Hey Guys, Got a recipe from my sister in law who runs a brewery, in New Zealand. Gave me the recipe in metric measurements so didn't think anything of it and then went to go convert it to a 5 gallon batch and realized it was for 320 gallons. I did the math to calculate percentages but just wanted to ask for an opinion on someone whose done this before, and also convert it to extract. Original Recipe after converting from metrics 320 gallons now 5 330 lbs of pilsner malt - not sure what to convert for extract 275 lbs of wheat malt 3.17 oz of green bullet now .1 oz at minute 90 19.5 oz of cascade now .3 oz at minute 45 23 oz of cascade now .35 oz at end of boil All I did was divide 320 by 5 to get the percentage and then went from there. But as I said would be very happy to get an opinion on steeping grains / malt extract and measurements for the extract. Thanks.
Pilsner Malt - Use Pilsner Extract Wheat Malt - Use Wheat Extract, but recognize that Wheat Extract is a mixture of Barley Malt and Wheat Malt. You'll need to do some juggling between the pilsner and the wheat to emulate the same overall split. To convert Quantities of Malt to Quantities of Extract, you need to know the brewery's Mash Efficiency. Or you need to know their Original Gravity for the recipe. Be careful with hops... hop utilization (efficiency) can be much different (often higher) on big systems. Ideally, you want to know the IBUs that the brewery gets from this recipe.
For size measurement you are correct... As for pilsen Malt Extract http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/fermenters-favorites-briess-dme-pilsen.html
Did they have recipe notes from a test batch? That might help overcome some the difficulty in getting a 5 gallon recipe.
you are probably not going to get anything like the original beer. just one look at the hopping additions makes that clear. (though given that it is apparently a wheat beer i suppose your hopping could be very low). you really need to know IBUs here, just for starters. if you know that along with the target OG and FG then you can brew something similar with extract. yeast is also very important. a multi barrel system is different than our 5 gallon set up is so many ways. your efficiency is not likely anything near commercial scale. you hop utilization is far lower than commercial. your boil off rate is different. finally, malt extract is subject to the manufacturers variables. one extract is going to be different from another, sometimes quite a bit different. so, overall, you will have beer, but do not expect it to be anything at all like the original. not unless you are intimately familiar with both the pilot system (yours) and the production system in New Zealand. i am not trying to discourage you here, but you have about 25% of the information you need to get this done as planned. Cheers.
Sorry American Ale yeast - fermentation, I would suspect typical 3 weeks between fermenting and then 2 in bottles.
As it is a pretty neutral yeast, you probably won't have much issue with that aspect of the flavor profile. If it turned out to be something tricky, e.g., a diacetyl producer, like Ringwood, it could represent added challenge. Assuming the commercial one uses fermentation temps that emphasize neutral, you ought to be OK.
