Dave Line mash efficiency

[David Edge]

I once wrote that Dave Line's recipes 'only' required 86% mash efficiency and I've seen this quoted a few times. As I was talking bllx I think a correction is required!

My calculation used the Promash default extract of 317 litre.degrees per kilogram for pale malt. Use a more realistic figure like 300 and Line's assumption rises to over 90%.

[spearmint-wino]

Wow, so for us lowly homebrew mortals would you recommend a grain bill increase of ~20% for his recipes?

[Graham]

I once wrote that Dave Line's recipes 'only' required 86% mash efficiency and I've seen this quoted a few times. As I was talking bllx I think a correction is required!

My calculation used the Promash default extract of 317 litre.degrees per kilogram for pale malt. Use a more realistic figure like 300 and Line's assumption rises to over 90%.

Hoorah! He's back!

I think Dave Line made a mis-assumption, if that is a real word. Somewhere in his texts, can't remember where, he mentions a figure of 97% efficiency. Indeed, some of his recipes that I recalculated years ago did come out at 97%.

I think that John Alexander has done the same thing, because he mentions this magic figure of 97% in his new book (p67).

I don't know where either author got this figure from, but I think it has probably been taken from a commercial text somewhere and the wrong end of the stick has been grabbed. So to speak.

I think that it stems from the fact that maximum lab extract is measured dry - after the grain has been carefully dried. Breweries cannot achieve that figure, because the malt, as supplied, has a moisture content which has weight and therefore reduces its efficiency.

Pale malt generally has 3% moisture content, so maximum brewhouse efficiency is the lab extract minus water content. So for pale malt, maximum brewhouse mash efficiency is lab efficiency * 97%, assuming 3% moisture. This is why maltsters always quote percentage moisture in their specs, so that a typical brewhouse extract can be calculated.

I think that is the right end of the stick.

In my brewing software my brewhouse extract is the coarse-grind extract, dry basis, adjusted for moisture content, and that will probably be carried across into the recipes in my new books, thereby icreasing the average mash efficiency by 3%

[Graham]

Oh, and another thing! Not only did Dave Line not have digital scales, but the only commonly-available aid to calculation in those days was a slide-rule. And that assumes that he new how to use one.

(I've still got two of them, but I doubt if I could use one now)

[ColinKeb]

In a totaly unscientific manner Ive always found that dave lines 5 gallon recipies work out right for 4 gallon brews. so about 20% less wort after the boil to ferment dunno if that translates from 97% efficiency Vs 80% being 17% difference cos in cr*p at maths

[ColinKeb]

here here

[Graham]

Your brewing calculator would have been handy earlier to day Graham

The "Beer Engine" calculator isn't anywhere near good enough for general release. Still quite a lot to do, like ingredient-list editors and the like. It calculates recipes though, so it is good enough for my private use.

It seems like I might have trouble packaging it as a Windoze stand alone though. The freebee open source packager won't install on my machine, which is annoying because before my computer crash a few months back I had a working version on it, but something has changed in the latest version.

It would be good if anyone out there has any Micro$oft development tools, even Visual Basic, and could send me nmake.exe and link.exe, cos it seems that there is an incompatibility between my version of nmake and the linker. I might be able to get the freebee packager running then.

Otherwise I'm going to have to fork out $200 for the Active State packager, or people will have to load PERL onto their machines to run it.

[Aleman]

if anyone out there has any Micro$oft development tools, even Visual Basic, and could send me nmake.exe and link.exe, cos it seems that there is an incompatibility between my version of nmake and the linker. I might be able to get the freebee packager running then.

Left the laptop at work for once, but if you don't get a better offer I'll send them on to you tomorrow.

I'm currently on the penguin machine, and I really should be looking at the phpBB version 3.0 upgrade for UKHB

[Graham]

Left the laptop at work for once, but if you don't get a better offer I'll send them on to you tomorrow.

I'm currently on the penguin machine, and I really should be looking at the phpBB version 3.0 upgrade for UKHB

Thanks, that would be good. It's a shot in the dark, but it's the linker that complains and it is called by nmake, so it seems probable. I too have a Linux box, well several, but I also have a Windoze box, but prefering Linux, I do not have much Microsoft stuff on it. I don't even have MS Office, but use Open Office for compatibility between the two systems.

I have written the beer recipe calculator in Perl on the Windows machine, because most people using it will be using windows, but I didn't anticipate having problems packaging it as a windows standalone. Well, I wouldn't have had problems had not my previous Windows machine crashed seriously.