Two problems I'm having with Beersmith

I really wanted to like Beersmith but I just can't get past a few problems. The biggest is that I don't agree with the brewhouse efficiency numbers. I've been using an excel spreadsheet for my recipe for years, and I figure my efficiency for most batches is 70-75% depending on gravity. With Beersmith, I'm having to enter efficiency numbers far lower than expected. 68% seems to correlate with my 75%. But for higher gravity beers, I expect 65-70% with my excel sheet, but I'm having to go as low as 50-55% with Beersmith.

I realize that efficiency is just a number and what matters is hitting your targets, but 1) We all know that 50-55% is just not correct, so it makes me trust the software less and 2) I need reliability so that I can hit my targets.

The other major issue I'm having is all the equipment setup. I've watched the videos, and I have it setup correctly for a "normal" batch. But sometimes when I make DIPAs, I like to finish the boil with an extra 2-4 quarts so I can still fill the fermentor with clear wort in spite of all the hops.

Beersmith's batch sizes are defined by how much is going into the fermentor. So whether I'm ending with 6gal of mild ale or 7gal of DIPA, I'm still putting 5.5 in the fermentor.

To account for the 7gal of DIPA, I went to the Volume tab of the recipe and changed the Trub Loss from .5gal to 1.5gal. This should have changed the quantities of grain required to hit my numbers, after all, I'm making an extra gallon of wort. But the numbers went unchanged. WTF.

 

BeerSmith uses two efficiency numbers: Mash efficiency and Brewhouse (total) efficiency. Make sure first that you are comparing the correct efficiency number.

For better or worse, Brad chose to key the calculations based upon total efficiency, i.e. what goes into the fermentor. The program will adjust your mash efficiency to make this number happen. When you adjust your batch size or trub loss number, the program adjusts the mash efficiency to compensate. Thus you have no change in the target numbers (OG, FG, IBU, Color) when you make a change like this.

This is why when you changed the amount of trub loss, your grain bill did not change. Instead, BeerSmith recalculated your mash efficiency based upon your grain bill to arrive at the same output.

I find that my mash efficiency is pretty constant and predictable within a given range and decreasing slightly for higher gravity recipes. MY variable is the brewhouse efficiency, which I adjust based upon the individual recipe to account for amount of hops, trub from higher grain bill, other ingredient adds, etc.

One of the 'good' aspects of BeerSmith is that I can alter a profile within a recipe to accommodate the additional trub loss and it carries with that recipe. Even if I alter the same profile in a different recipe or in the equipment profiles, that will not change the information contained within a previously written recipe. Though sometimes this can be a pain, as when I want to make a global change to reflect a change I made in my process, it does provide for customizing the parameters for some of those higher hop recipes.

When I do this, I change the amount of expected trub loss and then alter the brewhouse efficiency to give my my desired target mash efficiency. A little backwards maybe, but it is not hard to calculate and adjust.

Personally, having tuned my profiles in Beersmith I have found my numbers to be very consistent with the software's predictions.

 

Okay, I think I'm understanding this, though I disagree with "total efficiency" as a concept in the first place. So what would you recommend I set these two variables to? And uh... how the hell do you do that?

I'd love it if I could get it setup so that regardless of gravity, it did a good job predicting what my efficiency/extract will be.

 

I set up my basic equipment profile similar to how you did yours: based upon an "average" recipe with standard trub losses, etc. This pretty much handles everything up to a OG of around 1.070. If I design a recipe using a larger loading of hops (which I add directly to the boil, no bag), then I will make and adjustment accordingly.

To give you an example, my current system is a 10 liter batch with 1 liter of trub left in the kettle. This gives me a transfer efficiency of 10/(10+1) = 90.9% as my standard. Calculated along with my standard mash efficiency of 88% gives me a brewhouse efficiency of 80%. If I increase my trub loss to 1.5 liters, my transfer efficiency is around 87% which when applied to my mash efficiency of 88% gives me a brewhouse efficiency of around 76.5%.

I have a separate equipment profile for higher gravity recipes that has a mash efficiency of 84% and works very well for gravities from 1.070 to 1.100 (I have not brewed anything above that target yet). This one I preset with a trub loss of 1.25 liters given the additional protein from the grain.

