Beersmith way off... help

Brewed my very first all grain today, all went great... but... I ended after boil with over 7 gals in the fermenter? I put in another recipe and it shows me about the same boil size as over 8.25g. So maybe I have it setup incorrectly since it's all at default? Is there a good amount of tweaking that needs to go into calibrating it?

Beersmith is only a good as the info you put into it. You have to adjust the boil-off rate and mash tun dead space and batch size and everything to make sure it gives you correct volumes for each step.

You can boil a known volume of water on your system for an hour and measure afterwards to determine your boil-off rate.

It usually takes a few batches for users to nail it down though.

Yesterday was the first time Beersmith was spot on with it's calculations for me. I've had to do a lot of tweaking over several batches to get there though. A lot of times I over estimated my loss volumes. While a lot of preset factors have worked, you'll want to really fine tune the variables for your equipment (dead space and boiloff for example).

The first problem is using he default equipment and mash profiles as they appear in BS. You really need to customize it to your particular set-up. The sizes may look the same, but how much material is left in the mash tun? How much trub do you have when you transfer from boil pot to fermentor? What is your actual boil off rate (changing the surface to depth of the pot will change the boil off rate quite a bit)? Once you have some of these factors worked into a personalized profile for equipment and a personalized mash profile, it will take a few brews, as forstmeister pointed out, to dial in the last details. This will give BS the best chance at predicting the outcome of your brew session with any accuracy.

forstmeister said:

Beersmith is only a good as the info you put into it. You have to adjust the boil-off rate and mash tun dead space and batch size and everything to make sure it gives you correct volumes for each step.

You can boil a known volume of water on your system for an hour and measure afterwards to determine your boil-off rate.

It usually takes a few batches for users to nail it down though.

Click to expand...

Ah thanks, looking though the equipment and I see boil off is set to 2g, which I think might have been some of the issue... I guess I have to work it out. Hopefully my brew isn't too thinnned out. Maybe a dumb question but how to do figure out my dead space, is that based on the screen and fittings?

Oginme said:

The sizes may look the same, but how much material is left in the mash tun? How much trub do you have when you transfer from boil pot to fermentor? What is your actual boil off rate (changing the surface to depth of the pot will change the boil off rate quite a bit)? Once you have some of these factors worked into a personalized profile for equipment and a personalized mash profile, it will take a few brews, as forstmeister pointed out, to dial in the last details. This will give BS the best chance at predicting the outcome of your brew session with any accuracy.

Click to expand...

Shoot I guess I should have paid more attention to what I was getting after mash in volume. Oh well, it's all a learning process, it took me a bit to get things down when I was doing extract... thanks everyone!

Mash tun dead space is easy. Fill your tun above the valve, then drain it as you normally would. Once it stops draining you can measure the amount left in the vessel.

Just take good measurements of your mash efficiency, your strike to mash temperature difference, and your boil-off for a few batches, and you'll have Beersmith configured in no time. The only critical step in brewing for me is hitting my strike temperature. If I do that, it's like brewing by numbers - everything else falls into place.

Like everyone mentioned, it does take some tweaking.

Measure dead space like mentioned.

Put a couple gallons in your kettle and boil for an hour and figure out boil-off.
On that same topic, my boil off rate was all over the place for 2 or 3 batches.
I finally started adjusting the flow of gas to keep it JUST boiling. No need for a violent boil, just gently rolling. Once I did that, I found my rate to be a fairly consistent 1.2 gallons/hr.
Now that cooler weather is coming, I am sure it will go up slightly from summer values (at least I think it should)

It took me 4 batches to get it dialed in and my setup yields the same:
7.25 gallons into kettle pre boil
1.2 evap
0.5 gallon dead space/trub loss
5.55 into fermenter
I usually bottle about 5.25 gallons.

Once you get it figured out, it is an indispensible tool.

Remember 1 gallon of HOT wort right after the boil is NOT 1 gallon when it's cool enough to add yeast. Ya gotta takes notes/records until you get it all down pat.

Thanks everyone I'll be sure to take better notes next time. I'm too used to extract where I just dump it all in and boil... heck, I got so lazy that I stopped taking gravity readings.