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Beersmith a Strike Calculations

nicklawmusic

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Hi there,

I've been using Beersmith for a long time (both as a professional brewer and now as a nanobrewer) and it's really good except for one thing: the strike water temperature calculation.

I wondered whether anyone could shed light on the issue for me.

These days, I'm brewing batches on a 100L brew kit.  I've put in all the figures correctly but Beersmith tells me to mash in at around 76.7 with a liquor to grist ratio of 2:0.  This is way too low so I've started ignoring Beersmith on this front but with varying results.

I mashed in this morning, aiming for 67C using a pre-heated mash tun with 23.5KG malt and 55L of liquor and I still only hit 64.5C  :(

Is there a way I can get Beersmith to give me an accurate reading for my kit?  As I say, I've put all the figures in correctly and both checked and unchecked the equipment profile adjust temperature for kit box but it's still not giving me accurate readings as, to hit 67C I have to have a strike temperature of around 85-86C.

Any thoughts/advice would be usefiul.
 
There will be a certain amount of error due to all of the variables that affect temperature. The best way to dial in what works for you is to adjust the Mash Tun Specific Heat setting in your equipment profile.
 
nicklawmusic said:
Hi there,

I've been using Beersmith for a long time (both as a professional brewer and now as a nanobrewer) and it's really good except for one thing: the strike water temperature calculation.

I wondered whether anyone could shed light on the issue for me.

These days, I'm brewing batches on a 100L brew kit.  I've put in all the figures correctly but Beersmith tells me to mash in at around 76.7 with a liquor to grist ratio of 2:0.  This is way too low so I've started ignoring Beersmith on this front but with varying results.

Let's start here.  BeerSmith stock profiles for mash and equipment are meant to be templates.  Many people use them as presented without issue, just following what the program tells then to do.  In your case, you have a set liquor to grain ratio you want.  So take the closest profile to what you want to do and change it to reflect the liquor to grain ratio you desire.  This should be your first step.  Alter the starting temperature of your equipment (mash tun) to reflect the normal conditions you expect to strike in at.  Some people preheat the mash tun, with hot water to avoid the very hot temperature of the strike water.  Same goes for the grains in adjusting the temperature to where your grains will normally be when you dough in.

Once you adjust the mash profile, update the recipe with the latest version.  The recipes do not update automatically if you make a change to the profile as part of the archival nature built into the program.  Likewise, if you adjust the profile within the recipe, it will not adjust the profile in your library.


I mashed in this morning, aiming for 67C using a pre-heated mash tun with 23.5KG malt and 55L of liquor and I still only hit 64.5C  :(

Is there a way I can get Beersmith to give me an accurate reading for my kit?  As I say, I've put all the figures in correctly and both checked and unchecked the equipment profile adjust temperature for kit box but it's still not giving me accurate readings as, to hit 67C I have to have a strike temperature of around 85-86C.

Once you have your water volumes squared away to where you want them to be, you will want to take the actual temperatures of your grain, mash tun, and strike water just before doughing in.  Then take the temperature of the mash once you have doughed in.  Make a copy of your recipe and use those figures to update the mash tab of the recipe copy.  Input the grain and mash tun temperature, and adjust the target mash temperature to reflect your actual measurement.  Now, still in the recipe, edit the equipment profile on the mash tab.  Adjust the specific heat [as Bob357 stated above] of the mash tun until the strike temperature calculated by BeerSmith is close to your actual measurement of the strike water.  Use this figure to update your equipment profile in your profile library. As stated above, you will need to update any recipe previously written but not brewed with this new equipment profile.

As a hint, I append the date of my last change to the name of the profile so that I can see at a glance if the recipe I am currently working on has the latest profiles.




Any thoughts/advice would be usefiul.

Also if you are using a stock equipment profile, it would be best to build up a profile which better reflects your equipment and process.  There are several blogs on BeerSmith and YouTube videos which can show you how to build a profile from scratch.
 
Also if you are using a stock equipment profile, it would be best to build up a profile which better reflects your equipment and process.  There are several blogs on BeerSmith and YouTube videos which can show you how to build a profile from scratch.