If I choose to be frugal on any given brewday and dependent upon the recipe of the day, I can sneak in an additional .5 liters into the fermentor, but I always plan on having a little bit left over just to compensate to seasonal boil-off loss variations among other things.

BTW, if you could not tell from my original post, I dislike the brewhouse efficiency as being the fixed factor in the calculations as well, but one makes due with what has. After all is said and done, it works well for me and it beats the crap out of the few times that I sat down and went through all the formulas by hand... several times... for small recipe adjustments...

 

One thing to note is put all of your losses for the entire system in the fermentation losses column. If you add it in mash tun and kettle loss areas the numbers get all screwed up. My starting boil volume is 9 gallons as I leave about 2 gallons behind when I am done for a clean transfer. Once I entered that total loss in the fermentation loss column I was able to hit my gravities almost dead on. There is a flaw in the programming that if you put the losses in the MT and Kettle columns you end up coming up with SG numbers that are way too low.

 

This is something i continue to struggle with but have just stopped getting irritated that i have to put 65 - 68% in my total efficiency to have my numbers come out right. Here is what i do. I am not saying this is the best way, but so far this has been the easiest for me to hit the numbers that i am supposed to on.

First i completely zero out trub and chiller loss in the equipment profile. Set all your other numbers which should be true for every batch. Now you can adjust for your "trub and chiller loss" by just changing your batch size. So i can set a 5.75 or 6 gallon batch size and still get 5.25 into the fermenter. I usually just set my total efficiency at 65 for anything over 1.065 gravity and 68 for anything less and i hit my number MOST the time now. This is something i just started doing recently and it has seemed to help with making sure i hit what i am supposed to.

If anyone sees a major flaw with what i do please let me know but so far this has been the best setup for me to get my numbers right.

 

Okay, so based on what you're telling me, here's my situation:

Usually brew 6gal at the end of the boil and transfer 5.5 into fermentor. That's 91.6%. My typical mash efficiency is 75%. 75% of 91.6 is 68.7%. So in the Equipment Wizard I entered this into the Mash Efficiency cell.

Then I went to create this generic IPA recipe:
1.067 OG
45% maris
45% two row
10% wheat malt

After I punch in the grains, get the percentages correct, get the OG correct, I'm seeing the (adjustable) Tot Efficiency is 72% while the Est Mash Eff is 78.5%. That number seems high, and I'm comparing the grain weights it's putting out with my trusted spreadsheet and I know this won't work.

So then I adjust Tot Efficiency down to 68%, end up having to adjust the OG back to 1.067, and now Est Mash Eff is 74.2% which is pretty close to expected. The total grain bill is within about .3# of what I expect which is basically negligible.

Is this what I'm going to have to do every time? Or am I making something overly complicated?

 

EDIT: oops double post, deleted

 

This might be a dumb question, but what are you putting for your batch size? I used to have issues until I started putting the actual amount into the fermentor as my batch size.

 

I've double checked all the numbers to ensure BeerSmith reflects the spreadsheet I wrote. My spreadsheet is written so that my target batch size is what's left at the end of the boil (6gal), but I realize that in BS the batch size is what goes into the fermentor (5.5).

I'm playing around with what was suggested above to moving all the losses to fermentation so it's easier to visualize. It does make everything a little easier to think about, and the "Tot Efficiency" cell is more reflective of my actual mash efficiency, but I'm still having to fiddle around with all the numbers to make it equal the numbers that I know will work.

If I'm going to switch to BS, I need to be able to trust it. I don't want to always have to check the math against my own.

A final disclaimer: I have no doubt that Brad Smith is an excellent programmer and that the software works - I just can't get it to work in a way that makes sense to me.

 

If I had to guess, I would say some of the discrepancies lie in that batch size difference between your spreadsheet and BS. 0.5 gallon is roughly 8% difference between the two values, which could transfer to the efficiency problems you're seeing.

All things being equal (same poundage of grains/fermentables), you will have different estimated OG if one method is using 6 gallons and the other is using 5.5 gallons, assuming the same target estimated efficiency.

Although, I may well be misunderstanding your problem, so sorry if I'm telling you what you already know and/or have tried out.

