beer smith 2.0

I have a few quetions .

1: I am using a rims system I have set the dead space to 1.45 gal .I have to use the larger dead space because I need to keep the right ratio water to lbs of grain and wet the hole system . The question is this my last batch I brewed I was 82% efficient . I just do not under stand this. I have one gallon of boil off, I am brewing a five gallon batch I lose .5 gallons to trube and chiller . Why dose beer smith say that I need 8.17 gallon of water for pre boil. help

2:could some one pleas explane brew house efficience. I have my set at the default of sevendy five percent .

You will loose a small amount of volume when you cool the wort. That's the difference.

As for efficiency, I am still trying to understand that myself.

You have the dead space listed for your mash tun and not BK, right? I don't have the software in front of me, but I believe there is a dead space option for the BK. If you had 1.5G there, .5G to trub, and .5G to boil off, that is 7.5G needed in the BK right there - for a 60 minute boil.

If you listed it for a longer boil, that is something to account for as well. Is your boil off rate listed correctly? That is an option you can change, the percent expected boil off. You need to figure this out for your system and put that into BeerSmith - and I then adjust that seasonally due to air dryness.

For efficiency - the default is 75%, but if you consistently get 82%, then you can put 82% as your system efficiency, and the software will then calculate your recipes correctly assuming that efficiency.

Brewhouse efficiency is simply - how efficiently are you extracting the fermentable sugars from the mash (that alone is mash efficiency) including the added density during the boil.

I have a RIMS system and get 80-81% pretty consistently, unless I'm doing a heavy gravity batch and still trying to hit 10 Gallons. Then the added grain causes it to drop to 70%. If you keep your system dialed in, that is the goal. Hit your percentage, then you can calculate your recipes better in the software and hit your targets.

sorry not sure what you mean by (BK) if you are refering to boil kettle then no the dead space is only set for the mash ton. I will look for a dead space for a boild kettle not sure why you would need one in the boil kettle.
Also I could see like a boil volume of arounf 6.5 mabe seven but 8.57 seem realy high .

Just downloaded the trial version and looking to go from extract to either BIAB or All-grain.

4xtreme said:

sorry not sure what you mean by (BK) if you are refering to boil kettle then no the dead space is only set for the mash ton. I will look for a dead space for a boild kettle not sure why you would need one in the boil kettle.
Also I could see like a boil volume of arounf 6.5 mabe seven but 8.57 seem realy high .

Click to expand...

If you dump the entire contents of your boil kettle (BK) into your fermentor then you will have a loss of 0. However, whatever volume you leave behind in your kettle needs to be taken into account to properly calculate your water needs. For example, I leave behind 1/4gal in my kettle and my fermentor (this includes trub) and about a pint in my bottling bucket.

As for brewhouse efficiency: The common misconception is that brewhouse efficiency is how much of the sugar you extract from the grains vs. the potential extraction (i.e. if you were to extract every single molecule of sugar ). This is actually referred to as your mash efficiency. What brewhouse efficiency really means is how efficient your system & process are throughout the entire brewing & fermentation process (i.e. mash, lauter, boil, fermentor, bottling/kegging). You could have a very high mash & lauter efficiency and a bad boil, fermentor, bottling efficiency (or vice versa).