This is a good tutorial... https://youtu.be/HwEbjOt8OR8

This may also be helpful... https://youtu.be/QmW7pwQP5mQ
 
There is no error in BeerSmith's strike water calculation. I have derived the equation from conservation of energy and I get agreement with what BeerSmith says for my equipment. I agree with the other posts that the problem must be in your assumptions or inputs.

--GF
 
Thanks for getting back to me everyone.

Something isn't stacking up (and it could be me) as I've just gone through my brew sheets and put the temps into a spreadsheet to see a pattern:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HTlvgs75oQL4iL9fi9GbIzo4Eg-9V-9O9HTJhjj8tn4/edit?usp=sharing

As you can see from the spreadsheet, in order to get a mash temperature of 67C on the basis that I'm using - on average - 22.69kg of grain with a 44L amount of strike water, I'm having to get the HLT up to 81.4C (realistically, I've been going for 83C and recirculating it before pre-heating the mash tun, waiting 5-10 mins, and then mashing in; this - more often than not - has got me reasonably close, though, for those higher mash temps, I'm still a bit off).

Which brings me to Beersmith:

If I put the figures in (mash tun temp, weight, etc), it's still telling me I only need to mash in at 77.1C, which as we can see from the spreadsheet, is way off.

Given that the average difference between my actual mash temperature and strike temperature is 15.3C, how do I account for this in Beersmith so it'll give me an accurate figure?
 

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You have your specific heat for your mash tun set to 0.  This needs to be set based upon the actual value for your mash tun.  Even when you add the water at a higher temperature, this weight and specific gravity still has an impact. The program does the calculation and figures that the mash tun takes up no heat nor does it contribute any heat to the process. Hence the program's calculation of 77C versus your observation of 83C. 

Since you pre-heat your mash tun, you need to set that value in the mash tab of your recipe to get an updated strike temperature at the time of brewing. 
 
You have your specific heat for your mash tun set to 0.

Oops. That was an oversight on this equipment set up.  It's usually set at 0.12 as Beersmith recommends as it's a dual-lined 80L thermal pot.

However, even if I put in 45C (once I've heated the mash tun up, as per the 'Tun Temperature' on the attached image), I still get a low reading back.  See attached image.
 

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If I change the 'Mash Tun Specific Heat' in my profile to 0.70 Cal/gram-deg C, it seems to bring the strike temperature more in line with what I'm actually achieving based on my spreadsheet.

However, it seems quite high for Beersmith's guidelines.

What exactly is this calculation based on?
 

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Conservation of energy. There is heat energy in the grain, water and equipment. The energy in a material is the mass times the specific heat times the temperature. The starting energy is:

Qi = Mg*Cg*Tg+Mw*Cw*Tw+Me*Ce*Te

Mg= grain mass, Mw = water mass, Me = equipment mass, same notation for starting temperature and specific heat

The temperatures are all different at the start, but are all the same at the end (Tf), and the total energy is the same:

Qf = Qi = Tf*(Mg*Cg+Mw*Cw+Me*Ce)

Now you can solve for the initial water temperature, Tw, in terms of the final temperature Tf.

Tw = Tf + (Tf-Tg)*(Cg*Mg)/(Cw*Mw)+ (Tf-Te)*(Ce*Me)/(Cw*Mw)

This assumes that no heat is lost to the air, or to pumps or tubing or any other components.

--GF
 
Some complicated equations going on there.

Given that I know that if I heat my strike water to 83C with 22KG grains and preheat my mash tun to 45C and hit (on average) 66C, could I work backwards and alter the Mash Tun Specific Heat number accordingly so that with a dummy recipe I get a mash temp of 66C and then use that figure (ie: 0.70) as my figure to calculate my strike temperature for future brews..?

Or does it not work like that?
 
nicklawmusic said:
Some complicated equations going on there.

Given that I know that if I heat my strike water to 83C with 22KG grains and preheat my mash tun to 45C and hit (on average) 66C, could I work backwards and alter the Mash Tun Specific Heat number accordingly so that with a dummy recipe I get a mash temp of 66C and then use that figure (ie: 0.70) as my figure to calculate my strike temperature for future brews..?

Or does it not work like that?
That might work just fine if your process is the same all the time. Try it and see if it works.

--GF
 
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