Color Adjuster

Automatically adjust your grain bill to hit a target beer color while maintaining recipe balance

The Color Adjuster is a tool that automatically adjusts the fermentables in your recipe to achieve a target beer color. It intelligently modifies grain amounts to reach the desired SRM or EBC value while optionally maintaining your original gravity (OG).

Opening the Color Adjuster

1. Open a recipe in the Designer

2. Tap the Color Adjuster option from the recipe tools menu

3. The Color Adjuster modal opens showing your current recipe color and adjustment controls

Setting a Target Color

The adjuster shows your current recipe color and lets you set a target:

• Slider — Drag the color slider to visually select a target color (1–150 SRM or 2–300 EBC)

• Input field — Type an exact value for precise control (supports decimal values with 0.1 step)

• Color preview — A real-time color swatch shows both the current and target colors side by side

The color unit (SRM or EBC) matches your Brewfather settings. The conversion between the two is: EBC = SRM x 1.97.

Selecting Fermentables to Adjust

By default, the Color Adjuster automatically selects which fermentables to modify using a smart classification algorithm. It identifies:

• Base malts — Fermentables with an explicit "Base" grain category, or those making up more than 30% of the grain bill, or extracts with low color values. These are adjusted in the opposite direction to compensate for specialty malt changes.

• Specialty malts — All other fermentables. These are increased when darkening or decreased when lightening.

You can also manually select which fermentables to include in the adjustment:

1. Tap any fermentable in the list to toggle its selection

2. Selected fermentables have a checkmark

3. Only selected fermentables will be modified

Maintaining Original Gravity

The Maintain OG option (enabled by default) ensures that the color adjustment does not significantly change your recipe's original gravity:

• When enabled, the adjuster balances extract contributions — if specialty malts increase, base malts decrease proportionally

• When disabled, the adjuster focuses solely on hitting the target color, which may change your OG

If the OG change exceeds 0.1%, a warning is displayed showing the original and adjusted OG values.

Maximum Percentage Limits

The Color Adjuster respects typical brewing guidelines for ingredient percentages:

• Crystal/Caramel malts: Maximum 25% of the grain bill

• Roasted malts: Maximum 15% of the grain bill

• Base malts: No maximum limit

You can disable these limits in the adjuster settings if you want full control over the adjustment range.

How the Adjustment Works

The Color Adjuster uses an iterative algorithm based on the Morey equation for color calculation:

1. Calculates the Malt Color Units (MCU) needed to reach the target SRM

2. Classifies your fermentables as base or specialty malts

3. Iteratively adjusts specialty malt amounts to approach the target color

4. Compensates base malts to maintain OG (if enabled)

5. Verifies the final color using Brewfather's calculation engine

6. Repeats until the target is reached or the best achievable result is found

The algorithm uses adaptive dampening to converge smoothly, preventing large swings in ingredient amounts.

Applying the Adjustment

1. Review the preview showing adjusted fermentable amounts and the achieved color

2. Check for any warnings (OG changes, color tolerance, etc.)

3. Tap Apply to update your recipe with the adjusted grain bill

4. The recipe designer updates with the new fermentable amounts

If the exact target color cannot be achieved (e.g., it requires removing a fermentable entirely), the adjuster gets as close as possible and shows the achieved color alongside the target.

Tip

For best results, make sure your fermentables have accurate color values (Lovibond or EBC) entered. The Color Adjuster uses these values for its calculations — inaccurate color data leads to inaccurate adjustments.

Common Use Cases

• Darkening a Pale Ale — Increase specialty malts like Crystal 60 or Munich to add color and body

• Lightening a Brown Ale — Reduce roasted or dark crystal malts to bring the color down

• Matching a style — Set the target SRM to the middle of a style's color range (e.g., 6 SRM for an American Pale Ale)

• Experimenting — Try different target colors to see how grain bill changes affect your recipe