Howto: How I do my brewing calculations, and my Brew Sheet.

Everyone has a different way to record what and how they brew, it's the only way you can both be consistent, and get better at what you do. Initially, I started out trying different brewing apps and software like the majority of people out there in homebrew land, but it left me feeling underwhelmed, and uniformed.

Then I saw a tweet by matthew clark ‏(@thornbridgematt) that said "Homebrewers! Ditch those brew calculators and learn to work it out by hand. http://tiny.tw/38L9 "

Looking through this linked website, it helped me learn more about the fundamental mathematics of brewing, the science of what was happening. This appealed to the geek in me, and it helped me create a spreadsheet that became the basis for what I use now to brew, and record recipes.

My brewsheet looks like this; 

Don't worry, I will go through this in detail. I'm not going to go through all of the calculations, that is covered by the homebrewmanual blog that I linked earlier. 

To start with, I have the basic details of the brew, including dates, gyle number, batch size, brew type, and yeast used.

There is also the theoretical gravities that I should be hitting at an efficiency of 70%, and then space for the actual gravity, which will then tell me the %ABV.

One of the first things to do is select the style of beer;

This is only really important as it will then detail the water treatment that is required, which is different for each individual brew, based on type and batch size.

This was taken from a different page in the spreadsheet workbook that contains per litre additions for different beer types based upon the water profile for Manchester.

This I got from a handout that I was given by Dominic Driscoll ‏(@ThornbridgeDom ) at a homebrew meeting last year.

After the water and batch size, it's on to the grist.

Again, the gravity points calculations are from the homebrewmanual blog, so check that out if you want to see how I worked this out, but what I've got now is a space where I can put in the amount, and select the type of malt, and based on another sheet in the workbook that has grain extraction efficiency, I can get the gravity points for the brew, which when used with the batch size mentioned earlier, can give an expected OG for any given brew.

For the hops, it's not quite so nice. I've not made the separate page with all hops details, mainly as they change with every supplier and season, so it would be constantly changing. If anyone has a better way of doing it, let me know.

For now, I have to type things in manually, and then use a look-up table to get the alpha acid utilisation based on the gravity of the beer, and the length of the boil.

As you can see, it's a bit unwieldy, but I've not got round to using a direct calculation (as my exel-fu isn't all that).

The final bit of the brewsheet is the basic info, and efficiencies over on the right, this is there partially to remind me of certain things, but also to record how my brewing is doing as well.

I hope you found this to be useful, if you'd like a copy of the brewsheet, just ask and I will be happy to email out a copy of what I've made. It could be amusing for you, as it documents all of my brews, so you can see how I started, and what changes I've made over the course of my brewing.

If you can think of something I've not explained in my sheet, or simply something that is missing, then please let me know, I did this to learn more about what I'm doing, so if I'm missing something, or doing something wrong, then I want/need to know.

Thanks.