[BIAB 3 Gallon Batches] Exact Settings for BeerSmith

[Jordan Logo]

Hello All,

I'm having an extremely hard time finding good videos/guides on how to set my equipment specs and also how I can input my sparges (just a regular pour over sparge).

Does anyone have a similar set up that they can share their settings with me, or can someone show me exactly how to input the data to my specs?

I have a 5 gallon kettle, .09 grain absorption rate, and a .75 evaporation rate.

 

[IslandLizard]

I don't have the newest edition, I'm sticking with BS2. So I don't know what you're looking at.

Now you're doing a sort of hybrid conventional/BIAB mash, due to the smaller kettle. Most BIAB brewers have relatively large kettles that hold all the grain, all the water and have enough headroom to stir, so their equipment profiles won't work for you.

Maybe pick a regular mash system profile, with batch sparge once or twice?

 

[Oginme]

Check out the equipment and mash profile videos from Brulosophy on YouTube. They are the most straight forward to follow.

Next, your volumes in BeerSmith are set by the equipment profile. From the numbers you input, the program will calculate your mash infusion and your sparge volumes for you. The more accurate the numbers you give the program, the more accurate those volumes will be for you in real life. If you are using BS3, you can use the equipment profile wizard to quickly give the program the key numbers it needs.

Since you are not doing a full volume or a no sparge mash, do not treat this as a BIAB process within BeerSmith. You can use a regular 5-gal pot equipment profile and customize it with your figures. You already know a few key numbers needed to make the program work for you. The one thing you will need to adjust is the grain absorption rate, which sadly is in the global beersmith settings and not the equipment profile. To access this setting, you will need to click on 'options' > 'advanced' > and enter in your grain absorption rate in the 'grain absorption' setting. Ignore the BIAB grain absorption, since by doing a sparge step it does not apply.

In your equipment profile, make sure you have the losses for trub and any kettle losses represented. If you have done a brew in the past and have some idea of the brew house efficiency, you can enter in that value. Otherwise, for your first go round enter in a reasonable figure like 70% and plan on updating it once you do your first brew and input all the measured values into the 'session' tab of the recipe.

I recommend doing two things that will really help out in the long run to make the program work well for you. The first is to take measurements after the mash and after the boil and enter them into the program as your measured values. The more accurate the measurements you take, the faster you can get the program to reflect your process. BeerSmith will calculate out the actual brew house and mash efficiency for you once all these figures have been entered.

The second is to mark your customized profiles with the date you last changed them. This way, when you update the equipment profiles, you can see at a glance within a recipe if you are using the latest profile or not. BeerSmith treats every recipe as a self contained archive, so that changes you make outside of the recipe will not automatically affect the recipe without your updating of the profiles.

 

[IslandLizard]

That's really good, and specific info! ^

Thank you!

 

[Jordan Logo]

Check out the equipment and mash profile videos from Brulosophy on YouTube. They are the most straight forward to follow.

Next, your volumes in BeerSmith are set by the equipment profile. From the numbers you input, the program will calculate your mash infusion and your sparge volumes for you. The more accurate the numbers you give the program, the more accurate those volumes will be for you in real life. If you are using BS3, you can use the equipment profile wizard to quickly give the program the key numbers it needs.

Since you are not doing a full volume or a no sparge mash, do not treat this as a BIAB process within BeerSmith. You can use a regular 5-gal pot equipment profile and customize it with your figures. You already know a few key numbers needed to make the program work for you. The one thing you will need to adjust is the grain absorption rate, which sadly is in the global beersmith settings and not the equipment profile. To access this setting, you will need to click on 'options' > 'advanced' > and enter in your grain absorption rate in the 'grain absorption' setting. Ignore the BIAB grain absorption, since by doing a sparge step it does not apply.

