Confused about batch size

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mangine77

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Just when I think I know what I'm doing, I get confused about something that is very simple.

Ok, I've been doing several recipes from the Jamil book. It says in his book that all of the recipes are supposed to be configured to result in 6 gallons of wort being left after a 60 minute boil. He figures you will dump 5.5 gallons into the fermenter leaving .5 gallon behind. Then he figures another .5 gallon will be left behind after fermentation, leaving you with a final 5 gallons that goes into the bottles.

So, what should I be putting into Beersmith for a batch size?? I've been entering 5.5 gallon batch size into Beersmith because I usually shoot for 7 gallon of pre boil and I boil about 1.5 gallons in 60 minutes, leaving me with 5.5 left.

I feel like I've been calculating everything wrong:confused:

I only have a 7.5 gallon kettle for now but I'm going to up it soon.

Those that use beersmith, what batch size do you set??

How much do you boil off after 60 minutes?
 
I think the best thing to do is to figure out YOUR system. Figure out your system then go into Beersmith then to equipment and add a new entry for your brewery. Type in deadspace, volumes, evaporation rates, trub loss etc...Beersmith will then factor this in to your numbers when you formulate recipes.
To answer your questions I use a 5.5 gallon batch size, have around a 12% evaporation rate/hour, 4% cooling loss, and I leave about a qt in the kettle. I leave around .5 gallons in the fermenter and end up with 5 gallons.
 
What dfohio says, you need to get your numbers from your brewery. Deadspace in your MLT, evaporation rate in your boil kettle, the volume that you want at the end of the boil, etc. You can have several different configurations for different scenarios... 10 gallon batch, 5 gallon batch.. etc.
Also reading the manual would have answered your question more thoroughly.
 
I use Beersmith and here is how I do it. In the Equipment Details button there is a screen with all of the volume parameters such as volume lost to boil, trub, etc. I do a partial boil. I will first set Calculate Boil Volume Automatically to on. Then I enter the Final Volume as the amount I want to go into the fermenter. Typically I do 5.25 gals. Then I start entering the Evaporation Rate, Lost to Trub, Top Off, etc. until I get the boil volume that I want to start with. I don't really know the actual measures of the boil off, cooling loss, etc., but I don't think it matters that much as long as they are around the default values.
 
like everyone else has said, the best is to figure it out for your system/technique.

but if you were going to use the jamil recipe in your example and had the same trub losses etc as he had caculated the recipe for, you'd set the batch size at 6 gallons (and if you boil off 1.5 gallons in 60 minutes, you'd want to make sure that you have 7.5 gallons pre-boil)
 
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