Extract Potential for added ingredient

I want to use a wort from another brewing as an extract in a partial extract recipe.  How can I make Beersmith use the known gravity of my wort in calculating my new recipe?

What I did was copy and change from another extract ingredient, adding a new ingredient of "extract" type. Beersmith allows me to input the color and IBU just fine but is unable to change the potential/yield. When I change it and hit ok to save but when I later used the new ingredient in a recipe I got the wrong OG (correct IBU/SRM).

Interesting question.

The dilution tool will tell you what gravity you'll get by that process. You want to record it as an ingredient, which requires you to make some adjustments to how you'll treat it in BeerSmith.

The gravity potential of any extract is measured by dissolving 1 lb of extract into 1 gallon of water. It's based on the fact that 1 lb of sugar will give you 1 gallon at 1.046 (100% potential extraction) With whole wort, you've already dissolved the ingredients. That leaves you with a real gravity number, rather than a potential.

As it turns out, you can alter the Yield potential to reflect your actual gravity. By dividing the wort's real gravity by 46 (100% potential) you'll get the potential of the whole wort. If the gravity is 1.055, you'll get about 120% (55 / 46 = 1.1956, rounded up). Put 120 into the Yield field and the gravity will show correctly. You'll get the red error dots, but ignore them.

So, how to use this? BeerSmith assumes that you'll be adding the extract by the same weight increments that other ingredients are measured by. If pounds is your increment, then the wort has to be measured like that. Luckily, a full pint is also a pound.

Once added to a recipe, the wort gravity is then automatically diluted by your batch size.

The potential for error exists when using large amount of wort, because BeerSmith won't adjust for the water content of the wort. You simply have to subtract that volume from what BeerSmith will tell you, because you've already used that water to create the wort. Easily done by just measuring wort and water to reach the preboil volume and proceeding normally from there.

I've done this before when I was experimenting with the flavors of various specialty grains.  I made a large batch of base-wort, and then I split the base-wort into 5 batches and steeped the different grains. 

That was a fun brewday.  I used every burner in the house and outside to conduct all 5 boils simultaneously.  I digress.

I simply used an equivalent amount of pale-extract in each of the child-recipes.  I added the amount of extract necessary to obtain the pre-boil gravity of my base-wort recipe.  Not as elegant, perhaps, as Brewfun's approach...but it did the job.

Thank you both for the suggestions. I tried both ways. Can you explain why the SRM fell from 25 in the wort to 14 in the recipe?

Not sure I understand. 

In my case, I adjusted the "custom extract" ingredient color to match my all-grain base-wort results. 

So, I had an all-grain recipe for my base-wort: 14 lbs of UK 2 row (3 SRM), in 7.5 gallons =  4.8 SRM wort.

Each steeping grain recipe used 2.25 lbs of this "custom extract" with an SRM of 4.25 in 1.5 gallons = 4.8 SRM wort.    Then I added the particular steeping grain to each of these "extract" recipes. 

I did that as well Tom. but to retain the original wort 25 SRM in my beer I had to plug in an SRM of 80 to my extract ingredient. Otherwise, my recipe SRM fell to 14. So I guess its a question of why/how the extract SRM is affected internally to Beersmith moving from the extract ingredient to its use in a recipe.  Same when I substituted a defaultd dark extract ingredient, just changing the quantity to match preboil gravity - lowers the SRM in the recipe.

Color calculations are simply the starting SRM diluted to the batch size. There are 8 pints to a gallon. If you're using less than that as wort and diluting, then the color will be diluted, too.

This started as a question about using wort in a partial extract (aka partial mash) recipe. It seems to have transformed into a split batch, steeped grain project. The former would have additional water for the mash whilst the latter doesn't have to.

Thanks Brewfun. If I showed Beersmith a water dilution I did not mean to.

I did steep some grains, but in the pasteurizing wort with no added water.

Possibly water is being assumed, I thought I well understood this until now. When I added the amount of fermenter topoff water needed to equate my preboil gravity to the wort the IBU did not decrease, only the SRM.

The wort IBU is specified as the ingredient's HME IBU, and the color as the ingredient's  SRM.

Could you elaborate on how the software thinks the water volume is affected by using a full wort as extract?

I have uploaded the beersmith file to the recipe cloud "using wort as extract" so you can see what I may be doing wrong. Thanks again

In my first post, I commented that, "Once added to a recipe, the wort gravity is then automatically diluted by your batch size."  This appears to be exactly what's going on.

If you're using wort for 100% of the liquid, BeerSmith is not designed to create a 1:1 substitution. Remember, BeerSmith looks at fermentable ingredients in a dry or concentrated state. Adding water is baked into the calculations because that's normal brewing procedure. The instruction I gave was for using your wort as an analogue for concentrated extract.

Bottom line: the fermentables have to be put into the new recipe as if you were making the wort from scratch. The water volume then is simply the amount of wort you're adding to the new recipe.

The reality is that what you're doing is a lab or QA procedure, rather than a brewhouse one. As such, the original recipe is the master and procedural notes to show what was steeped and for how long are simply attached. That's a job for a spreadsheet.

Thanks. I will post a new response as soon as I can with a new attempt for review.