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Making change to Equipment Profile

Group W

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I changed and saved my equipment profile to include .25 gallons of Mash Deadspace Losses. An existing recipe using the changed profile was updated with the saved revised profile. The .25 gallon MLT loss is reflected in the increased total water and sparge water amounts. Without changing the ingredients I would expect the OG and ABV to decrease slightly due to adding more sparge water to the boil.

I also made the same change using one gallon just in case .25 gallons was within rounding impact on OG and ABV. Same result.

What step am I missing that results in a recalc of the entire recipe? Thanks
 
First, when you make a change to a profile you need to update all your recipes with the old profile one at a time.  BeerSmith treats all recipes as a self-contained archive so that if you change a profile later on it will not be reflected in recipes that have already been brewed.

Now, even if you updated the equipment profile in your recipes you will get the same results you had before.  The reason for this is that there are two different material balances that the program is trying to solve.  The first is the volumes throughout the process.  When you changed your mash tun dead space figure, it adjusted the amount of water you needed to mash with to compensate for this change.

The second is the sugars from the mash.  BeerSmith relies on the brew house efficiency value you supply in your equipment profile to calculate how much sugar is needed from your grains.  It takes your brew house efficiency and the volume into the fermenter to figure out the amount of sugar it needs.  It then adds the sugar lost in each of the volume losses specified in the equipment profile, adjusts for the boil off rate, and sets that total amount of sugar it requires from the mash.  It reflects this by changing the mash efficiency to draw the same amount of sugar you needed at the end of the process, taking into account the various losses throughout the process. 

So for instance, if you set up for a 75% efficiency with a 5 gallon batch the program will calculate that 75% of the available sugar in the grains (based upon the grain potential) will make it into the fermenter.  If you had no losses in the system, the calculation would assume a 75% mash efficiency.  Now, if you added a gallon of losses into the equipment profile without a change in the brew house efficiency or a change in the grain bill, the program will calculate that you needed an additional 1 gallon of wort at the 75% efficiency and adjust the mash efficiency upward to draw that amount of sugars from the mash.

When you make a change to the equipment profile for a change in the volume of process losses, you need to adjust the brew house efficiency to bring the actual mash efficiency into alignment with the previous figure from before you made the change.
 
Thanks Oginme! I get it. I didn?t have much of a problem with session beers, but my first DIPA (~8%) exposed the nuances. I figured a lower BH & mash efficiency for this first DIPA as compared to session beers. I?m thinking 70% & 72% respectively on a single infusion mash. Hope that makes sense...

I had two problems with this first DIPA brew and could use your help on the first.

1: I needed to top off the BK with .25 gal to get to my pre-boil volume. I forgot that my pump and lines hold wart even though my HERMS coil drains. The .25 gallons of first runnings eventually gets into the sparge water, but at the end of the sparge I?m short .25 gal. My question is, should I put the .25 gal in the Eq Profile as Recoverable Mash Deadspace or Mash Deadspace Losses? I have it in the former now.

2: Since I was doing a DIPA, I did a very strong boil (with propane) to make sure I had enough OG. Well, I ended the boil 1 gallon short and 20 points high on OG. So I topped up the BK and all was good. I changed my Boil Off from .75 to 1 gallon and will go easier on the boil next time. All this made it hard to calculate actual efficiencies.

Thanks again for your help!
 
Group W said:
1: I needed to top off the BK with .25 gal to get to my pre-boil volume. I forgot that my pump and lines hold wart even though my HERMS coil drains. The .25 gallons of first runnings eventually gets into the sparge water, but at the end of the sparge I?m short .25 gal. My question is, should I put the .25 gal in the Eq Profile as Recoverable Mash Deadspace or Mash Deadspace Losses? I have it in the former now.

I would take the volume you have in your pump and lines and is recoverable and put that as 'recoverable mash dead space' then that part of the wort which you lose becomes your 'mash tun dead space losses'. This separates the lost part versus the part which will make it to the boil kettle.  This way your water volume which remains in contact with the grains will always be at the water to grain ratio you set in your equipment profile and the program makes up the difference in mash water for the lost volume when you drain the mash tun.  If you still find yourself short, then just adjust the volumes between the two accordingly to make up the difference in the wort collected vs. projected.

Group W said:
2: Since I was doing a DIPA, I did a very strong boil (with propane) to make sure I had enough OG. Well, I ended the boil 1 gallon short and 20 points high on OG. So I topped up the BK and all was good. I changed my Boil Off from .75 to 1 gallon and will go easier on the boil next time. All this made it hard to calculate actual efficiencies.

I take all my higher gravity brews and have a profile for them that includes a 90 minute boil.  This accomplishes 2 things.  First, there is additional mash water available (the added half hour boil off) for extraction of the sugars and this helps keep my mash efficiency up to where I have it with the normal gravity beers.  Second, the added boil off means that I don't need to extract as high a gravity from the wort in order to make my final gravity or volume.  I can also adjust my boil time slightly if I find that I am initially short on gravity or realized a higher gravity coming out of the mash.  This also means that I don't need to adjust my burner and have a more predictable boil off.

 
Thanks Oginme! I totally get it and appreciate the quick response! :)
 
Oginme, I need to make a correction to above. After working on my profiles and recipes for a day and going over past brew results, my pre-boil mash efficiency is 80-83% and brewhouse is 75-78%.

If recipes differ a little from a stock equipment profile (ie. using a step mash vs single infusion, hop rocket as a filter ahead of fermenter, etc.) can I just set the actual efficiencies (based on past experience) at the top of the recipe?

I must say, BS3 is an outstanding brewing tool. Thanks again!
 
You can adjust the brew house efficiency within the recipe by doing it a couple of ways.  Entering the new BHE on the design tab will override the value in the equipment profile and that change will reflect in the equipment profile in that recipe only.

The other way to do it if you want to adjust anything else in the equipment profile, such as trub losses or boil off rate, is to edit the equipment profile by clicking on the 'check mark' box next to the equipment profile on the design tab.  Again, unless you press the disk icon this change will affect this recipe only.
 
So I have a 2 vessel stainless system,which is a 20 gallon boiler and 20 gallon mash tun with no bag.
It?s all electric,and I re circulate with a chugger pump.

The profile I have selected is BAIB no sparge, as I do a temp mash out.
When adding the recipe it gives the full volume of water to add to the mash,say 57.6ltrs  then At the bottom of the mash step it states add  53 ltrs and mash out with the step temp of 168.

I am confused as the full volume of water is not added there?s 4 ltrs difference?

Am I selecting the correct profile?
 
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