Beersmith help!

[jrowland74]

Can someone please explain what this means? I plan to batch sparge, but can't figure out these steps. Am I adding 5 gallons twice then 1.5g twice at 180 deg?

 

[jrowland74]

Whoops... Here's the pic

 

[LLBeanJ]

Not sure what's going on there. The mash-in and sparge steps should add up to your total water, but 20.31 qts and 6.26 qts do not add up to 7 gal. A second sparge of 6.26 would put you at about 8 gal total, so that doesn't make sense either. I don't know where the 7 gal water is coming from.

I'm not familiar with the mobile version, but somewhere there should be a volumes tab for the recipe. How much total water does it say you need under the volumes tab? If it's 6.64 gal, then you have one sparge step of 6.26 qts. If it's 8.40, then you would have two sparge steps (assuming you have the "Use equal batch sizes" box checked.

BTW... I'm not sure why, but BS always says "Batch sparge with 2 steps..." when using the batch sparge option, regardless of how many sparges are required.

 

[jrowland74]

I think the 7 gallons came from my equipment profile. My first 2 ag batches, I used just 2 equal amounts of water; one to mash, the other to sparge. That's what I planned to do here but wanted to give beersmith a try. I plan to have 6.5 gallons to boil, so I was figuring 10 gallons total into the tun. Thoughts?

 

[jrowland74]

I made some changes and this is closer to what I want I think

 

[jrowland74]

I don't understand how adding 168.2 F water gets me to 170 F though

 

[LLBeanJ]

It won't. 168.2 is the strike water temp required to achieve your 156 mash temp, since the grain and the mash tun are going to absorb some of the heat from the water.

170 is your sparge water temp.

 

[jrowland74]

That's what I thought. Thanks for clarifying

 

[LLBeanJ]

I plan to have 6.5 gallons to boil, so I was figuring 10 gallons total into the tun. Thoughts?

Assuming you're using Beersmith's default grain absorption rate, with 16.25 lbs of grain you will lose 1.95 gal to the grain. If no other losses, you would need...

6.5 + 1.95 = 8.45 gal total water to start with to achieve 6.5 gal pre-boil. If you have any water loss from the mash tun (i.e., deadspace), then you would add that to the 8.45.

 

[jrowland74]

Thanks

 

[StLouBrew]

Going back to the details of the batch sparge... I'm new to AG brewing, but from what reading I've done it seems to reason that batch sparging in two steps would give you a better efficiency.. right?

 

[jrowland74]

Probably. My OG came up a little low at 1.060. I am trying my hand at my first self written recipe so I am kind of winging it. Here's to hoping for the best

 

[jrowland74]

After boil OG was 1.076, with estimated OG of 1.084. I'm OK with that. I'm sure it will be great!