Question of %s

[monk]

I was excited to receive the Real ALe Almanac in the mail today (yay!). But now I have a question.

The malt is described in percentage (a la 5%crystal). What does this mean for a 5 gallon recipe? Is it 5% of all fermentables? Including the crystal? I'm confused. I drank turbo cider tonight.

So...

11.4 lbs. Pale malt

.6 lbs. Crystal

= 5% crystal?

(assuming you only have base and crystal malt in the recipe)

Am I making this harder than it is?

Thanks in advance, guys.

Monk

[Andy]

I assumed it was by weight.

[bitter_dave]

Good purchase Monk I've got that book and it is a great database for coming up with recipes, for seeing if different hop and malt combinations have been done before commercially.

I'm pretty much certain that the percentages are for weight of grist.

As you may have noticed there are some anomolies (sp?) though, as all the info is from the brewers, but they are often pretty obvious. For example, a brewer might say they used 95% Pale malt, 5% Crystal malt plus sugar

Wheeler also points out that brewers must be darkening their beers in some cases given the ingredients they list. Nevertheless, the book equals hours of nerdish fun

[monk]

Thanks for the tips guys. It seems to make sense to me, but I hope I have it right. I think it's Norman who's the almanac guru...any tips? I still don't know if I'm doing the percentage thing right.

Was my calculation right?

[bitter_dave]

Was my calculation right?

Yes