Beersmith help

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aeviaanah

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I run 20gal water in my HLT to maximize HERMS coil coverage. Ill use something like 8gal for mash and 8gal for sparge for 16gal total. 4gal treated water will be left behind in HLT after brew day.

When calculating salts, I add 8gal worth of calculated salts directly to mash and 12gal worth of calculated salts to the HLT (to account for extra water not used) after mash water is pulled.

I have the most recent version of Beersmith. Any clever ideas to cheat the software to reflect the above? My goal is to use TRY Beersmith for water profile instead of Mash Made Easy or Bru N Water.
 
I have an XL spreadsheet open on brew day, enter the Beersmith numbers for the sparge mineral additions and scale it up linearly to actual sparge water I’m heating.
 
(I may need to edit this but here goes.) So when you are crafting your recipe, you will pick a water profile as your base water profile. Then you will adjust that and the adjustments will reflect the water profile you are aiming for. The mash salts should reflect the amount needed for your mash water. Then on the water tab under Water Adjustment Salts, there is a check box to Hold Sparge Salts Until Boil. I think that will then correctly determine your sparge salts based on the amount of sparge wate you need to use. You would need to add those to the BK though if you are OK with that. That's what I do.
 
I think you will want to have your equipment profile set up fairly exact as well and make sure you sparge correctly to your preboil volume. I have only been adjusting my water this year so I am not expert at it.
 
I have not seen that Beersmith option / feature - I‘ll check it out!
I use that because I too just use the water for sparging that is left in my HLT and that amount of water is in excess of all the water in the recipe as the water needs to cover the HERMs coil. I suppose I could drain the HLT to around the sparge amount but still I would have some water left below the HLT exit port. It would still be a little off then needing to calculate the values based on the volume in the HLT. Also I fly sparge and I am not sure in Beersmith (or in general) if that affects the values calculated I wonder if Beersmith assumes batch sparging? Like I said, I'm new to the overall water chemistry information. I do know that checking that hold sparge salts box will alter the amount of the adjustment salts.
 
I run 20gal water in my HLT to maximize HERMS coil coverage. Ill use something like 8gal for mash and 8gal for sparge for 16gal total. 4gal treated water will be left behind in HLT after brew day.

When calculating salts, I add 8gal worth of calculated salts directly to mash and 12gal worth of calculated salts to the HLT (to account for extra water not used) after mash water is pulled.

I have the most recent version of Beersmith. Any clever ideas to cheat the software to reflect the above? My goal is to use TRY Beersmith for water profile instead of Mash Made Easy or Bru N Water.

One of the failings of the water tab in latest update was its inability to respond to the amount of water which the user entered into the recipe but limited the calculations to the 'total water needed' calculation within BeerSmith. It has been brought up enough times on the BeerSmith forum that I hope Brad has it on the list to fix in the next update.

There is, however, a way to work around this issue. Get your recipe set up the way you want to brew it. Go to the 'vols' tab and increase the volume into the fermenter by 4 gallons (so if you have a target of 12 gallons, then increase it to 16 gallons). The mash profile will not change the amount of mash water, so the additional volume will be added to the sparge water. Now click onto the 'water' tab, change the water input to the amount of water you want to treat. Go through the matching water profile to add the salts to the recipe. After the salts have been added, you can go back to the vols tab and set your target into the fermenter back to the original volume and the salt additions in the recipe will stay as they were when they were added.

It is a PITA, but that will give you the numbers you need to treat the whole amount of water in your HLT to the desired level.
 
One of the failings of the water tab in latest update ...

It is a PITA, but that will give you the numbers you need to treat the whole amount of water in your HLT to the desired level.

I just ignore the water tab - I agree it seems a little screwed up.

Build your recipe without any adjustments to the water. Once you have a "Total Water Needed" volume, use the Water Profile Tool (menu Tools/Water Profile Tool). Click "Match Target Profile" any time you play with the numbers and it works fine. Plug the results back into your recipe.
 
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