Most homebrew recipes focus upon ingredient weights. This is great for beginners because it makes brewing beer a hard-wired process similar to baking cookies from a recipe. However, the reliance upon weights creates problems for more advanced brewers. Mash efficiency can vary depending upon equipment and processes. Another weight-based headache is that brewing software typically requires the user to enter weights and then adjust these weights up or down to hit the desired targets, such as style-specific original gravity or IBUs. In sum, focusing upon weights is easy, but has the drawback of being inflexible and backward.
It seemed to me that there must be a better approach for advanced brewers. BYO magazine's Ashton Lewis has expressed a similar frustration: "I have witnessed many many positive changes over the last 37 years of homebrewing, yet recipes and recipe talk is a department where things have stagnated." (2023, July-August, p. 22).
The present recipe calculators focus on batch targets and percentages rather than ingredient weights. From these percentages or concepts we can work forward (top-down) to determine the weights that will be needed to reach the target. The ingredient weights are the end point of the calculation process, not the beginning point. From our concepts we can calculate the ingredient weights needed to achieve the concepts.
The software provides additional kinds of flexibility. The batch size can be simply increased or decreased. The units of measurement can be easily switched to either metric or US units based on user preference. Target gravity can be expressed as either specific gravity and degrees Plato.
The flexibility provided by this system should be most helpful to homebrewers. The volumes and systems that homebrewers use vary widely. With this approach recipes can easily be scaled up or down to whatever the brewer needs.
There are two versions. The concise version is a compact way to communicate a known recipe. Here's an example that could be plugged into the system.
og: 1.053 m: American two-row, 91, 2, 80 m: Crystal 40L, 6, 40, 75 m: Wheat malt, 3, 2, 80 ibu: 38 h: Cascade, 70, 5.75, 60 h: Cascade, 15, 5.75, 15 h: Cascade, 15, 5.75, 0 y: ale
The second version is flexstyle. It guides the creation of a new style-based recipe based on beer style articles and analytic information.
This bare bones description is sufficient to generate recipes anywhere from 1 gallon to brewery-sized volumes. The rest of the vital information, such as target volume and mash efficiency, can be supplied by the user. Recipes communicated in this format could be much more efficient than the current weight-focused recipes. In addition, users can make small edits to values like malt yield or hop alpha acids to easily customize the recipe to their unique brewing needs.
The Beer Engine 2024 is the third generation of this software. A notable development is that the user has more control over the ingredient inputs. For example, what needs to be done if a recipe calls for hops with 5% alpha acids, but yours have 6%? All you need to do is change the alpha acid value from 5 to 6 in the hop value fields. The software will adjust accordingly to the higher hop alpha acid levels.
Another kind of flexibility is freedom: no cost and open licensing. These files can be copied, edited, and used for your own purpose with a Creative Commons license. Attribution is requested.
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