beersmith is making me insane. please help!

[doverox]

hi guys! ok so i am ready to pull my hair out. please help this noob.

can someone explain to me the estimations that beersmith is coming up with in the bottom right corner of the second screen shot?
i have entered my equipment profile with boil off rate. it's set for biab. what else can i do here?

also, it automatically changes this batch to a 5 gallon yield in that section even though i told it that it's a 3.5 gallon batch. the picture shows it manually changed to 3.25.

and while we are at it does anyone else think that the pre-boil volume seems a little low for a 3.5 gallon batch with 7 lbs of grain? thanks

i am missing something. please help.

 

[theck]

I think you need to scale the recipe not just change the batch size?

 

[govner1]

Agree w/ theck. You need to set your vol in your equipment profile to 3.5g & scale to that profile.

 

[doverox]

thanks, guys. but just to clarify, i designed this recipe. i mean it's based on an existing recipe but i manually entered everything else except for that bottom right section.

when i started the recipe, i did start it with my 3.5 gallon batch equipment profile.

what did i do wrong?

 

[LLBeanJ]

Post a screen shot of your Volumes page so we can see more of what is being calculated.

 

[doverox]

nevermind you were right the first time. i'm a dummy and didn't realize i set my equipment profile to 3 gallons, not 3.5.
i did need to scale the recipe.

thank you for your help!

 

[pricelessbrewing]

Glad you figured it out. I wish beersmith had settings more accessible.

As an alternative, you can use the calculator on my blog listed below or you can reach it directly at pricelessbrewing.github.io/BiabCalc

It has every mash related calculation, agrees with both beersmith and the biabacus but has several features beersmith doesn't offer just yet, such as hop absorption, thermal expansion as a function of temp, as well as heights in inches (assuming straight walled cylinder).
If nothing else it can be used to double check your settings for beersmith and make sure it's set up right.

 

[doverox]

Glad you figured it out. I wish beersmith had settings more accessible.

As an alternative, you can use the calculator on my blog listed below or you can reach it directly at pricelessbrewing.github.io/BiabCalc

It has every mash related calculation, agrees with both beersmith and the biabacus but has several features beersmith doesn't offer just yet, such as hop absorption, thermal expansion as a function of temp, as well as heights in inches (assuming straight walled cylinder).
If nothing else it can be used to double check your settings for beersmith and make sure it's set up right.

i spoke too soon. i don't know why but it keeps assuming that i am doing 5 gallon batches, even when i use the right profile. this is very frustrating.

i will try your calculator, thank you

 

[chickypad]

i spoke too soon. i don't know why but it keeps assuming that i am doing 5 gallon batches, even when i use the right profile. this is very frustrating.

Are you talking about the measured batch size field? That always has to be inputted after every brew day once you see what you actually hit, just like the measured OG, measured FG, measured pre-boil gravity, etc. I agree it would make more sense for the default when you open a recipe to just be blank, but it is what it is. You don't even need to show that field if you don't want, and it's not affecting your recipe calculation in any way.

 

[LLBeanJ]

The 5.0 gal measured batch size is the default amount entered by BS. There's nothing you can do (that I'm aware of) to change this. This is a post-brew field so you tell BS how much wort actually made it into the fermenter, regardless of what your planned batch size is.

Edit: yeah, what chickypad said.

 

[MagicMatt]

I've never really liked this feature either. In fact, I don't like how it prepopulates any of the user-entered (post brew/fermentation) values. I'm always second guessing whether these values that it enters are supposed to be an estimate, or suggestion, or what.

For instance, I brewed yesterday and entered my measured OG (1.058). It automatically changes the values in the "Fermentation/Storage" and "At Bottling/Kegging" sections. If those are estimates, why not have them in fields labeled such (just like they do with Est. OG and Est ABV, etc)?


Maybe that's a question/suggestion for Mr. Smith.

 

[Oginme]

I created a 'blank' recipe as a template with my default equipment profile and standard additions. In that template, I have blanked out all the user input fields so that any recipe created with it has all blank fields.