Recipe scale-up

[jipjanneke]

I assume that many of you probrewers have at some stage or other scaled up tasty-sounding homebrew recipes for your commercial-quantity breweries. For example, from 5 Gallons up to 10bbl.

Is this pretty straightforward, and what are the major pitfalls one should watch out for when trying to do this?

Thanks.

[tarmadilo]

Two main ones: degree of extract, and hop utilization. I generally get somewhat more fermentable extract from a good professional mash tun than from a picnic cooler mash tun. I also often get better hop utilization (more bittering).

Having said that, I'd note that, if I'm being patient and careful with the five-gallon batch, the differences aren't dramatic...

Cheers, Tim

[ourseven]

Have been brewing for about a year now and would like to kick up the ABV, what is the best choice, corn sugar or dry malt extract? Thanks for any help.

[Larry Horwitz]

....also watch out for color malt utilization change...you need less color malt to make an impact on a commercial scale batch. in a place you might use 5% black malt you will be using more like 1%-2% to get where you want to be. same with crystals and high dried
(less with high dried)