Help decipher this brew day

[h22lude]

I just brewed Yooper's Yellow Fizzy beer (e-BIAB recirculating mash). I wanted to keep really good notes to help determine this off-flavor I have been having and figure out my BeerSmith profile.

My brew process:

Left 8.9 gallons (probably closer to 9 gallons) of water out overnight to remove chlorine.
Added half campden tablet while bringing up to mash temp.
Added 2.7 grams Calcium Chloride
Added 2.7 grams Gypsum
Added 3.5mL lactic acid

Milled grain twice.

Mashed in 3lb 10oz Pilsner and 8lb 7oz Vienna at 150°. Mashed for 75 minutes. Mash pH 5.2.

No sparge or mash out. Started to heat wort to boil. Squeezed grain bag to get more sugar out. Pre-boil volume 8.5 gallons. Pre-boil gravity 1.046.

Boiled for 60 minutes. Post boil volume using sight gauge 6.75 gallons (maybe closer to 6.5 gallons). My boil off rate was spot on to what I have in BeerSmith.

5.5 gallons into carboy at 70°. OG 1.054.

My questions:

1) Mashed in with 9 gallons and pre-boil volume was 8.5 gallons so my grain absorption was .5 gallons. 64 oz for .5 gallon and 193 oz of grains...calculated grain absorption .3316 oz per oz of grain. Does that make sense? BeerSmith has .586 oz per oz of grain. Is mine lower because I squeezed the bag or because I milled twice? Should I update BeerSmith?

2) Trying to determine my mash efficiency and brewhouse efficiency. Mash efficiency per BeerSmith is 90.3% which I'm really happy with. My brewhouse efficiency I'm not sure what to do. I need to enter my measured batch size which per BeerSmith is what goes into the fermentor. If I enter 5.5 gallons my brewhouse efficiency is 68.6% which isn't bad but I want it to be better. That 5.5 gallons doesn't take into account that I had about 1.25 gallons left in my kettle. If I enter 6.75 gallons as my batch size, my efficiency goes up to 84.2%. What should I be entering?

 

[kh54s10]

I would take records and make changes to your BS profiles so that you can more easily repeat and achieve the same results. You might want to do a couple of brews and average the results, then make the changes so that you don't over compensate.

I think you need to take into account that you produced too much wort. So, I would think that the 6.75 gallons and 84.2% to be the more accurate measurement.

 

[Citizen86]

Beersmith has a setting for trub loss in the fermenter, you'd want to calculate how much you generally leave behind.

 

[h22lude]

I would take records and make changes to your BS profiles so that you can more easily repeat and achieve the same results. You might want to do a couple of brews and average the results, then make the changes so that you don't over compensate.

I think you need to take into account that you produced too much wort. So, I would think that the 6.75 gallons and 84.2% to be the more accurate measurement.

I may brew this beer again and see what figures I get. This was my first batch double milling. If that helped my efficiency a lot, that may have caused some volumes and gravity readings to be different from my last batch.

Beersmith has a setting for trub loss in the fermenter, you'd want to calculate how much you generally leave behind.

I'm not overly concerned with trub loss in the fermentor. I did put .5 gallon which is what I usually have. My kettle figures seem to be off from my last batch which is what I'm more concerned about.

I hit estimated OG right on which is good but I had a lot more wort than I expected.

 

[h22lude]

My loss to trub and chiller was set at .5 gallons. If I bring it up to 1.25 gallons, it increases my water volume. I don't want that because then I'll have even more wort. I just can't figure out where these extra water is coming from. The lower grain absorption only accounts for .3 gallons.

 

[TechyDork]

I may have missed it, but why do you leave 1.5 g behind in the kettle? Do you have that accounted for in your profile? I would think you would only want to leave a minimal amount behind, or do you need that much to cover the grain bed during your mash? To me that would mean the your batch size is actually the 6.75 g and not 5.5 g and you are just not fermenting 1.5 g of wort.

 

[h22lude]

I only left that much behind because it would have put my batch size way over 5.5 gallons. I typically leave .5 gallons in my kettle when I rack to my carboy. This is what I'm trying to figure out. Why do I have so much wort left over?

Let's say I leave behind 1 gallon. If I enter that into my loss to trub and chiller, that will only increase my volumes and I will have even more wort.

There are 4 things that go into the ending volume into my carboy. Strike water, grain absorption, boil off and loss to trub and chiller. Boil off rate was spot on with what I had in BeerSmith so that eliminates that variable. Grain absorption in BeerSmith for BIAB is .586. Calculated for this batch, mine is .3316 which comes out to be .3 gallons. That helps but doesn't account for so much extra wort.

