IMO you need to brew it, taste it , adjust the recipe, and rebrew.
Ain’t gonna get it right on the first try.
I have had a few beers done on big systems, came out to be good, but not exactly replicated.
On BN accomplished guys like Tasty and JZ often had to rebrew, even after talking to the pro brewers.
I am a percentages and points per pound per gallon guy. I can formulate the grist for any recipe given its original gravity and its grist percentages using little more than pencil and paper. With that said, the reason why the numbers seem odd is because the recipe was clearly originally formulated using the metric system and converted to American units of measurement (a.k.a. US customary units) using a calculator or brewing software.
In the case of these National Homebrew Competition recipes, that is exactly how they were submitted to us so that is how we post them. We don’t want to start taking liberties and altering people’s recipes.
That being said, the Zymurgy and AHA Web teams are devising a plan to address a standardization of recipes in print and on web, which would cover situations like unhelpful weight measurements and such.
As always, thanks for the feedback!!
Cheers,
Duncan
AHA Web Coordinator