BeerSmith Efficiency Calculator

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

HiImBrian

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 15, 2014
Messages
273
Reaction score
67
Does anybody really know how to use and adjust this thing? I feel like I've seen so many different articles and videos of people offering their own thoughts, but nothing too concrete.

This video for example, walks through a mock brew day and how to find your overall total efficiency. It ends with him doing a guess/check technique with his Equipment Profile Brewhouse Efficiency until his Est Mash Eff and Measured Mash Eff from the Mash tab were close in value. Is this accurate and if so, is this new Brewhouse Efficiency what I should plug in for future batches?
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIoeFuNbDbU[/ame]

Here's one more thread that seems to follow that same idea. Maybe it really is just that easy? I'm struggling to understand the math behind it.
http://www.beersmith.com/forum/index.php/topic,8579.0.html

My last two batches had very drastic differences in mash efficiency and after comparing numbers over my last few brews, they seem to be all over the place. For instance, when I do the guess/check comparison thing mentioned above, I get 68% for one brew and 101% for the next. 101% isn't even possible! I plan to brew in the next few days and want to make sure I am narrowing in on my system's total efficiency.

Any and all advice or comments on the topic are absolutely welcome.
Thanks,
 
My last two batches came in lower gravity than I expected so what i did was modify my total efficiency number, adjusting it until the estimated SG matched what i had measured. After watching this video, I decided to look back at a few recipes I've made this past year. If you notice the text on the left hand margin in the video it says to go to the fermentation tab and use the measured efficiency stated there. So what I did was averaged the last 5 batches I made. The result was just a little higher but pretty close.
 
There are two things to look at when trying to get the right efficiency into BeerSmith. The first is the volumes. Did you get the right volumes throughout? how far off were you? I would recommend focusing on getting your water/wort volumes corrected first and then using the calculated efficiency from BeerSmith to modify your brewhouse efficiency in your equipment profile.

Next is the sugar extraction, as tracked by the gravity readings. This is only useful when you have your volumes fairly accurate. You can do some initial adjustments if you track the 'sugar points' through the system. 'sugar points' is the gravity reading minus 1 and times 1000 [so a 1.040 gravity readings becomes 40] times the volume [so your 1.040 gravity (40 gravity points) at 6.5 gallons becomes 40 x 6.5 or 260 sugar points]. This number should be consistent between pre-boil and post boil since there should not be a loss in sugar, just a concentration of it. This number, if not reasonably close in pre-boil vs post boil will give you an indication of the accuracy of your measurements (both volume and gravity)

Why must you look at both independently? Since BeerSmith (or any brewing software) does not do volume corrections for errors. It tracks the extraction of sugar from the grains and uses both of the measurements to figure out the mash and brewhouse (total) efficiency of your system once you brew. So if it predicts a 1.040 gravity with 6.5 gallons and you end up with 5.2 gallons at 1.050, the program thinks everything is fine with regard to your efficiency numbers.

Once you have your volumes pretty much on target, then you can use the calculated Brewhouse efficiency from BeerSmith (as stated above) to adjust your equipment profile to more accurately predict your gravity readings.

Another thing to note: BeerSmith uses the Brewhouse efficiency and volume to fermenter as the basis for its calculations. It always assumes that there is more sugar available in the grains to be extracted. Thus, if you set your brewhouse efficiency before you have your water balance corrected, you may find that you have additional volume at the end of the boil and record a 101% efficiency or end up with an unreasonable mash efficiency to draw the sugars from the grain. Hey, it is only a program which runs maths on information given to it. It does not judge if that information is possible or not for your given system/process.
 
My last two batches came in lower gravity than I expected so what i did was modify my total efficiency number, adjusting it until the estimated SG matched what i had measured. After watching this video, I decided to look back at a few recipes I've made this past year. If you notice the text on the left hand margin in the video it says to go to the fermentation tab and use the measured efficiency stated there. So what I did was averaged the last 5 batches I made. The result was just a little higher but pretty close.

Ah very good to know! Yea I saw that text on the left and I believe that's what linked me to that other thread I posted above. I'm thinking I might keep an ongoing tally of my past measured efficiencies and keep my adjustable Tot Eff set as the average of them all kinda like what you checked.
Thanks
 
There are two things to look at when trying to get the right efficiency into BeerSmith. The first is the volumes. Did you get the right volumes throughout? how far off were you? I would recommend focusing on getting your water/wort volumes corrected first and then using the calculated efficiency from BeerSmith to modify your brewhouse efficiency in your equipment profile.