In your equipment profile, make sure you have the losses for trub and any kettle losses represented. If you have done a brew in the past and have some idea of the brew house efficiency, you can enter in that value. Otherwise, for your first go round enter in a reasonable figure like 70% and plan on updating it once you do your first brew and input all the measured values into the 'session' tab of the recipe.

I recommend doing two things that will really help out in the long run to make the program work well for you. The first is to take measurements after the mash and after the boil and enter them into the program as your measured values. The more accurate the measurements you take, the faster you can get the program to reflect your process. BeerSmith will calculate out the actual brew house and mash efficiency for you once all these figures have been entered.

The second is to mark your customized profiles with the date you last changed them. This way, when you update the equipment profiles, you can see at a glance within a recipe if you are using the latest profile or not. BeerSmith treats every recipe as a self contained archive, so that changes you make outside of the recipe will not automatically affect the recipe without your updating of the profiles.

Thanks for your reply!

1. So when I make my equipment profile for a 3 gallon BIAB w/ sparge what should I put as my top up volume? Or am I leaving that blank?

2. What should I put in the mash ton fields? (mash ton volume) And should I check the box for "Adjust mash/water grain ratio to compensate for large deadspace volume"?

3. Lastly, when setting my mash profile, I know the video says to click "Drain mash ton before sparring" but in my case I wouldn't click that right?

 

[Oginme]

Thanks for your reply!

1. So when I make my equipment profile for a 3 gallon BIAB w/ sparge what should I put as my top up volume? Or am I leaving that blank?

2. What should I put in the mash ton fields? (mash ton volume) And should I check the box for "Adjust mash/water grain ratio to compensate for large deadspace volume"?

3. Lastly, when setting my mash profile, I know the video says to click "Drain mash ton before sparring" but in my case I wouldn't click that right?

So taking your questions in order:

(1) if you are sparging with all the remaining volume you will need for the boil, then there is no top off volume. Top off volume accounts for water added directly to the kettle without being used to extract sugars from the grains. I also use it for wort from cold steeped grains for the few recipes that I perform that step, but that is on an exception basis.

(2) Mash tun volume becomes the volume of your kettle. And, you can check the box [for mash tun dead space] if you have a false bottom on your kettle to account for the amount of water which resides underneath. If you do straight bag in the kettle, then there is no volume to account for as it all comes into contact with your grains.

(3) Click on the box to 'drain mash tun before sparging' since you will be lifting the bag out of the kettle (essentially draining the wort out). Otherwise the program will assume that you can only add a small amount of sparge volume to reach the max volume of your kettle and then have your drain the mash tun, which essentially splits the sparge volume up into two aliquots. Meaningless for what you are doing.

 

[Jordan Logo]

So taking your questions in order:

(1) if you are sparging with all the remaining volume you will need for the boil, then there is no top off volume. Top off volume accounts for water added directly to the kettle without being used to extract sugars from the grains. I also use it for wort from cold steeped grains for the few recipes that I perform that step, but that is on an exception basis.

(2) Mash tun volume becomes the volume of your kettle. And, you can check the box [for mash tun dead space] if you have a false bottom on your kettle to account for the amount of water which resides underneath. If you do straight bag in the kettle, then there is no volume to account for as it all comes into contact with your grains.

(3) Click on the box to 'drain mash tun before sparging' since you will be lifting the bag out of the kettle (essentially draining the wort out). Otherwise the program will assume that you can only add a small amount of sparge volume to reach the max volume of your kettle and then have your drain the mash tun, which essentially splits the sparge volume up into two aliquots. Meaningless for what you are doing.

Last question - I promise! I think I have everything nailed down but I'm a bit confused on how to enter my boil evaporation rate. I have attached a picture to what I think it should be.

I just did a test run and boiled 1 gallon of water for 15min and ended up with .25 gallons evaporated. I boiled 16 cups of water and ended up with 12 cups. Wouldn't this mean my rate is 1gal/hr? I know wort evaporates at a little bit less so I just put .75 as a placeholder for now.

