Q2XL

Recipes 

Here is a photo of my BrewSheet form Beersmith. I am really trying to get a lot of information about all-grain and Beersmith. I used 60% efficiency because this is my first and did not want to shoot too high. Anyways, here it is. Any suggestions or thoughts. Does this seem right?

eggbeater59

Recipes 

just out of curiousity, why would you batch sparge 2x with 2 different amounts? if you were batch sparging twice, wouldn't you just divide by 2 for your water quantity?

mkade

Recipes 

Yeah, it looks nice. If it were me, I might up that last Cascade addition just a bit to get a little more aroma, though that might really not be to style. Best of luck.

Blender

Recipes 

Your strike water temperature seems low. I would go around 168- 170. It is easier to cool the mash than to heat the whole thing up a few degrees.

I always heat the first sparge to 180-185. This will raise the grain bed temp into the 160's.

Preheat the cooler in some way to avoid temp loss at mash time.

__________________
Gary

Duster72

Recipes 

Yeah, BS defaults to 168 sparge temp and that weird batch sparge split.

I always take the total batch sparge amount and split it in half, and then heat the sparge water to 185.

Those two changes took my efficiency from 60% to 75%.

jldc

Recipes 

Beersmith defaults to batch sparge the maximum the MLT will hold on the first round and the remaining water the second. You can change to equal volumes by adjusting the batch sparge options.

Q2XL

Recipes 

Thanks for the input guys. I do like Beersmith but their default numbers seem strange to me most of the time.

Strike water at 161.4F...That doesn't make sense. But for some reason Beersmith keeps on giving me that temp.

The division of the sparge water in 2 different size batches. That is strange too.

I think Beersmith could be improved in many different ways.

Q2XL

Recipes 

What is the reason to raise the grain bed to temp to the 160's? I am sure that I have read the answer to that somewhere, but there is an awful lot of beer information in my head floating around. Soon enough all of that info will become understandable to me.

mkade

Recipes 

The wort becomes less viscous, and the sugars are most soluble, so you maximize efficiency. You can also perform a mash-out at that temperature to stop the enzymatic activity so you don't keep converting when you don't want to while sparging (more of an issue w/ fly).