How closely should I follow beersmith?

[arborman]

Ok, so I have beersmith on my mac. I have a Northern Beer IPA all grain kit, and I have entered my recipe into beersmith, along with adding my equipment. ( question: They do not have a boil kettle setting, only mash tun setting?)

So, do I follow what beersmith says in regards to how much water to mash in with, temps of mash water to add, how much sparge water to use and how much boil volume will be used? I am guessing this is pretty accurate information, but it just seems too easy to do it this way!!! With my recipe, it says to add in 15 qts of water to mash at 163.7 degrees, then sparge out with two steps, .79 gal and 3.10 gal. Does this seem like enough water? Sounds a bit short to me...... its a 60 min boil for a 5 gal batch. Its showing grain absorption at 1.44 gal and preboil volume at 6.2.

So, do I go with what beersmith says, as long as I have all my settings and recipe info input correctly?

Lastly, what is tun deadspace, and do I need to enter a number in there? Currently, its set to 0. Thanks fellas

 

[Ryan11]

Yeah that sounds about right to me. If you want instead of doing two batch sparges you can just add those together and do one. As long as you have your equipment set up correctly in Beersmith, I would follow what it says. Also, tun deadspace is the wort that is left in your mashtun underneath your false bottome that you cannot drain. Which is about .25 gal for my 10 gal mash tun. So if you have roughly 3.75 gal. and you are mashing with roughly 3.89 gal. If you add those up and subtract 1.44 for the grain absorption you'll get 6.2. So you need to account for tun dead space of around .25 gal

 

[forstmeister]

I use Beersmith also, and I find their volumes to be pretty accurate. The thing is you have to correct things for your equipment, like boil off rate and deadspace. After a few batches you will know more about your system.

I batch sparge also and find that I usually need about 5 gallons of sparge water for a 5.5 gallon batch (if you bought a kit it will usually produce 5 gallons though).

 

[weirdboy]

The volumes you got from beersmith sound about right to me. I wouldn't worry about actually sparging in two steps if you have the space in your system to do it all at once. Seems like once you drain your first runnings, you'd have about 2.5 gallons of space occupied by wet grain. Maybe you need to check the box that says "drain mash tun before sparging"? That's assuming you are batch sparging. If you are fly sparging, then leave it unchecked.

Also, don't forget to vorlauf!




Also you have to take what forstmeister says with a grain of salt. He might be mashing with a different thickness than you, which would have a direct impact on how much sparge water to use. Additionally he may boil-off at a different rate, which would also directly affect the amount of sparge water. You need to look at the total volume of water going into the mash tun, and subtract from that the water lost to grain absorption and dead space. THAT would give you the preboil volume. Then you may have to make some adjustments based on your boil-off rate.

 

[billl]

Unfortunately, if this is your first time using the program, it almost certainly isn't going to be set exactly to your setup. You'll need to go through a few brew days and tweak the settings to get to the "set it and forget it" level of confidence in their projections.

So, keep extra of everything on hand. Boiling water, cold water, some dme, etc. Take lots of measurements at every step so you can update the setting for future batches.

 

[sherma]

Unfortunately, if this is your first time using the program, it almost certainly isn't going to be set exactly to your setup. You'll need to go through a few brew days and tweak the settings to get to the "set it and forget it" level of confidence in their projections.

So, keep extra of everything on hand. Boiling water, cold water, some dme, etc. Take lots of measurements at every step so you can update the setting for future batches.

+1 to this. It took me about 5 brews before I had my equipment settings dialed in. Definitely keep good notes about your volumes (pre-boil, post-boil in particular and pre and post boil gravities). These will help you dial in your efficiency on your equipment setup.

I suggest setting up your own equipment and mash profiles and not using any of the defaults ones that are in the program.

 

[rayfound]

Personally, I found the Beersmith mashing calculators to be confusing/hard to use.

I love beersmith for recipe formulation, but that's about where it stops for me.

I prefer the caclulator here for calculatiing mash volumes/temps, etc:

http://www.brewheads.com/batch.php

Through 2 batches, it has been nearly perfect, within 1/2 degree on hitting mash temps.

 

[Homercidal]

Beersmith can be accurate if you input your correct equipment taking into account the various variables. But, for your first one or two batches expect to have to tweak it a bit to get it dialed in.

IIRC you can create a new profile for YOUR equipment and input the particulars yourself. The interface just takes a bit of getting used to.

 

[rayfound]

Beersmith can be accurate if you input your correct equipment taking into account the various variables. But, for your first one or two batches expect to have to tweak it a bit to get it dialed in.

IIRC you can create a new profile for YOUR equipment and input the particulars yourself. The interface just takes a bit of getting used to.

I have no doubt beersmith's math works. It's the UI that's unusable.

 

[weirdboy]

I agree that Beersmith's UI sucks. I was really excited when Beersmith 2 came out because I had thought he was redoing the interface. Instead it was just basically minor tweaks to the way the UI worked that IMO were not worth the extensive development effort.

I still use it, but the UI is really horrible even if you "get used to it" after a while.

 

[arborman]

Thanks for the help on this. I'm using a homemade cooler as my mash tun (10gal Home Depot water cooler) and instead of a false bottom I'm using a stainless steel water supply line housing. Does this set up need to be configured for any dead space? Seems like there's no dead space, but I'm not sure

 

[GrogNerd]

Thanks for the help on this. I'm using a homemade cooler as my mash tun (10gal Home Depot water cooler) and instead of a false bottom I'm using a stainless steel water supply line housing. Does this set up need to be configured for any dead space? Seems like there's no dead space, but I'm not sure

pour in enough water to be able to drain out, then let it drain out. once it stops coming out, measure what is left in the MLT and that's the amount of deadspace for your setup. definitely needs to be accounted for

 

[weirdboy]

It helps drain a bit more if you stick something under the back end to tilt it a bit.

 

[GrogNerd]

It helps drain a bit more if you stick something under the back end to tilt it a bit.

right, but no matter what you do, anything left over is deadspace and has to be accounted for. and if you measure it that way, you have to always do it that way

or, like when I used a Zapap, I could lauter all of the wort out without leaving anything behind, but to get the proper water-to-grist ratio, I had to account for the deadspace under the filter bucket.