Adjusting recipes in BeerSmith 2.2

Hi,

I'm having some difficulty in adjusting recipes in beersmith and was hoping for some help with what I'm doing wrong. I was brewing this weekend and as I'm using 5 gallon buckets in my garage opted for that as the "standard" option - all grain.

I was following a recipe and hit the OG I needed to, but when I put that into the app it told me I should've used a kg less of malt. If I put the amount of malt in that I did use it gave me an OG 10 points higher than it actually was.

I'm assuming I need to reduce my efficiency setting, but am not certain. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

When you said that you selected 5-gal bucket as the 'standard' option, did you just select one of the equipment profiles that came with beersmith or did you customize that one to fit your system.

If you did not build or modify a profile to match your process, then that is where you need to look.  From your last batch, did you carefully measure water in, pre-boil volume, volume to fermentor, and any losses in the kettle?  Along with that, you will need to track your specific gravity preboil and post boil.

If you customized one of the profiles for your system set-up, then you need to enter the values mentioned above in beersmith and look at the planned efficiency versus the actual efficiency achieved.  This can be found on the 'fermentation' tab, 2nd column at the top.  Adjust your equipment profile to match this recipe's output.

Over the next few brews, measure and record the values mentioned above and use these figures to adjust your water loss to grain absorption, boil off rate, and efficiency - both mash and total (brewhouse) efficiency.  Use these figures to adjust beersmith to better predict what your brewing process will produce.

Rockhopper said:

I'm assuming I need to reduce my efficiency setting, but am not certain. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Click to expand...

It sounds as though the recipe was written according to mash efficiency and you inputted that as brewhouse efficiency.

Brewhouse efficiency is nearly always lower than mash because BHE represents the amount of sugar that gets to the fermenter. Mash efficiency measures the sugar that gets into the kettle. BHE then deducts the amount of wort losses on the way from the kettle to the fermenter.

You likely do need to reduce the BHE in BeerSmith. On the Fermentation Tab you'll find "Measured Efficiency" which is the summary BHE based on all of your actual measurements. Just accurately input your volumes and gravities and you can use the measured number in your equipment profile for BHE. Be sure to modify the profile in the equipment database, so that new recipes reflect it accurately.

Thanks both.

Oginme, yeah I just selected the profile rather than creating my own.

In all honesty, it's only by 4th brew and I'm pretty much learning as I go along - maybe should've done a bit more forward planning! Will follow your recommendations and hope it's more in tune next time.

Thanks again.