My first all grain - seeking better water calculation tools

[airbrett]

This weekend I brewed my first all grain, a hoppy pale ale recipe based on my first brew ever that came out great.

I have a 10 gallon igloo with a circular false bottom. I did a 60 minute 150 degree rest then batch sparged, vorlaufing after both. I'm pretty happy with the efficiencies for my first time around.

Conversion: 87.8%
Pre-Boil: 65%
Brew House: 52% (due to being too aggressive siphoning away from the trub)

I cannot do a full boil yet as I am using a gas stove top, but am able to get 4.5 gallons to a rolling boil. Because of this, I am topping off with cold water after the boil and increasing the hop bill.

I used Brewer's Friend which was great for most calculations, but did not seem to be able to handle the fact I was doing a partial boil with full grain. It insisted using the batch size rather than the kettle volume figures I set.

I understand BeerSmith can handle this ok, but it is a downloadable program which I would like to avoid.

Ideally, I would like a cloud/web based tool like Brewer's Friend but with the power of BeerSmith. With a good, clean modern user interface would be a huge plus. Any recommendations? If not, I can continue using my Google Docs spreadsheets and docs in combination with BrewersFriend.

 

[pricelessbrewing]

Just to make sure I'm following. You want to be able to get your mash and boil volumes with topping off after the boil? Side note, don't siphon off the trub from the kettle. Just let it all go into primary. Cold crashing will compact it out and you'll get a lot more beer out of it.

What I would recommend is using your own choice of recipe database, then taking your equipment and grain/hop masses into my calculator at pricelessbrewing.github.ip/BiabCalc
In your case, enter the top off volume as your "sparge" If you want, I can update it in an hour or two and add another entry point as "top off after boil" so that your boil volumes aren't skewed.

My calculator doesn't do anything about OG or anything relating to attenuation or IBU calculations so keep that at brewerfriends or similar.

 

[SpeedYellow]

Nothing wrong with doing your water volume calcs by hand. It's really simple, after all. I always do them by hand even though I use Beersmith.

 

[airbrett]

Just to make sure I'm following. You want to be able to get your mash and boil volumes with topping off after the boil? Side note, don't siphon off the trub from the kettle. Just let it all go into primary. Cold crashing will compact it out and you'll get a lot more beer out of it.

What I would recommend is using your own choice of recipe database, then taking your equipment and grain/hop masses into my calculator at pricelessbrewing.github.ip/BiabCalc
In your case, enter the top off volume as your "sparge" If you want, I can update it in an hour or two and add another entry point as "top off after boil" so that your boil volumes aren't skewed.

My calculator doesn't do anything about OG or anything relating to attenuation or IBU calculations so keep that at brewerfriends or similar.

That simple tool is great! It looks like it's applicable even though I'm not BIAB, but using a regular mash tun. Thanks for the link. Top off after boil would be great. I'm using Revvy's method described here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showpost.php?p=2898334&postcount=2

I don't have the ability/fridge space to cold crash and I don't keg, just use bottles so I am looking at ways of getting to the point where the beer is clear and there is only a light bit of sediment in the final poured bottle from whatever yeast carbonated it.

 

[pricelessbrewing]

Do you have access to cardboard,blankets and have some freezer space? If so you can cold crash.

Make a box, fill some containers with ice (tupperware, bottles, freezer packs, freezer bags w/e), place this in the box. Cover the thing in lots of blankets to help insulate some. This may require rotating a lot of ice packs, but it can be done.

Yeah I'll probably change the name at some point, as it's not longer just supporting BIAB even though that was the main cause of creating it. I'll add top off volume sometime this week. Let me know if there's anything else you'd like to see added.

 

[RM-MN]

There are a couple ways to get clear beer and little sediment in the bottles. One is cold crashing as others have mentioned. The other is time in the fermenter. Many of us would like to brew our beer and start drinking it the day after we put it in the fermenter but good beer takes longer and most of us are willing to wait for that to happen.

The beer I made and left in the fementer for 9 weeks cleared quickly and had very little sediment in the bottles because the sediment had had time to settle out before the beer went into the bottles. Beer that I bottled after one week had a quarter inch of sediment. If you leave the beer long enough so much of the yeast will settle out that you will need to add yeast to get the beer to carbonate but we're talking 6 months or more for that to happen.