 

[Oginme]

Water is a pretty good simulation of evaporation rate for the wort. The heat of vaporization is pretty close to the same. How you estimate this is up to you, since you can best decide if having a little more wort at the end (if you choose the 1 gph rate) is OK or you would rather err on having lesser wort (if you choose the 0.75 gph rate) is acceptable to you. Once you have a brew down, your measurements will confirm which is more accurate.

Please do not hesitate with questions!

 

[RM-MN]

Just some random thoughts on this.
1. Set your boil off a little low. You can boil longer if you still have too much wort...if that bothers you. I just accept that extra as a gift and bottle it.
2. About 90% of the hop bittering happens in the first 30 minutes. How badly do you feel the need to have the exact bitterness? Maybe boil for 30 minutes and see how much you have boiled off, then decide if you need or want to boil longer.
3. I can't tell the difference between a 5% beer and a 5.25% beer. Can you? What if you had way too much wort at the end of the boil and only got 4.5% beer. Would that make you cry? What if your mash efficience was through the roof and the boil off was a little higher than expected. Would you discard the beer if it turned out to have 7% ABV?

 

[Jordan Logo]

Just some random thoughts on this.
1. Set your boil off a little low. You can boil longer if you still have too much wort...if that bothers you. I just accept that extra as a gift and bottle it.
2. About 90% of the hop bittering happens in the first 30 minutes. How badly do you feel the need to have the exact bitterness? Maybe boil for 30 minutes and see how much you have boiled off, then decide if you need or want to boil longer.
3. I can't tell the difference between a 5% beer and a 5.25% beer. Can you? What if you had way too much wort at the end of the boil and only got 4.5% beer. Would that make you cry? What if your mash efficience was through the roof and the boil off was a little higher than expected. Would you discard the beer if it turned out to have 7% ABV?

Awesome points! Thank you!

And.... I aint no cry baby!

 

[CascadesBrewer]

BeerSmith treats every recipe as a self contained archive, so that changes you make outside of the recipe will not automatically affect the recipe without your updating of the profiles.

This one threw me for a loop at first. I kept jumping to my Equipment and making a change and wondering why the values in my Recipe did not change.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

Does anyone have a similar set up that they can share their settings with me, or can someone show me exactly how to input the data to my specs?

Note that I had a little better luck telling BeerSmith that I was doing a Fly Sparge when doing a BIAB w/ Sparge. Depending on the size of your kettle/mash tun, I had times where BeerSmith was trying to tell me to do multiple batch sparges. For the most part you just want BeerSmith to calculate your Sparge volume, so it should not matter too much. Hopefully one of these days, BeerSmith will make BIAB w/ Sparge an option.

 

[Jordan Logo]

Hello Everyone,

I think I finally got it down, and I will be attaching pictures here for you guys to check out to see if I actually did it correctly.

Just as a preface I am doing a 3 gallon "BIAB" but just letting my grains drip into my kettle, then sparging to reach my boil volume.

Equipment Profile: Finally got this dialed in for a 5 gallon kettle. I put my Mash Volume to 4.66 so I don't boil over. For exactly 3 gallons into my fermentor I put my batch volume at 3.5 gallons since I usually loose around .5 gallons from trub, spillage, etc.

Mash Profile: I simply just followed Brulosophy's suggestions on this tab

Sample Recipe: With all my settings BeerSmith calculated that I'd start with 6.66 quarts (1.665 gallons) and mash for 60 mins. After that mash I'd lift my grain bag and let sit till drained and then sparge with 3.05 gallons giving me a pre-boil volume of 4.66 gallons (which is perfect for my 5 gallon kettle since I don't want to overflow).

Did I do it right? I think I did.

 

[LittleRiver]

...pre-boil volume of 4.66 gallons (which is perfect for my 5 gallon kettle since I don't want to overflow)...

If you're saying you are going to boil 4.6gal in a 5gal kettle, then do it in a location that you don't mind getting soaked with hot sticky wort, and keep your cleaning supplies close at hand.

