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HBS kits and BeerSmith

MTBrewer

Master Brewer
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Dec 7, 2015
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Whilst I've been involved destroying/remodeling a bathroom to become a brewroom, as well as building an electric brewing system for said brewroom, I've been using kits for expediency, rather than using my grainstock which would have to be supplemented with specific specialty malts/hops/yeasts that i might not have available here at home.
I have noticed that the ingredients and specs in the kits usually don't match up with BeerSmith when I record the ingredient amounts, OG, FG, ABV into my BeerSmith app - not all  kits, just some of them. The kit-makers seem to 'inflate' the numbers for some reason or another. I have used kits from Northern Brewer, Homebrew Exchange and Love2Brew, and invariably, they don't always match up with BeerSmith.
I'm assuming that they are using different numbers for the different ingredients than Brad uses but I could be wrong about that. They aren't always  that far off. In some cases they are spot on for some numbers, but in some cases, I would have to add more grains or more hops to make the recipe match the numbers to BeerSmith. Is this normal for other homebrewers using kits, or is this just an anomaly that I'm experiencing - i.e. maybe I'm being too anal about the numbers ;>). BTW, I still make the kit according to their original recipe without adding the grains or hops that BeerSmith would require for meeting their specs, and the beer still tastes good to me, I'm just wondering if this is normal for kits v. recipes put together from your own stock.
Thanks!
 
The predicted numbers for kits are generally based on expected results at a certain efficiency when brewed on an average system, whatever that is. If you really wanted to, I'm sure you could tweak your equipment profile and efficiency to match the predictions.
 
Yeah, thanks Bob, I only use kits for the time savings, when I get my brewroom and system finished, it's back to recipes and AG for me, no more of these 'session beer' kits!
 
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