My Setup In Beersmith Keggle And 12 Gallon Cooler

I just bought BeerSmith and I am trying to set my system up. I have a 15.5 gallon keggle and a 12 quart rectangular mash tun.

Do any of you guys have this setup? If so, what numbers do y'all have dialed in for it?

Thanks in advance,
J

HalfPint said:

I just bought BeerSmith and I am trying to set my system up. I have a 15.5 gallon keggle and a 12 quart rectangular mash tun.

Do any of you guys have this setup? If so, what numbers do y'all have dialed in for it?

Thanks in advance,
J

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I have a similar system, but I find I get better accuracy on my temperatures by preheating my mash tun myself and unchecking the "adjust temperatures for equipment" checkbox. I just add water to the mash tun at 10 degrees or so over my dough in temperature, cover the tun and let it stand for five minutes or so to equalize, and then adjust the water temperature accordingly once the mash tun is preheated.

If you do this, remember: It's easy to adjust DOWN. Up is a PITA.

Yeah, I always preheat my mash tun. What I mean is what do people set their evaporation rate, lost to trub, top up water final volume, etc too with this type of system?

Thanks,
J

The thing is, evap. rate, trub loss, kettle losses, and all the other fiddly bits are very system-dependent. For example, I can drain my boiler almost to the bottom. Other people leave behind 1/2 gallon or more.

Rather than track each of those individual losses in my system, I just formulate based on a 6 gallon batch, and plan on draining 5.5 to the fermenter. Any leftovers can go into the freezer for starters.

As for boil off rate, that depends on your system and environment. My system (keggle + jet burner) boils off around 1.5 gallons per hour, regardless of batch size. Again, I set my pre- and post-boil volumes by hand, as the percentage loss (as most programs calculate it) is strongly dependent on batch size.

Yeah, sounds like what I already know. Sometimes plain ol common sense is better than fancy technology.

Freezing that extra wort huh? I typically just toss that extra wort out into the yard. How do you freeze it and re-use it? When you thaw it out do you do another boil?

Preheat? Screw that. Big waste of time. Typically you can increase your dough-in temp 5-7 degrees. Why waste time?

passedpawn said:

Preheat? Screw that. Big waste of time. Typically you can increase your dough-in temp 5-7 degrees. Why waste time?

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Yeah, I know what you mean. I just do it for extra insurance. What I typically do anyways is while I'm heating my x gallons of strike water I just boil the tea pot on the stove and toss it in to my mash tun. I also always overshoot my strike water by about 10*. I get it where I want then I pour my mash in.