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large boiloff rate and recipes

danbrews

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Apr 11, 2019
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Hi, im using a 15gal keg as a boiler and have a boiloff rate of 7 liters/hour
when I add peoples recipes to beersmith I always have a much larger boiloff than the original recipe
What is the best way to account for this to best keep to the original recipe?
I was thinking top off water? when I enter top off water to the recipe it doesn't change the alc % ibu or anything. Should I scale the recipe somehow? cheers!
 
When you set up your equipment profile, you should have entered your true boil off in the appropriate box. If you haven't set up an equipment profile, you really need to. Unless you scale from another BeerSmith recipe, you'll likely need to make other adjustments too
 
danbrews said:
Hi, im using a 15gal keg as a boiler and have a boiloff rate of 7 liters/hour
when I add peoples recipes to beersmith I always have a much larger boiloff than the original recipe
What is the best way to account for this to best keep to the original recipe?
I was thinking top off water? when I enter top off water to the recipe it doesn't change the alc % ibu or anything. Should I scale the recipe somehow? cheers!

One of the first things I would look at is your energy input.  Do you need to boil off that volume?  Can you save on fuel and aim a little lower to get a  4 lph rate?? 

Beyond that, BOB357 brings up a good point.  Your equipment profile reflects your process.  It is not the same as other people's process and their losses may be very different from yours.  One of the strengths of BeerSmith is to take a recipe which someone else has developed and scale it to match your equipment, batch size, and process.  Water volumes which may be stated in a recipe are valuable only if your process (boil off, trub losses, etc.) completely match the original.  Yours obviously does not especially when it comes to the boil off rate.

When copying a recipe into BeerSmith from another source, I always try to get the ingredients (fermentables, hops, yeast, other adds) in the correct proportion, but I don't worry about the recipe instructions for water volumes, only the ending volume (batch size) is important.  The rest of the volumes is calculated by the software based upon my process in order to reach that ending volume correctly on my equipment.

 
Thanks Bob and Oginme!, I thought I had to have a fairly vigorous boil? if not I will fill the boiler up again and retest the boiloff with less power, I think I have the scaling thing down.
Bit off my topic but a quick question about adding salts to my water, does beersmith calculate the mash pH based on all the salts being added to the mash water and none to the sparge or kettle?
Thanks for the advice I really appreciate it!
 
Your boil vigor should be up to a good rolling boil.  You want the surface of the kettle to be changing over at a reasonable rate. 

BeerSmith calculates mash pH based upon those water salts which are added to the mash.  If you tell it to divide up the salts between the mash and the sparge, it will only use the portion added to the mash for pH calculations.  You can specify this split on the 'water' tab in the recipe (I think it is the default setting) or move all the salt additions to the mash. 
 
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