 

[Jordan Logo]

If you're saying you are going to boil 4.6gal in a 5gal kettle, then do it in a location that you don't mind getting soaked with hot sticky wort, and keep your cleaning supplies close at hand.

You think I'd still boil over? Couldn't I just cut heat at each hop addition, add hops, then slowly raise the temperature again?

 

[Oginme]

Overall, it looks pretty good.

Something to consider. Your 'pour over sparge' will displace some of the wort and rinse out the sugars but not to the same extent as a standard batch sparge. Your grains plus initial infusion water only takes a bit over 2 gal of space in your kettle. You would get better efficiency by upping your initial infusion volume to split the water more evenly between the mash and the sparge. You will realize even better efficiency if you maximize the volume in the mash step and minimize your sparge volume.

 

[Oginme]

You think I'd still boil over? Couldn't I just cut heat at each hop addition, add hops, then slowly raise the temperature again?

It is not the hop additions which cause a boil over but the proteins from the grains which form a stable foam at the top of the kettle and then end up trapping the water and allowing it to expand up over the top of the kettle. A spray bottle of water and/or Fermcap S will also help with keeping this foam down to a minimum.

 

[LittleRiver]

You think I'd still boil over? ...

Yes.

I would not even attempt to boil a volume that close to my kettle size.

 

[Jordan Logo]

Overall, it looks pretty good.

Something to consider. Your 'pour over sparge' will displace some of the wort and rinse out the sugars but not to the same extent as a standard batch sparge. Your grains plus initial infusion water only takes a bit over 2 gal of space in your kettle. You would get better efficiency by upping your initial infusion volume to split the water more evenly between the mash and the sparge. You will realize even better efficiency if you maximize the volume in the mash step and minimize your sparge volume.

Do you know how to put more water into the mash for BeerSmith? Or should I just adjust that during my brew session? I could just have what BS tells me to start with, put in my grains, then if there's room just add more water? I'm just asking just in case there's a specific setting on BS for that.

 

[IslandLizard]

Can you boil wort on the side, like in a different pot on your stove? Then combine in the fermenter, or in your 5 gallon main kettle so you can chill it easier.

 

[RM-MN]

It is not the hop additions which cause a boil over but the proteins from the grains which form a stable foam at the top of the kettle and then end up trapping the water and allowing it to expand up over the top of the kettle. A spray bottle of water and/or Fermcap S will also help with keeping this foam down to a minimum.

As the beer approaches a boil the protein foam starts to build up on the surface. That foam is then an insulator which causes the temperature to rise quicker than it had been and that is when the boil over occurs. I use a wire whisk (the same one I use to mix in the grains at the beginning of the mash to break up dough balls) to stir this foam down. With that method I have been able to keep the pot from boiling over even when it is 1/2 inch from the top before the boil. I have to really watch it and stir the foam away from the edge of the pot.

 

[Oginme]

Do you know how to put more water into the mash for BeerSmith? Or should I just adjust that during my brew session? I could just have what BS tells me to start with, put in my grains, then if there's room just add more water? I'm just asking just in case there's a specific setting on BS for that.

The way you adjust the infusion volume in BeerSmith is to open up the mash profile and click on the 'mash in' or 'infusion' step of the profile and click 'edit step' below the dialog box. Alternatively, you can double click on the mash step.

From there, you can adjust the water to grain ratio or just set the amount of water you want to add. So in your case if you open up the mash profile and double click on the 'mash in' step, you can set the 'water to add' to 3 gallons (or whatever number you choose) and then 'ok' to save that change. BeerSmith will then adjust the water according to that set amount when you update to that newly changed profile in the recipe.

Remember that this is just a piece of software doing modeling of a process. It will blindly follow the inputs and instructions you feed into it. As the user, you can look at and adjust any part of what controls the volume inputs: equipment profile and mash profile to get the program to reflect how you want to brew.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

You think I'd still boil over? Couldn't I just cut heat at each hop addition, add hops, then slowly raise the temperature again?

