BeerSmith

Ok, so I downloaded BeerSmith and have been attempting to just tool around with it to see what kind of stuff I can come up with. My question is, no matter what kind of recipes I try to make up, I always seem to get the Actual ABV at .6%... that's insanely low and I don't even consider that beer anymore at that level.

Am I doing something wrong or is the Actual ABV reading in the program just completely wrong?

Look at your Final Gravity. I bet its only a few points below your Original Gravity.

Do you get an accurate reading for Anticipated SG? If so Then thats really all that matters... I don't typically care what me ABV will end up being so long as I end up at the correct OG for the style or the recipe, and then the correct FG after fermentation.

ABV can be calculated via many great options online:
http://www.rooftopbrew.net/abv.php
http://www.brewersfriend.com/abv-calculator/

I tried beersmith when I was first getting into brewing and didnt like it that much... I have Promash and have been happy since day one.

If you havnt tried it I strongly encourage giving it at least one chance.

If you don't change the FG field to something anticipated then the Actual ABV feild will stay low because the default value in the FG feild is rather high.

You just have to make sure that when you measure your OG and FG you input them into the proper fields.



You can guesstimate by using your OG estimate and FG estimate located on the left side.

Oooh ok, I see what I'm doing. I was just kind of tooling around with it and seeing what kind of recipes I could come up with and ultimately I thought it would tell me the Actual ABV without actually having to do any of the brewing yet... n00b mistake.

The Actual ABV defaults to that value. It will change when you enter in SG measurements.

You don't necessarily have to use Actual ABV to get an idea of what the ABV is. You can look at "Alcohol by Vol Est" or you can just manually enter in the values in the measured OG and FG fields.

WSURaider41 said:

Oooh ok, I see what I'm doing. I was just kind of tooling around with it and seeing what kind of recipes I could come up with and ultimately I thought it would tell me the Actual ABV without actually having to do any of the brewing yet... n00b mistake.

Click to expand...

If the yeast profile is properly set-up the estimate values will be reasonable with respect to attentuation at it's maximum potential. the real problem lies within yeast manufacturers not using a standard descriptor of attentuation. some use words like Low, Medium, and High which is rather obscure whereas others use a percentage approximation.

I forget what BS uses.

When you enter your OG and FG does beer smith need you to enter the temp corrected values or does it do that based off of your Imputed number elsewhere?