I've missed my numbers twice in a row... Why?

[Deadalus]

In the Beersmith equipment profile one can set up deadspace losses, loss to trub, and loss to chillers which is what sounds like has been done. Their boil off rate hasn't been stated nor the batch size.

I entered the recipe into Beersmith using my own equipment, a 3V2P keggle EHERMs. My profile uses small losses for the MT and trub however, with an 85% BH efficiency and a 6 gallon batch size, the EST OG is 1.071. At 5.5 gallons, it's 1.078. To get the Est OG to be 1.066, I had to drop BH efficiency to 70%. To hit the measured OG of 1.053, I had to drop to 55%.

I think it would be helfpul to go over your equipment profile, letting us know what is comprising your brew rig. Then see if your thermometers are well calibrated, and what your mash and sparge process was in better detail. And your gap size on your mill and whether you set that.

 

[mac_1103]

Maybe I'm overcompensating.
Maybe I worry too much.
What kills me is that I've never missed my O.G. by so much before.

I don't know if overcompensating is the right word. And you should always RDWHAHB. But have you always done things this way in the past? Your grain bill only has so many gravity points. To hit your OG you have to hit your volume (among other things). If you leave volume in the lauter tun and the kettle and the chiller, then you're leaving gravity points in all of those places too. You can't treat wort that you leave in those places as if it was water that you boiled off.

 

[user 338926]

My counterflow chiller is 40' long plus the hoses that connect the pump to the chiller and the chiller to the fermenter.

I don't understand what you're saying here. Do you mean your Chiller is 40 ft away? And you have wort in the lines going to it that you're going to lose?

 

[carrsgarage]

I don't understand what you're saying here. Do you mean your Chiller is 40 ft away? And you have wort in the lines going to it that you're going to lose?

Oops, I corrected that - my counterflow chiller is made from four pieces of copper tube, each one 5' long. There are three short pieces of silicone hose that connect the copper tubes. This is mounted flat underneath my brew table. It is connected to a pump that draws wort from the bottom corner of the boil kettle on one end with a hose approximately 2' long. The other end of the chiller has a hose approximately 3' long which is the output to the fermenter.
This apparatus doesn't always drain completely when transferring wort from kettle to fermenter, so I have calculated that volume as loss.

After brewing my very first batch on this equipment, I found that I did not get five gallons of finished beer in my keg. I then ran a known volume of water through the entire system and measured the volume that actually made it into the fermenter. To that result I added 1 gallon for boil off per hour and ½ gallon for loss in the fermenter so I wouldn't be transferring trub.

 

[user 338926]

To that result I added 1 gallon for boil off per hour and ½ gallon for loss in the fermenter so I wouldn't be transferring trub.

May I ask then what are the numbers that you are using as the loss in the chiller as well as how much do you figure you are leaving in the kettle?

Also, I wouldn't have considered the chiller a counterflow chiller. Those are a small box with four ports on them in my experience. I would call yours a immersion chiller, albeit you are doing yours in Reverse from how I do mine as I run cold water through my copper coil and you are running beer through the coil. For me, all the additional cleaning would be a contamination risk but that's another story.

I'll avoid equipment discussion as we all use what we have , and most times make it work. So back to the original topic, these last couple days of confusion have had me thinking a lot of things. Here's an idea.

When you're getting ready to mash, obviously you have hot water in the mash tun and it's obviously hotter than the mash temp. In the instances where your mesh temp will be high, obviously it is higher. Does that amount of additional temperature cause a measure of enzyme destruction which ends up affecting fermentability? As to say, as I'm putting my grain in, the first grain that hits the water gets scalded pretty good. Let's say my water temp is well above the 168 threshold. How quickly does the higher temperature water destroy the enzymes, and what effect does that have on the end result?

These are questions I don't know the answer to, but I guess when I try to recall brews that required a really hot water, I would say those are the ones where my gravity remained high after fermentation. But I would have to go back and look at an awful lot of notes to correlate all that. I just had two beers finish out at 1.016 and 1.018, both of which had Mash water greater than 168.

 

[Deadalus]

...
Also, I wouldn't have considered the chiller a counterflow chiller. Those are a small box with four ports on them in my experience. I would call yours a immersion chiller, albeit you are doing yours in Reverse from how I do mine as I run cold water through my copper coil and you are running beer through the coil. For me, all the additional cleaning would be a contamination risk but that's another story.

I'll avoid equipment discussion as we all use what we have , and most times make it work. So back to the original topic, these last couple days of confusion have had me thinking a lot of things. Here's an idea.

...

Carrsgarage is not describing an immersion chiller. Immersion chillers get dropped into the wort.

The box type you are describing is called a plate chiller,

with counterflow chillers constructed of different materials, with tubing inside tubing. A plate chiller uses a series of plates instead of tubing to cool the wort by sending the wort in the opposite direction of the water.

What the @carrsgarage somewhat describes, having not mentioned the water, sounds like one of these. These are CFCs.

 

[user 338926]

What the @carrsgarage somewhat describes, having not mentioned the water, sounds like one of these. These are CFCs.

View attachment 819246

Never seen anything like that. CF chiller in my mind is like your second picture. I have one like the first, immersion. I had no idea people ran wort through 20' of copper such as this. I guess it looks easy enough... Does seem like it's not without compromise.

 

[Deadalus]

I don't know if overcompensating is the right word. And you should always RDWHAHB. But have you always done things this way in the past? Your grain bill only has so many gravity points. To hit your OG you have to hit your volume (among other things). If you leave volume in the lauter tun and the kettle and the chiller, then you're leaving gravity points in all of those places too. You can't treat wort that you leave in those places as if it was water that you boiled off.

If @carrsgarage set up their "Equipment Profile" correctly (or at least estimated well) in Beersmith, those losses are added into the system. There are boxes for "loss to trub and chiller", a box for fermenter loss, and a box for batch size. There are some other equipment specific changes that can be made as well, such as MT deadspace. The software then accounts for it. It's potentially lost gravity points if you can make changes to your process to capture those losses but inputted properly they are accounted for losses as far as the estimated OG.

@carrsgarage you are not getting the results that Beersmith calculates. Could you start at the beginning with what you have inputed to Beersmith for an equipment profile? Also, were you using Beersmith prior to your two year break? What is your BH efficiency set at in Beersmith?

As I mentioned, I use Beersmith and I have a similar brew rig and though I said I use smaller losses, your preboil volume is only about 1/2-1 gallon greater, yet when I run your recipe, the overall BH efficiency would need to be set extremely low ~55% to hit the numbers you posted. There is something very off in your system. One of my theories is that your thermometers are very off in some fashion. I have also had this problem and fixed it but I am not sure what your brew rig is composed of exactly.

 

[carrsgarage]

Carrsgarage is not describing an immersion chiller. Immersion chillers get dropped into the wort.
View attachment 819244
The box type you are describing is called a plate chiller,

View attachment 819245
with counterflow chillers constructed of different materials, with tubing inside tubing. A plate chiller uses a series of plates instead of tubing to cool the wort by sending the wort in the opposite direction of the water.
View attachment 819247View attachment 819248

What the @carrsgarage somewhat describes, having not mentioned the water, sounds like one of these. These are CFCs.

View attachment 819246

That's almost exactly it!
Rather than having it doubled over on itself, mine is flat - it was easier for me to solder that way and also tucks up under the tabletop nicely.

I will dig into my BrewSmith settings when I get a chance. I noticed this thread from years ago and it sounds similar to the problems I'm having: How do you guys calculate for trub loss?