I agree with LittleRiver. About 4.8 gals is to the point where you might have trouble stirring a non-boiling volume...4.6 boiling in a 5 gal pot is very close. I would highly recommend you scale back your batch size to maybe 3.0 gal into the fermenter. I do 2.5 gal batches (about 2.6 or 2.7 into the fermenter) in my 5 gal pot and that feels about right. I would recommend 1 gal of head space for boiling at a minimum.

 

[Jordan Logo]

I agree with LittleRiver. About 4.8 gals is to the point where you might have trouble stirring a non-boiling volume...4.6 boiling in a 5 gal pot is very close. I would highly recommend you scale back your batch size to maybe 3.0 gal into the fermenter. I do 2.5 gal batches (about 2.6 or 2.7 into the fermenter) in my 5 gal pot and that feels about right. I would recommend 1 gal of head space for boiling at a minimum.

Noted. I think I'll go with your suggestion. Better safe than sorry lol

 

[NobleNewt]

I’m going to hijack this thread a little bit.. I’m running BS 2, and I’ve pretty well got my equipment dialed in. The only problem is that when it comes to bottling time, I usually get right at 3 gallons in the bottling bucket which almost always leaves me a little shy of filling my 24 swing tops.

My question is, if I want to add about .25 gallons to my batch size, does it matter where I add that in my volumes? I get 3.5 into the fermenter which makes me think I’m losing about .25 gallons to trub and another .25 or so to samples. I could add the extra quart to the trub loss from kettle or to the trub loss from fermenter.

To me it would be the same but for BS it might be different. Any thoughts?

 

[IslandLizard]

I’m going to hijack this thread a little bit.. I’m running BS 2, and I’ve pretty well got my equipment dialed in. The only problem is that when it comes to bottling time, I usually get right at 3 gallons in the bottling bucket which almost always leaves me a little shy of filling my 24 swing tops.

My question is, if I want to add about .25 gallons to my batch size, does it matter where I add that in my volumes? I get 3.5 into the fermenter which makes me think I’m losing about .25 gallons to trub and another .25 or so to samples. I could add the extra quart to the trub loss from kettle or to the trub loss from fermenter.

To me it would be the same but for BS it might be different. Any thoughts?

Either place is fine.
But adding it to the trub loss in the fermenter is the most logical, as that's where you sustain the extra losses between samples and perhaps more trub (beer left behind with the trub). That keeps all your other numbers closer to their actual values.

 

[Oginme]

I’m going to hijack this thread a little bit.. I’m running BS 2, and I’ve pretty well got my equipment dialed in. The only problem is that when it comes to bottling time, I usually get right at 3 gallons in the bottling bucket which almost always leaves me a little shy of filling my 24 swing tops.

My question is, if I want to add about .25 gallons to my batch size, does it matter where I add that in my volumes? I get 3.5 into the fermenter which makes me think I’m losing about .25 gallons to trub and another .25 or so to samples. I could add the extra quart to the trub loss from kettle or to the trub loss from fermenter.

To me it would be the same but for BS it might be different. Any thoughts?

Why would you not just add this to your batch size straight off? You will still lose the half gallon to trub and samples, but you want the ending volume of bottled beer to be increased enough to get that last bottle out. So really you are looking to have 3.75 gallons into the fermenter.

 

[Jordan Logo]

What he said ^

 

[Jordan Logo]

@NobleNewt why don’t you just upgrade to BS3? I believe you can for free if you already have BS2 and you can import all your settings.

 

[IslandLizard]

upgrade to BS3? I believe you can for free

You can, but it's not free after the month trial period.
BS3 is mostly subscription-ware now, but you can still buy the latest edition and get the 'minor updates' for free.

I'm sticking with BS2. I already learned to use it.