help with beersmith

[olotti]

I'm confused trying to do my equipment setup. I watched the videos but its just not computing in my head. My goal is to boil 7 gal and end with 5.5 gal into fermenter then after loss end up with 5 gal to bottle. I punch in the numbers and beersmith calculates it out for me to have 8.26 gal preboil but then says measured preboil is 7 gal with 6.5 gal batch size. Idk. I use a 10 gal cooler with a false bottom and I have deadspace but I tip the cooler until I get all the runnings so my loss is minimal if anything. Plus I pegged in a recipe and it says OG= 1.059 but measured OG= 1.048 WHY the difference. Idk I'm gonna have to do somwmore research.

 

[Calypso]

Are you looking at the "volumes" tab of your recipe? The "measured" fields are user edited. It's where you enter the volumes (or FG or whatever) that you actually measured, rather than the number that BeerSmith estimated. So if you entered your information for your equipment and various losses, the "Est. Pre-Boil Vol" is the amount that BeerSmith is suggesting you boil in order to end up with (in your case) 5.5 gallons post-boil. If you follow that recommendation and then measure it to be more or less, you can enter it in the "measured" field and then adjust your losses next time to get a more accurate result.

 

[olotti]

Are you looking at the "volumes" tab of your recipe? The "measured" fields are user edited. It's where you enter the volumes (or FG or whatever) that you actually measured, rather than the number that BeerSmith estimated. So if you entered your information for your equipment and various losses, the "Est. Pre-Boil Vol" is the amount that BeerSmith is suggesting you boil in order to end up with (in your case) 5.5 gallons post-boil. If you follow that recommendation and then measure it to be more or less, you can enter it in the "measured" field and then adjust your losses next time to get a more accurate result.

Thanks for the input. I played around with it more today and think I have it figured out. Punched in my first two recipes and outcomes, slick program takes a lot of the guesswork and overthinking out of the whole process.