Gravity Missed

My All Grain brews always seem to miss the target Est gravity's ( low Gravity's.) After the last brew I made a dip stick for my  brew kettle in half litre steps so  I can fine tune my volumes in my equipment profile.
I stared  a brew yesterday which missed it's targets ( Pre Boil and Start Gravity) as expected it always does.
I used the dip stick for the first time during this brew so I now know what the Boil volume, Boil off and cooling shrinkage is. I measured the loss to trub in my brew kettle so I know what that is, and I pretty much know from experience what I will loose in the fermenter.So now armed with this new information I have reset my equipment profile volumes to the relevant figures.
So question time.

when my brew is complete do I enter the Missed Gravity readings into BeerSmith ( this is what I have been doing ) If so
What do I do next?
Do I adjust Brew House Efficiency in my equipment profile, if so how do I know what figure to put in. ( I have tried different B/H Eff figures but I'm just pissing in the wind so to speak, and my gravity's are way off and the defult B/H Eff was missing Est gravity's as well.
So in theory if all volumes are correct and you have found the correct B /H Eff  will you hit your target Est Gravity's?( after all this is why we PAID MONEY  for this programme  to help designed a beer and know what the ABV will be.)
Does BeerSmith take your Brew House Eff into account when you use the Adjust Recipe tool when using  your own equipment profile, IE does it take your entered B/H Eff  and equipment  Boil volume size to adjust the grain bill to match gravity , or is it just adjusting the grain bill to suit the equipment size to match the gravity.
I'm Stuck what do I do to ensure next time I brew I get somewhere near  BeerSmith  Est target's.
I test my Mash with beer PH test strips it's normally high and I add Stabilizer 5.2 when necessary and test again. Iodine test after the given time. So I assume my mash is working. I'm sure it's something to do with this Brew House Efficiency thing.

Start by keeping track of you gravity readings.  Be sure to carefully take readings and not be cavalier about it.  Be sure the wort is at the same temperature every time. 

1. Take a reading after you sparge (pre-boil) and have stirred the wort in the kettle very well. 

2. Take another reading when the boil is done and the wort is cooled before pitching yeast.

3. Take a final reading after fermentation.

Reading 1 will tell you you mash efficiency.  The grain bill has a potential and you have an actual.  BeerSmith estimates the preboil for you based on standard grain potential and the efficiency that is set in the recipe.  So, if the recipe has a 75% efficiency set and you are below that, you need to lower you efficiency settings.  A few things can be adjusted to change this.  Mainly the grain crush and sparging techniques.

The difference between reading 1 and reading 2 tells you how much the boil concentrated the wort.  It there is no difference between 1 and 2, then you didn't boil or you didn't take readings correctly.

The difference between 2 and 3 is your total attenuation and tells you how efficient your fermentation was.  Beersmith estimates the potential for you. 

If the final reading indicate you are low (the gravity readings didn't change and much as they could have), your fermentation was not as efficient at it could be.  Lots of reasons here.  Not enough healthy yeast, not the right temperature, yeast flocculated too soon, you stopped it, etc.

If it is high (the readings are farther apart than they should be) you probably took a bad reading, have a wild yeast or some other strange anomaly.


Most commonly, brewers do not take consistent and accurate readings and therefore have no idea their brew house efficiency.  Only you can determine your brew house efficiency and you can do that by being very consistent, taking detailed notes with times and temperatures of events and using this data to keep track of your consistent brewing process and efficiencies.

Thank you for your reply jomebrew
I have been taking the readings for steps 1/3 but I must say I have not been stirring the wort in the brew kettle before taking the pre boil reading. I buy my grain pre crushed.
And thank you for explaining how these readings work with BeerSmith.
What I'm not understanding is this.
When I input the Measured readings from my brew into the recipe in BeerSmith  it doesn't auto alter the Brew House Efficiency so we have to do manually is there something in the programme to help us find the figure that we need to input as Brew House Efficiency percentage or are we guessing what the percentage is.

There are tools to help.  I can check on my system when I get home later this evening unless someone else pipes in. 

I used to have terrible mash efficiency using pre-crushed grains. When I got my own mill my efficiency dramatically increased. This is an area you should look at.

Make sure you set your efficiency in the equipment profile.  Then in your recipe.

Once you establish the efficiency of your system and process, you can then figure out if you need to adjust the equipment, process or recipe.

As mentioned, a poor crush can reduce the conversion and leave you will less mash efficiency.  If your water is too hard and higher than 5.5 PH, it is too alkaline and will reduce the mash efficiency.

Then again, you might have fermentation issues keeping the yeast from fully attenuating the beer leaving you with a higher final gravity.

Often, it is the way you sparge and lauter the wort.

There are a lot of things to work on once you establish a baseline.

Cheers!

IMHO on this one is to not worry about your own personal efficiency as a home brewer, make sure you get a good grind, other than that, adjust the efficiency in your profile and or recipe so that your numbers meet beersmith's estimated gravity numbers, lowering brew house efficiency % number will lower beersmith's estimated gravity readings, or add more grains/extract to make your numbers meet their estimates. Then have fun and drink more homebrew. Either way you decide, the experiment will be fun!