Designer
Introduction and how to use the Recipe Designer
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Introduction and how to use the Recipe Designer
Last updated
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The recipe designer is the heart of your brewing creativity. This is where you design your recipes or modify recipes you have imported.
The workflow has been carefully designed to take you step by step through creating your personalised brew. Starting by naming your recipe and choosing the style and your brewing equipment through choosing your ingredients, brewing and fermentation profiles.
As you change details and ingredients, your batch details, such as color, predicted gravities and ABV, change in real-time, allowing you to fine-tune each recipe to your target values.
You input your recipe details in this section and choose the brew type.
Click on the text area under name and author to enter your details.
Click on the Type drop-down to choose the type of recipe (All Grain, Partial Mash or Extract)
Next comes setting your equipment profile. This affects the predicted values based on batch size, efficiency and other factors from your equipment profile.
Click the 'Change Equipment Profile' button to change your brewing equipment. Changing the equipment profile may ask you if you want to scale the recipe to match the new equipment profile.
The Style section provides the recipe designer with the guideline ranges to provide meaning values for the sliders. The shaded areas represent the range of the values provided by the style. The style can be picked from multiple supported style guidelines, including BJCP, etc.
The main body of the designer screen is devoted to your ingredient entry areas.
This is the area where you choose your fermentables. This can include items you have already added to your inventory or a wide range of ingredients in the software. It includes a calculated Pre-Boil, Original Gravity and a Colour value at the bottom which updates in real time as you adjust your grain bill.
Type in the search bar at the top to find a named brand of malt or a generic type of malt from your inventory or the built-in database of fermentables.
If the fermentable you want is not in the database or your inventory you can enter it directly from this dialog box and provide the relevant information about it. Find more information about adding custom fermentables here.
Much like the fermentables this allows you to enter hops from your inventory or from a range of hops already included in the software. This includes a Total IBU, BU/GU (Bitterness Units/Gravity Units) ratio and a RBR value (Relative Bitterness Ratio) which updates in realtime with each change you make.
Here you can choose your fermentation profile from a list of preset fermentation profiles included or from a custom profile you have created yourself.
Click the 'Edit Profile' button to edit the current profile directly
Delete - This deletes the current recipe
Duplicate - This creates another copy of the recipe
Export - Provides you with the option to export the recipe in
BeerXML
Brewfather recipe JSON
Share - Provides a URL you can share with people to enable them to see your recipe
Close - Closes the recipe and takes you back to the previous screen, generally the recipes section screen..,
Brew - Takes you on to the Batch Planning section which gives you step-by-step instructions for your brew day and timers for each section of the process
When you change a profile (equipment, mash, fermentation, water) from the profiles page, you have to reselect it in your recipe after you change it. This is because a profile in the recipe is not updated automatically to avoid breaking recipes unintentionally, it will stay at the same value as the profile had when the recipe was created. this goes for all profile types. New recipes will have the updated profile that you starred as default.
Click on the 'Scale' button to scale the recipe to whatever batch size you would like
Click on the 'Edit Equipment Profile' button to edit your current equipment profile Any edits made will mean Brewfather will prompt you to scale the recipe to ensure that the predicted outcome will remain the same.
Click on the 'Batch Size' button to change the batch size without scaling.
Click on the 'Boil Time' button to set the length of the boil
Click on the 'Change Style' button to choose your style from the list of available styles.
To add a fermentable to your recipe click the add button to bring up the 'Add Fermentable' dialog box.
If you wish to follow a recipe that lists the malts as percentages of the total you can use the add button to add 1kg/lb of each malt then click the Percentage button This will open a dialog box allowing you to set the percentages of each of the fermentable ingredients. Please note that you can go above or below 100% but Brewfather will scale the ingredients to end up with 100% and this may not be scaled the way you want it so keep an eye on the total percentage at the top of the dialog box.
You can also choose to scale the recipe up or down to a specific Original Gravity by clicking on the OG button This will scale all your ingredients linearly to reach the chosen OG.
Click the' Add' button to add hops from your Inventory or the database. This brings up a dialog that works in the same way as the Fermentables dialog and allows you to either search using the search box at the top or enter in custom details.
The IBU button allows you to set the IBU value that you want and Brewfather scales the 60-minute addition to match the IBU's set.
This section allows you to include water salt additions, yeast nutrients, finings etc to your recipe and works in the same way as all the sections, click the 'Add' button to choose your additions
This section allows you to add your yeast to your recipe. Clicking the 'Add' button takes you to a dialog box that works in the same way as the other ingredient dialog boxes. You can search from the box at the top or enter customs details directly in the box. There is also a button to take you directly to the yeast calculator to work out the amount of yeast you need to pitch or the size of starter you need to create. This is accessible by clicking on the 'Calc' button
Here you set your mash profile. You can choose a preset mash profile or one you have already created by clicking on the 'Change Mash Profile' button
You can also directly edit the selected profile by clicking on the edit button
As you make changes, the estimated values at the bottom of the section will change in real time to show the predicted results of your changes. The exception to this is if the Final Gravity has been set to a specific value, which can be done or undone by clicking on the 'Final Gravity' button To undo the set final gravity, just click 'Reset' after clicking the 'Final Gravity' button to get an estimated final gravity value.
Following a common theme you just need to click on the 'Change Fermentation Profile' button to choose another profile
You can also set your carbonation volumes for when you come to package your beer. The style recommended range is shown by the Carbonation label; you can edit the target to your preference by either clicking the up and down arrows to the right of the figure under the label or by double-clicking and editing the value manually.
This section gives you an overview of the quantities of water needed for each stage of the brewing process and the current water profile. You get an estimated pH value for the mash at the top right by the 'Calc' button The 'Calc' button gives you easy access to the water calculator where you can calculate the mineral and acid additions to get the right mineral profile and mash pH.
The 'Menu' button at the bottom left gives access to a couple of functions (Not all functions are available in a free account)
