I have a recipe i really like but i want to now try to scale it down to a session beer, something like 4% abv give or take a percentage. Any suggestions? The orgininal recipe is:
11.00 lb Brewers Malt 2-Row (Briess) (1.8 SRM) Grain 64.7 %
2.50 lb Munich Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 14.7 %
1.50 lb Brown Malt (65.0 SRM) Grain 8.8 %
1.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM) Grain 5.9 %
0.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM) Grain 2.9 %
0.50 lb Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 2.9 %
0.75 oz Magnum [14.00%] (60 min) Hops 29.1 IBU
1.00 oz Goldings, East Kent [5.00%] (10 min) Hops 5.0 IBU
2.00 items Vanilla Bean (Secondary 14.0 days) Misc
1 Pkgs American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) Yeast-Ale
thats what i was thinking, but when i do that, i only come up with 21 SRM instead of 30something in the original. Also only 4oz of chocolate malt seems kinda low to me for a porter
At the lower gravity the flavor contribution of the chocolate malt might be more pronounced. Don’t sweat the color so much, he flavor is much more important.
You come up with 21SRM in a computer calculation. Brew the beer and then determine if it’s too light. Every time I’ve ever tried to make a “color adjustment” in software, I’ve missed the mark on the flavor of the beer I was shooting for.
If you’re batch-sparging, up the efficiency a little for the new recipe before re-calculating. And I wouldn’t cut the specialty grains by the same ratio as the base grain. Instead, cut the base grain by 60%, then add back the others, keeping them in the same relative ratios as in the original recipe(3:2:1:1 Brown:120:40:Choc) until you see the correct SRM - this will help boost the body a little in a “thinner” beer. Once you have the grain bill, add the hops back in so that you get the half the IBUs from each addition.
+1 to this, smaller beers still need to finish at a decent gravity. You get one down at 1.008 and it tastes thin. So you either mash at a higher temp or add a little more crystal.