Next is the sugar extraction, as tracked by the gravity readings. This is only useful when you have your volumes fairly accurate. You can do some initial adjustments if you track the 'sugar points' through the system. 'sugar points' is the gravity reading minus 1 and times 1000 [so a 1.040 gravity readings becomes 40] times the volume [so your 1.040 gravity (40 gravity points) at 6.5 gallons becomes 40 x 6.5 or 260 sugar points]. This number should be consistent between pre-boil and post boil since there should not be a loss in sugar, just a concentration of it. This number, if not reasonably close in pre-boil vs post boil will give you an indication of the accuracy of your measurements (both volume and gravity)

Why must you look at both independently? Since BeerSmith (or any brewing software) does not do volume corrections for errors. It tracks the extraction of sugar from the grains and uses both of the measurements to figure out the mash and brewhouse (total) efficiency of your system once you brew. So if it predicts a 1.040 gravity with 6.5 gallons and you end up with 5.2 gallons at 1.050, the program thinks everything is fine with regard to your efficiency numbers.

Once you have your volumes pretty much on target, then you can use the calculated Brewhouse efficiency from BeerSmith (as stated above) to adjust your equipment profile to more accurately predict your gravity readings.

Another thing to note: BeerSmith uses the Brewhouse efficiency and volume to fermenter as the basis for its calculations. It always assumes that there is more sugar available in the grains to be extracted. Thus, if you set your brewhouse efficiency before you have your water balance corrected, you may find that you have additional volume at the end of the boil and record a 101% efficiency or end up with an unreasonable mash efficiency to draw the sugars from the grain. Hey, it is only a program which runs maths on information given to it. It does not judge if that information is possible or not for your given system/process.

This is what I've been looking for! Thanks for taking the time to write all that up.

I've heard people say that some people brew based on volumes, while others brew based on gravity. I would say I brew based on gravity in the sense that when I sparge, I'll keep running my sparge water until I get about 1.010 - 1.012 coming out of my mash tun. This is where I have the potential to get a much higher preboil volume than estimated. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're saying that I should essentially cut off my sparge once I hit my boil volume and record my gravity at that point and adjust my total efficiency based off those numbers taken from the correct volumes?

I feel like I need to brew like 5 days in a row in order to really dial this thing in. Brewing once a month is just enough time to lose any sort of flow or process.
 
If you know your pre-boil volume target well and know that it will get you your post-boil volume consistently, then I would recommend that you sparge to pre-boil volume and then stop. I don't fly sparge (tried it once, went back to batch sparge when not doing BIAB) but the time that I did, I watched both the volume and the gravity of the later runnings to make sure that I didn't go below 1.012 towards the end of the sparge. Especially for bigger beers, sparging until the gravity fell down to 1.012 would leave me with way too much volume and a very low pre-boil gravity.
 
If you know your pre-boil volume target well and know that it will get you your post-boil volume consistently, then I would recommend that you sparge to pre-boil volume and then stop. I don't fly sparge (tried it once, went back to batch sparge when not doing BIAB) but the time that I did, I watched both the volume and the gravity of the later runnings to make sure that I didn't go below 1.012 towards the end of the sparge. Especially for bigger beers, sparging until the gravity fell down to 1.012 would leave me with way too much volume and a very low pre-boil gravity.

I don't see a huge difference between batch sparging and fly sparging except for the fact that when you fly sparge, you can continue sparging until you fall below 1.010-1.012, but when you batch sparge, your limiting factor is how much water was dumped in. I have to imagine that if you stopped at a constant volume, the difference in preboil gravity would be very close between the two (with the difference essentially being mash eff).

My next brew I will sparge to my preboil volume and work towards an "accurate" efficiency moving forward.
Thanks again!
 
The difference is with batch sparging, I can calculate exactly how much water I need to meet my pre-boil volume. Because I know well my grain absorption rate and dead space in my mash tun, I can accurately predict the total volume that I need and split it between infusion and sparge volumes.

Most people that I know who fly sparge, heat up ample water and mash at a consistent rate. Then they fly sparge and shut off the valve when their desired volume is reached.

Good luck with your brews!
 
Good info so far

I'll add in that your lauter efficiency (and therefore the mash and brewhouse efficiencies) will vary from recipe to recipe. A 18 lb recipe will always have a lower brewhouse efficiency than a 12 lb recipe, assuming equal process.

More efficiency info at my blog HTTPS://pricelessbrewing.github.io/methods/Efficiency if you want to do some more reading.
 
Good info so far

I'll add in that your lauter efficiency (and therefore the mash and brewhouse efficiencies) will vary from recipe to recipe. A 18 lb recipe will always have a lower brewhouse efficiency than a 12 lb recipe, assuming equal process.

More efficiency info at my blog HTTPS://priceless brewing.github.io/methods/Efficiency if you want to do some more reading.

That link is no good fyi.
 
Copy and paste into another browser window and remove the space between priceless and brewing and it will work.
 
Back
Top