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BeerSmith 3 Nutrient additions issue

KevinM

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It appears that the nutrient additions for mead assume a 2 gram per gallon amount and do not allow for more or less. This will need to be altered to account for different practices.  Also will there be a method to customize a schedule? Tosna is good but sometimes certain changes need to be made and other types of nutrients are used. I can use my own ools for now, just wondering.
 
You should just be able to change the amount in the design tab or open the ingredient and change the amount. If you open the ingredient, then click on "edit details" you can change the dosing rate per gallon or liter.

You can assign a baseline dose for any misc ingredient. Ingredients > Misc then open any ingredient and assign the dosing for BeerSmith to calculate. I prefer to go with the lowest recommended dose per the lowest increment (liters or gallons).
 
For meads, you can go to the yeast starter tab and pick a nutrient method and specify a yeast nitrogen requirement for fermentation additions.  If you don't like the ones that are available, you can pick one that is closest and then click on 'add nutrients to ingredients' where you can alter the amounts or timing of additions as you see fit.

I have not explored (since I have not made a mead yet) how to enter a customized nutrient method. 
 
What I mean is when on a mead recipe you choose the "Starter" and add a yeast. No matter how many packs you add or how many cells you edit the entry for the pack to contain, the nutrient amounts never change. It would also be nice to allow a customized nutrient schedule and chemicals other than goferm, fermaidO and fermaidk, like fermaidA, dap,superfood,etc.
The non-changing nutrient amounts based on cell counts is the main issue though.
 
The nutrient TOSNA and TiOSNA (note spelling, BeerSmith has a typo) additions are not relevant to the amount of yeast pitched. The nutrient additions are based on g/l of sugar content and the amount of nutrient required for yeast to consume it.

Here are the calculations BeerSmith seems to be following:
http://www.meadmaderight.com/tiosna--inorganic-.html
http://www.meadmaderight.com/info.html

Why this makes sense:

Regardless of the yeast volume, the same amount of nutrient is all that's needed. Yeast don't store fermentation products inside their cells. So, it doesn't matter if one cell or 20 get involved in consuming a milligram of sugar, the required nutrient is in solution for any cell to use on demand. This applies to beer as well, but isn't applied as precisely.

Nutrient to cell volume would matter if the yeast were being harvested for reuse. The common professional wine, mead and cider practice is to use dry only once.

The narrow choices available are most likely because this particular mead maker doesn't use any other nutrients.
 
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