Beersmith Question

I'm toying around with creating my first recipe using Beersmith. I'm trying to create a Partial Mash BIAB recipe, but the problem is that it will also be a partial boil since my pots are not big enough for a full boil.

I can't figure out how to create a recipe where the boil volume is less than the finishing volume. I'm also worried that if I do it wrong the program won't account for the top-off water. In other words, I think it'll assume the pre-boil volume is more than the end volume (since it appears to calculate for boil off), and all the SG numbers will be way off.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

did you uncheck the box for Adjust boil volume based on equipment?

terrapinj said:

did you uncheck the box for Adjust boil volume based on equipment?

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Okay, so I unchecked "calc boil vol" and under pre-boil volume I put 3 gallons. Then for batch size I left it at 5 gallons. Does that mean it will correctly calculate for the top-off water? Is there anything else I need to do?

Thanks for the help. I appreciate it.

Click on the "Preview Brewsheet" it should have a step to add water to achieve the right level for a 5 gallon batch

enkamania said:

Click on the "Preview Brewsheet" it should have a step to add water to achieve the right level for a 5 gallon batch

Click to expand...

Right you are my friend! Thanks a million.

Okay, so on that brew sheet it says to add 13 quarts of liquid for the mash, but it doesn't have a sparge step...do I just subtract some of those 13 quarts and save for sparge?

onipar said:

Right you are my friend! Thanks a million.

Okay, so on that brew sheet it says to add 13 quarts of liquid for the mash, but it doesn't have a sparge step...do I just subtract some of those 13 quarts and save for sparge?

Click to expand...

You can click the "mash profile" area and choose the mash profile you want and that should include the sparge.

Yooper said:

You can click the "mash profile" area and choose the mash profile you want and that should include the sparge.

Click to expand...

Thanks! Yeah, I just saw that, but all the BIAB styles require no sparging according to the entries. I'm not really sure what to put otherwise, but I guess that is mostly for the direction sheet anyway, so maybe it doesn't matter much?

Thanks again everyone for the help. That beersmith program is sort of intimidating at first.

onipar said:

Thanks! Yeah, I just saw that, but all the BIAB styles require no sparging according to the entries. I'm not really sure what to put otherwise, but I guess that is mostly for the direction sheet anyway, so maybe it doesn't matter much?

Thanks again everyone for the help. That beersmith program is sort of intimidating at first.

Click to expand...

Exactly! Since you're sparging, you can "skip" any BIAB profiles and just choose one- say single infusion, medium body. You can double click on that profile and put your desired mash thickness in- it may default to 1.25 quarts a pound or something, but you can change it to whatever you want. Then it should give you the amount of sparge water.

The equipment used doesn't really matter, except to calculate dead space under a false bottom, etc. So, you can pick your mash profile and tweak it to your own equipment.

Very cool, thanks. I'll probably end up posting my tentative recipe soon for help tweaking it.

if you uncheck the box "BIAB Mash with Full Boil Voume" in the mash profile for BIAB you can then enter sparge steps