I think I'm going to calibrate all the things I used for water measurement. Maybe marks on something is off and I put in more than I thought. I don't think this is it but it won't hurt to check.

 

[Citizen86]

Pre-boil volume 8.5 gallons.
Post boil volume using sight gauge 6.75 gallons (maybe closer to 6.5 gallons).

According to those two measurements, you boiled off 2 gallons in 60 minutes. That seems REALLY high, most people are around a gallon of boiloff, sometimes less.

I'm going to assume your sight gauge is off somehow. You say right there that you had 6.75 to 6.5 gallons of wort, yet racked out 5.5 gallons and still had 1.5 gallons left? That doesn't add up.

 

[kh54s10]

According to those two measurements, you boiled off 2 gallons in 60 minutes. That seems REALLY high, most people are around a gallon of boiloff, sometimes less.

I'm going to assume your sight gauge is off somehow. You say right there that you had 6.75 to 6.5 gallons of wort, yet racked out 5.5 gallons and still had 1.5 gallons left? That doesn't add up.

My rig boils off 2 gallons/hour.

5.5 gallons into the fermenter from 6.75 - 1.25 left so if making estimations it is within reason.

When I started using Beersmith I got varying amounts and gravities. As I made small adjustments in my profiles the numbers got closer. I still miss from time to time.

I would not sweat things too much yet. Try to figure out your water needs for the next time, working backward from your boil off rate. Then you can make more tweaks to your profiles in BS

 

[h22lude]

When I said maybe closer to 6.5, I meant maybe 6.7 or 6.65. My boil off is 1.8 gallons which at 6.75 gallons starting with 8.5 gallons, it is right on the mark (.05 gallons off). I have my element set to 65% and I still boil off that much. Not sure why. My boil is good. A good rolling boil but not extreme.

Maybe I'm going crazy but I can't see where I put 1.5. My original post I stated I had 1.25 left in my kettle. 5.5 and 1.25 would put me right at 6.75 for post boil.

 

[h22lude]

My rig boils off 2 gallons/hour.

5.5 gallons into the fermenter from 6.75 - 1.25 left so if making estimations it is within reason.

When I started using Beersmith I got varying amounts and gravities. As I made small adjustments in my profiles the numbers got closer. I still miss from time to time.

I would not sweat things too much yet. Try to figure out your water needs for the next time, working backward from your boil off rate. Then you can make more tweaks to your profiles in BS

I hit my OG right on so I'm happy with that. I'm just confused as to why I had so much wort left over. I'm ok with dumping 1.25 gallons from loss to trub but then if I put that in BeerSmith, it just makes my total volume increase and then I'll have even more left over. I'm really just trying to figure out what needs to be adjusted on BeerSmith to fix it.

 

[brewkinger]

I hit my OG right on so I'm happy with that. I'm just confused as to why I had so much wort left over. I'm ok with dumping 1.25 gallons from loss to trub but then if I put that in BeerSmith, it just makes my total volume increase and then I'll have even more left over. I'm really just trying to figure out what needs to be adjusted on BeerSmith to fix it.

A good place to start tweaking Beersmith is the grain absorption.
You are squeezing the grain bag and therefore not losing as much to grain. This could account for some of the leftover volume in the kettle.

Which brings me to point #2, you didn't hit your gravity spot on in reality. You still had sugar and water on the kettle that should be in your fermenter at the moment.

Like mentioned above, you have to change things in Beersmith a little bit at a time and brew several batches to really get it dialed in.

 

[h22lude]

A good place to start tweaking Beersmith is the grain absorption.
You are squeezing the grain bag and therefore not losing as much to grain. This could account for some of the leftover volume in the kettle.

Which brings me to point #2, you didn't hit your gravity spot on in reality. You still had sugar and water on the kettle that should be in your fermenter at the moment.

Like mentioned above, you have to change things in Beersmith a little bit at a time and brew several batches to really get it dialed in.

I did just update that. I may make a copy of my profile so I can screw around with it to see what happens to this recipe.

Well yeah I did have sugar and water left in my kettle but that is a volume issue not a gravity issue. My original gravity is right on where BeerSmith (and Yooper's recipe) have it. So I got all the sugar out of the grains that I should. My pre-boil gravity was actually 5 points higher than it should have been. Which just adds to the confusion as to how I hit the OG but my volume was off.

