Newbie Question regarding Mash & Equipment Profiles

Hi,

I'm a new AG brewer having bought a 1G BBS kit. I quickly bought some extra carboys et all  to up my batches to 2G -- I don't have the space/luxury for a big 5G+ cooler setup, but doing 1G batches is too little beer for too much work.

I've done 3 x 1G and 1 x 2G gallon brews so far.

My current setup given my limited space is to:
- Brew 2 Gallon batches into 2 x 1G Carboys for fermentation
- Use a 2G Igloo cooler with a bag liner (rather than a modified braid / spigot setup) as my mash tun -- this holds temperature really well.
- batch sparge (but in a somewhat weird way -- see below)
- icebath cooling.
- fermenting in 2 separate 1G carboys.

Setting up the equipment profile I've done reasonably well (I think), as all the measurements are ok, however, for my batch sparge set-up I do the following.

No mashout
At the end of the 60 minute mash, I draw off all the wort (I don't bother with a vorlauf as the bag keeps any grit out) and add it all to my boil kettle.

I then add as much sparge water into the top of my 2G cooler as I can fit, stir it up, let it sit for a minute, and then draw all this wort out also and add it to the kettle --- all the while the bag remains in place -- I add the water effectively into a OPEN bag at the top, rather than a BIAB closed-like bag (see pic) .

Then I throw in more, *fresh* sparge water into the mashtun and again draw it off into the kettle until I'm up to the boil volume I need.

My question is, how do I represent this process/equipment setup in beersmith?

Thanks

Brad

sounds like batch spargeing to me.

Yes, it is a batch sparge -- but how do I represent it in BS?

There's nothing weird about this at all.  Its simply a traditional batch sparge with 3 batches (first, second, and third runnings).

ON the mash profile page, the key things that matter for this are:

1.  Check "batch sparge using batches that fill XX% of mashtun".  You choose XX, maybe 100% for you.
2.  Check "Use equal batch sizes".
3.  Check "drain mash tun before sparging."

1.  Will ensure that you do not fill the mash-tun above whatever threshold you set (90%, 95%, 100%, etc).  Once the batch volume exceeds that threshold, beersmith will automatically add another batch-sparge to the process.

2.  You don't HAVE to use this.  But, it maximizes "lauter efficiency" (not so important), and ensures better consistency (much more important) from batch to batch.  When this setting is checked, fo recipes that are not 3 full batches, BS will reduce the size of ALL batches so that they are all equal.  If you prefer to use full-size batches for the first two runnings and just use a partial batch for the final runnings, then leave this UNCHECKED.

3.  This does just what it says.  It drains all the of wort from the mash tun before adding any sparge water.  If this is left UNCHECKED, then BS will add water to the mash-tun (assuming that it isn't full) before sparging.  This usually happens when you mash at a specific water/grist ratio which does not FILL the mash-tun completely. In that case, BS2 would fill the mash-tun before draining.