Need BeerSmith Equipment Profile for 20 Gal InfuSSion Mash Tun

[micraftbeer]

I recently got a 20 gallon Brewtech InfuSSion mash tun. It's bigger than I needed (so I think now...), but the 10 gallon wasn't big enough for my occasional big batch experiments where I split wort off into fermentors to test different fermentation parameters.

Anyway, I was brewing a 5 gallon batch (5.75 gallons into fermentor) of IPA as a test run last weekend, and I massively undershot my mash step temperature. I'm looking to see if anyone has had success with an equipment profile in BeerSmith 2 that works for this. I didn't do any "hot water conditioning" of the mash tun to try to warm things up because I figured that would just add more uncertainty in the calculations. But maybe that's a key step I need to do.

- 13.3 lbs of grain
- 1.5 qt/lb mash density
- 0.7 gal Lauter Tun deadspace (measured volume under false bottom)

Mash Volume: 20.00
Mash Tun Weight: 50lbs
Mash Tun Specific Heat: .12 cal/g-deg C
Mash Tun Deadspace: 0.00

The above settings told me to add 5.7 gallons of strike water at 158F to hit my 150F mash temperature, but I only hit 144F. I didn't have my full set-up going yet to allow me to circulate and heat in my Boil Kettle so it was kind of a pain for me. I need to figure out how to get much closer. I've always had great predictions for this come out of BeerSmith, but something is obviously way off and I'm not sure how to correct/adjust/fix.

 

[kevin58]

I highly recommend that you do not rely solely on the equipment profiles that come with (or that you can add on to) Beersmith. Even Brad Smith says to only use these as a starting point. Your system and your process is always going to have differences. So create your own, custom equipment profile. Here are a couple of tutorials that will walk you through the process.

 

[micraftbeer]

OK, I finally watched both videos, but there were no new pieces of information for me in there. I know how to set up an equipment profile and that is what I did for this first brew I did with the InfuSSion. However, the strike temperature water prediction was way off.

BS Has an Infusion tool where you can input the values like you have in your recipe and equipment profile. If I type in the same info as I have in my recipe + equipment profile into that calculator, it tells me I should've used 170F water. The mash tab of my recipe told me to use 159F strike water.

The 170F seems like it would've been more accurate, but I don't know why it's predicting a different value.

 

[micraftbeer]

Hold the phone. Found the problem. There's a little checkbox on the Mash page that says "Adjust temp for equipment". Not sure why that's not defaulted, or if I need to set something in a profile, but once I checked that box, it told me 170F. I think I'm good.