 

[FatDragon]

2) Trying to determine my mash efficiency and brewhouse efficiency. Mash efficiency per BeerSmith is 90.3% which I'm really happy with. My brewhouse efficiency I'm not sure what to do. I need to enter my measured batch size which per BeerSmith is what goes into the fermentor. If I enter 5.5 gallons my brewhouse efficiency is 68.6% which isn't bad but I want it to be better. That 5.5 gallons doesn't take into account that I had about 1.25 gallons left in my kettle. If I enter 6.75 gallons as my batch size, my efficiency goes up to 84.2%. What should I be entering?

I would say your potential brewhouse efficiency is in the 80's, but if you're leaving behind over a gallon of wort, your actual brewhouse efficiency is in the high 60's. Why not sanitize a gallon jug and get some extra beer out of it? The hard work's already done and it would be a perfect opportunity to try adding some kind of adjunct after primary fermentation if you're curious about a certain dry hop or brewing with your favorite tea or chilli beers or anything else.

As I understand brewhouse efficiency (caveat - my definition is almost certainly different from what Beersmith gives), it should calculate how much finished beer you get out of a certain amount of grain. Your mash efficiency is basically how many total gravity points you get out of your grain and into your wort (as a function primarily of OG*volume of postboil wort) while your brewhouse efficiency would be how many total gravity points you get into bottles or kegs (as a function primarily of volume of packaged beer/volume of postboil wort), so given a theoretical batch that puts 5G into the fermenter at 100% mash efficiency (I don't math as well as some of the guys here, so I like easy numbers) and packages 4.5G of finished beer, the brewhouse efficiency would be 90%. By that definition of brewhouse efficiency, a typical brewer achieving 75% mash efficiency, leaving .5G of trub in the kettle and another .5G in the fermenter and packaging 5g of finished beer is getting 62.5% brewhouse efficiency - 62.5% of the sugar in the grain ends up as drinkable beer. If you chase efficiency, 70% would be a pretty solid target, and getting much above 75% would be difficult considering limits to reasonable mash efficiency and trub loss (hence I'm probably wrong on my definition of "brewhouse efficiency", at least as compared to Beersmith's definition).

 

[h22lude]

I created a new equipment profile and new recipe. I imported Yooper's BSM file and scaled it using my new profile.

Strike water is 8.71 gallons. Grain absorption is .41 gallons (using .3316 oz per oz of grain). Boil off is 1.8 gallons. Shrinkage due to cooling is .25 (default). I put loss to trub at .75 gallons. Batch in fermentor should be 5.5 gallons.

Strike - absorption - boil - shrinkage - loss = batch in fermentor
8.71 - .41 - 1.8 - .25 - .75 = 5.5

On paper this should work. I think a big part of it was the higher grain absorption in BeerSmith.

 

[h22lude]

I would say your potential brewhouse efficiency is in the 80's, but if you're leaving behind over a gallon of wort, your actual brewhouse efficiency is in the high 60's. Why not sanitize a gallon jug and get some extra beer out of it? The hard work's already done and it would be a perfect opportunity to try adding some kind of adjunct after primary fermentation if you're curious about a certain dry hop or brewing with your favorite tea or chilli beers or anything else.

As I understand brewhouse efficiency (caveat - my definition is almost certainly different from what Beersmith gives), it should calculate how much finished beer you get out of a certain amount of grain. Your mash efficiency is basically how many total gravity points you get out of your grain and into your wort (as a function primarily of OG*volume of postboil wort) while your brewhouse efficiency would be how many total gravity points you get into bottles or kegs (as a function primarily of volume of packaged beer/volume of postboil wort), so given a theoretical batch that puts 5G into the fermenter at 100% mash efficiency (I don't math as well as some of the guys here, so I like easy numbers) and packages 4.5G of finished beer, the brewhouse efficiency would be 90%. By that definition of brewhouse efficiency, a typical brewer achieving 75% mash efficiency, leaving .5G of trub in the kettle and another .5G in the fermenter and packaging 5g of finished beer is getting 62.5% brewhouse efficiency - 62.5% of the sugar in the grain ends up as drinkable beer. If you chase efficiency, 70% would be a pretty solid target, and getting much above 75% would be difficult considering limits to reasonable mash efficiency and trub loss (hence I'm probably wrong on my definition of "brewhouse efficiency", at least as compared to Beersmith's definition).

Damn, I didn't even think of fermenting the wort left over. A good amount of it was break material and hops but I could have still gotten something out of it.

I'd be happy with 70% (wouldn't mind getting 75% but I'm not going to chase it). I just want to figure out why I got so much extra wort.

I think my next batch will be better now that I updated grain absorption and loss to trub in kettle.

 

[h22lude]

I wonder if water expansion could have added to the extra wort. I think I'm going to calibrate my sight gauge to the mash temp range and then add 3% for post boil.