 

You are misunderstanding me. I have them both setup so that I have 7.3gal preboil, 6gal postboil, 5.5 into fermentor, 5 into keg.

 

You know, the conclusion I'm coming to is that BeerSmith is designed for people who build their recipes like this: "I want to make an APA with an OG of 1.050. I'd like 1.5# of munich and .75# of C40, and the rest two-row." So they adjust the two row up until it hits the right gravity.

I always build my recipes by percentage so that it's translatable to any size system, but I think it's inhibiting use of the software correctly.

I'm kinda bummed BS has so many roadblocks for me - I really wanted to use it so that everything would be stored together, I'd be more motivated to track gravities/tasting notes/rebrew versions, I think it has other awesome capabilities, and I wanted to support Brad for supporting the Brewing Network. It's just too much extra work though to iron out these reliability problems.

 

If you haven't read it already maybe this post will help shed some light on how BeerSmith use the variables you give it...or not

http://www.beersmith.com/forum/index.php/topic,8579.0.html

 

Thanks, avidly reading now!

 

I think you're probably right, if for no other reason than that is exactly how I build out my recipes and I have no issues hitting the numbers in beer smith. Have you checked out the "Building a Recipe using Grain Percentages" video?

http://beersmith.com/building-a-recipe-using-grain-percentages/

Cheers!

 

Now that I have my system dialed in, I always hit all of my numbers +/- 2 SG points. Volumes are virtually always spot-on. It takes me about three-four batches to hit my numbers when I change something about my system.

The software is used widely among homebrewers and pro brewers, and is very reliable - you just have to get it to do your bidding. That involves starting with your best guess for your equipment and taking measurements throughout the process; then adjust settings as needed. Sometimes you have to middle with the mash tun specific heat or even weight settings (for my cooler mash tun, I had to enter a weight two pounds lower than it actually was, likely because the fittings and lid threw it off). The other thing I changed is hop utilization - I don't care that first wort hops MEASURE higher in IBUs than a 60' addition, because they don't TASTE like that.

 

The article MerlinWerks linked to helped a lot - I adjusted several things and now I'm double checking it against known recipes on my system.

Finding some other complications, such as the fact that I see the grain percentages are merely based off of weight of the total grain bill, rather than percentage of gravity contribution. That makes a big difference for something like cane sugar. I'll keep playing with it, I still have 13 days in my free trial.

 

Thanks for pointing this out. I was just reviewing the latest posts and was going to suggest this video. I find BeerSmith to be very flexible in how you approach recipe design, having entered recipes through a variety of means.

 

FWIW, I don't use BS as you suggest and I don't have any issues whatsoever. Sorry it's not working out for you, it really is a great piece of software. And I still believe there is something inherit in how you are calculating vs. BS that's causing you problems. The only question I would like to know is what are you dividing your points per pounds per gallons of each grain by? In order to decipher your problem, we would probably need to know how your spreadsheet is set up to calculate.

 

Basically, I used ideas, formulas, and pppg numbers from Designing Great Beers to build a spreadsheet that calculates grain poundage based on inputs of OG, batch size, efficiency, and grain percentages.

I went with calculating by extract rather than weight purely because when I built this thing I was the newbie and Daniels was the master, and that's what he recommended. Now it's ingrained in the way I think about recipes.

Take these two model (simplified) recipes: Both are 6gal at the end of the boil, 1.070 OG, 75% efficiency.

By extract potential:
80% two row = 12.44#
10% special B = 1.65#
10% cane sugar = 1#

By weight:
80% two row = 11.56#
10% special B = 1.44#
10% cane sugar = 1.44#

I realize it's a weird example of a beer, but both of these would yield beers with the same parameters described above. But there's gotta be a huge difference in flavor there. The difference would be even more pronounced if I had chosen something with low extract like roast barley instead of special B, but I wanted something that was at least semi-reasonable.

I don't know, I do like a lot of the other capabilities of BeerSmith so maybe I'll keep poking around.

 

Man... makes me think i should have read Designing great beers before i started down this road. What you are saying makes sense. I have just never even thought about calculating recipes that way. Gonna have to grab that book.