Beersmith on the fritz

[smuth10]

Question for those of you that use Beersmith. I had a recipe I found here for a 5 gallon batch and I scaled it up to 7 gallons in BS. BS said I should have 9.75 gallons pre-boil for a 60 min boil. I knew this sounded way off, but I figured it had to be right. Anyway, I made the beer and naturally had about 8.5 gallons when it finished boiling. Am I doing something wrong or is BS way off sometimes? I thought you loose about 12% per hour. I am used to about 1.5 gallons more pre-boil for a 5 gallon batch on a 60 min boil.

 

[Hammy71]

Not sure about BeerSmith.... but your boil off should be the same regardless if you boil 5 gallons or 10. If you normally burn off 1.5 gallons for a 5 gallon/60 minute boil. You'll burn off the same with a 7 gallon batch.

 

[passedpawn]

I think Beersmith has a bug here. It calculates boiloff as a percentage. This just isn't right. It is a constant "g/hr". Hammy above has it exactly right.

 

[jroot]

I agree that the correct boil off calculation in Beersmith should be in gallons . Some brewers evidently prefer to use the boil off as a percentage of the grain bill. You can easily apply the boil off correction in Beersmith by choosing "Details" for your Equipment profile then under "Evaporation Rate" you will see the calculated Boil Off to the right for the time period you use for boiling. Just adjust the percentage rate until the gallons reflects the figure you regularly get from past brew sessions.

 

[smuth10]

I just checked what BS has for the boiler #'s and it has %15 per hour. Or 1.2 gallons\hr on an 8 gallon(7.92) boil with 1 gallon lost to trub and chiller on a 5.5 gal batch. I guess I see the logic there, but I am not seeing these #'s in my brews. Not sure whether their math is off, whether I am doing something wrong or whether I need to uncheck the automatic calculation and put in my own #'s. I have brewed several batches now on my system and it is off most of the time. It is affecting my FG because I have too much wort after the boil. Do most of you guys just boil a little longer when this happens? Just wondering if I need to try a different software. Promash maybe?

 

[passedpawn]

I alternate between 5g and 12g batches, so the % thing will never work for me. But really, once you get to know your system, you'll probably not pay attention to some of those water numbers anyway.

 

[Memorex88]

Have you tried asking on the Beersmith Forum?
http://www.beersmith.com/forum/

 

[smuth10]

I have not. Thank you for that link.

 

[Hammy71]

I just manually add my pre boil volume manually. Since I know what my system burns off per 1/2 hour....it's a piece of cake.

 

[jds]

Here's what I think is going on:

Whether you boil 8 or 15 gallons of wort, as long as you use the same equipment, you'll lose approximately the same VOLUME of water to evaporation per hour.

Because the BeerXML specification (www.beerxml.com), which defines the data sets several brewing software packages use, specifies boiloff rate in PERCENT per hour, the rate has to be adjusted for batch size. I think this is an error in the specification. The issue is not with Beersmith, but with the specification.

Personally, I don't bother. I don't let Beersmith calculate boil volumes automatically. I just know that I boil off 1.5 gallons per hour in my rig and manually set the boil size.

 

[smuth10]

I will be sure to do that next time. Thank you!

 

[passedpawn]

Because the BeerXML specification (www.beerxml.com), which defines the data sets several brewing software packages use, specifies boiloff rate in PERCENT per hour, the rate has to be adjusted for batch size. I think this is an error in the specification. The issue is not with Beersmith, but with the specification.

That's interesting. Thanks for the clarification.