is from your kettle and heel/trub. I would suspect that's from hops or other boil adjuncts.

  • IMO a different kettle won't help much.

  • Use a large BIAB net bag in your boil. Keep it off the bottom. This will allow you to remove most of not all of the boil trub and increase yield.

  • Don't use a whirlfloc tab or Irish moss. These fluf up and really inflate the trub volume. And are really pointless unless you're actually doing a whirlpool to leave the hot and cold breaks in the kettle. Whirlpool helps compact the trub. Also I've found I can achieve better head and brilliant clairity with just proper post fermentation fining. Also in a dark beer there's little point.

1
answered at

My recommendation would be to use a brewing program. Many are free or offer free trials on your mobile device or computer. You can plug in all your numbers to include boil off and trub loss and create equipment profiles. Also based on your recipe and numbers it will list a target gravity. If low based on your recipe to calculation ratio I would just add more base malt or DME to boost the gravity. Plug and play simplicity.

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