What is the easiest/best way to calculate equipment profiles?

[ninjai]

I'm having this problem where I get too much volume of beer when I'm done brewing and I'm not sure where it's coming from.

I do 5 gallon batches, which is approx 19 liters. Here's what I've tweaked my new settings to be in my equipment in beersmith:

Efficiency:65%
Boil vol: 27.28L
Boil time: 60min
Boil off: 7L
Loss to trub and chiller: 0.5L
Batch volume: 19L
Fermenter loss: 0.5L

I'm not sure if .5 L is realistic or not for chiller/fermenter loss, but I feel like if I had to guess, what would be the amount.

I feel like what would really help me dial this down is if I knew how much volume was in my fermenter after chilling, and how much volume was in my boil kettle after mash.

Problem is that my fermenters and boil kettles have no measurement markings.

How is everyone else dialing these settings in?

 

[brewpool]

I would make a sight gauge to measure your volume in the kettle. If doing 5 gallon batches I would pour a few gals of water into your kettle using a gallon jug as your reference. Then take a stainless spoon, brew paddle, etc and mark a line on this tool where the water volume is. Then add a gallon and mark 4, add a gallon, mark 5, etc. I do 5.5 gallon batches and for my equipment profile, I pour 7.1 gals into my kettle so I'd go up to 8 in the gauge if I were you.

I would repeat the above with your buckets. If they are white or let some light through, you could mark the outside of the bucket for reference.

Your boil off rate will be dependant on your setup. I would pour a few gallons into your kettle, get to a boil, then start a timer. Rather than boil for an hour and then measure what is left, I would boil 20 mins, subtract volume of water left from starting volume and multiply by three to get your boil off rate per hour. So if you start with 3 gals, boil 20 mins and end up with 2.5 gals (3 - 2.5 = 0.5 × 3 = 1.5 gal per hour boil off rate). Mine is about 1.5 gals per hour in my setup. Per the above sight gauge, you may want to calibrate all the way down to 1 gallon so you don't have to boil a ton of water to try this out. I would even make some 0.25 gallon or at least 0.5 gal marks to help with calculating boil off.

 

[MagicMatt]

One word to the wise if you use water to measure the volume: heat the water to the temps of the wort you will be measuring. Liquid expands as it's heated, so if you make your calibration measurements with room temp water and then try to use those markings to measure boiling wort, you'll be off by a significant factor.

It should be relatively simple to determine your kettle loss. Put some water in there (temp shouldn't matter for this), and drain/transfer as you would on brew day. Whatever you have left in the kettle that can't reach the pickup tube or spigot, measure it. This is your kettle loss. As for the chiller, there should be little-to-no loss of volume from the chiller. I use a CFC and it's maybe 4 oz, hardly enough to even worry about accounting for.

 

[pricelessbrewing]

I'm having this problem where I get too much volume of beer when I'm done brewing and I'm not sure where it's coming from.

I do 5 gallon batches, which is approx 19 liters. Here's what I've tweaked my new settings to be in my equipment in beersmith:

Efficiency:65%
Boil vol: 27.28L
Boil time: 60min
Boil off: 7L
Loss to trub and chiller: 0.5L
Batch volume: 19L
Fermenter loss: 0.5L

I'm not sure if .5 L is realistic or not for chiller/fermenter loss, but I feel like if I had to guess, what would be the amount.

I feel like what would really help me dial this down is if I knew how much volume was in my fermenter after chilling, and how much volume was in my boil kettle after mash.

Problem is that my fermenters and boil kettles have no measurement markings.

How is everyone else dialing these settings in?

That's a reasonable profile, except for the losses. In my experience, the trub loss after fermentation is usually in the 6-10% range. Closer to 6% if you cold crash, 10% if you don't.

Efficiency should not be tied to your profile, and is one of the things I dislike about beersmith. Efficiency will change with each recipe, and should be estimated using batch sparge analysis.

I use my mash calculator, link in sig, for all my water volumes, temps, and expected efficiency numbers.

For measuring volumes, I use a metal ruler (if you check out my calculator you'll see each step is listed as a measurement of inches for the kettle). Be aware that volumes will expand as they're heated, as the above posted noted. A good rule of thumb is 4.4% more volume at boil temp, and 1.6-2.2% at 140-175F for mash/strike temps. All volumes are temperature adjusted in my calculator.