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hop absorption compensation options

JayWass

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Joined
Mar 16, 2015
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Hello, Im new here and to Beersmith.  However I have used other brew software in the past and BeerSmith is quite different and im finding it hard to wrap my head around not having separate areas for recipe and brew sessions.
Anyway here is my question, then I will follow up with details:

Q: What is the best way to adjust for hop absorption?

My setup
1. I have setup my equipment to match my actual mash and brewhouse efficiency.
2. I have measured and adjusted for volume loss in my whirlpool pump and kettle to be .23 gallons regardless of recipe.
3. I use a suspended hop bag in my boil kettle.
4. I always weigh my hop bag after the boil.  According to my actual calculations; pellet hops absorb about .05 gallons per ounce.

So for instance; my blond ale recipe has 3 ounces of hops, the loss to absorbtion is .15 gallons or 19.2 ounces, so volume comes out close, however my IPA recipe uses 8 ounces of hops so the absorbtion is .4 gallons or  51 ounces, so my volume is almost a half gallon short!

What I want is for my total volumes to reflect for this loss.

Obviously I dont want to keep going into my equipment profile and adjust the .23 gallons system loss to reflect the amount of hops each time, I want that equipment loss number to stay .23 always.

I guess I could go in the recipe and under the VOL tab add.23 (equipment loss) and my calculated number Hx.05  where H is the total ounces of hops in the recipe, but this seems tedious especially in a program that already knows how many ounces of hops im using and that im using pellet hops so this could be calculated or even a user adjustable number.

Another option is, I could be to forgo the hop bag and just have more trub in my fermenter, then im just shifting that number to fermenter loss, but again the amount of trub will still change based on recipe.  Wouldn't this just be shifting the numbers around?

Any other ideas out there? 

Is this a possible feature request?

Thanks in advance
JayWass
 
I like the changing the recipe idea, though tend to just predict the need to crush a little more grain. Of course if you change the recipe and Beersmith actually fixes this issue down the line, your recipes will be incorrect. tough call really and it's almost guaranteed to NOT generate any comments by the creator if it has already been brought up by users sometime in the past 10 years it seems.
 
JayWass,

First, there are separate places for recipes versus brew sessions.  There is a 'Brew Log' folder that is set up automatically by BeerSmith when you copy a file to it using the button 'Copy to Log' found on the secondary toolbar.  You can highlight a recipe and click the copy to log button and a copy of that recipe will appear in the brew log folder.  This is a nice feature that allows you to adjust and record each brew day data without compromising the original recipe.

Second, I like the idea of including some type of volume adjustment for the hop water absorption.  Right now, I do it for each recipe by adjusting the amount of trub remaining.  Since I have a history of what that amount should be and my profiles are set for an 'average' brew, I adjust up or down depending upon the style and amount of hops in the recipe.
 
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