Beersmith + Wort Share

[VT_Mike]

There are a couple of other threads in other sections but I am fairly new to using BeerSmith and wanted to get someone else's opinion.

A local brewery near me is doing a wort share competition. I've entered the grain bill for the wort that they are giving us and that's fine.

To get the style that I am going for I am going to do a minimash and add the two worts together.

So my question in what is the best way to formulate that scenario in BeerSmith.

Thanks in advance.

 

[skunkfunk]

Wait what? Can you be more specific? Iterative mash? Just going to do another mash, boil it, and throw the new wort in with it?

 

[VT_Mike]

So basically a local brewery, Center of the Universe Brewing Company (http://www.cotubrewing.com/), is having a competition where they give 60 Homebrewers the chance to take a wort that they have made and pretty much do whatever they want with it, as long as it it commercially viable.

They send out the grain bill, so here's that:
90.6% Special Pale
4.6% Caramel 30
2.5% Crisp Dextrine Malt
2.3% Flaked Oats
2.8 to 1 liquor to grist ratio.
Target Mash Temperature 155° F
15.5° Plato (1.078 SG)

I signed up for 2 slots, so I will receive approx. 12 gallons of fresh wort to play around with. I think i got pretty close with entering the base recipe into beersmith. So i have an idea of what just their wort is going to give me. Once you have the wort, you are responsible for yeast, hops, and anything else.

I guess where I am getting thrown off, and possibly thinking too much, is if I want to add more grain to the recipe. I should probably KISS and plug their recipe in and then just add the grains that I would like to add.

When I go to brew, I will have their wort, so any additional grains I want to add i could do so with a mini mash with just those grains and add the two worts together and then boil.

 

[sandyeggoxj]

Our local club does something like that. Do a 10bbl mash and then distribute to the members. Then people can steep more grain for color or just boil and add hops and yeast. Then there is a competition.

One clarification that I have is that 15.5ºP is more like 1.063...

 

[VT_Mike]

Yeah that's throwing us off too. We think 15.5 plato (1.063) is preboil gravity. Our postboil OG is close to 1.078 but a few tenths lower in beersmith, so we are not sure what 1.078 is supposed to be.

 

[sandyeggoxj]

That is a good guess. It would be a hell of a boil. Could also be a typo...

 

[brewfun]

So basically a local brewery, Center of the
15.5° Plato (1.078 SG)

I guess where I am getting thrown off, and possibly thinking too much, is if I want to add more grain to the recipe. I should probably KISS and plug their recipe in and then just add the grains that I would like to add.

You want to start with their recipe on its own. What you didn't say is if this is a boiled and hopped wort when you get it, or just raw, unboiled wort?

Either way, your minimash wort should be its own recipe, too. The commercial wort should be treated simply as a sugar addition. Since Plato is the percentage by weight, the 15.5 and 6 gallon numbers become approximately 7.75 pounds of sugar added to your new wort.

Make sure that the sugar is 100% efficient, to get the right dilution into the new wort. The water is accounted for as part of the mash or sparge water depending on if you're reiterating the mash or just blending, respectively.

You can also translate the color directly from the commercial recipe to the sugar profile without changing it.