Beersmith 2 equipment profiles

Brewed my 1st batch with beersmith 2 the otherday and ended up short in my fermenter. ??? Topped it up and ended short on gravity by 10 gu! I noticed that 1.4 when you enter calc boil vol auto it changes the boil vol. Now on version 2 it just changes the boil off %. I believe this is why I was short. Shouldnt the boiloff % be about the same or slightly more (due to a longer boil with the same volume of liquid)and the boil volume just increase due to boil time? Maybe Im missing something/dazzeled by all these new features. I have brewed about 8 all grain batches on this setup and usually get about 78% eff. I have never had to top up before! Any suggestions or help would be great.

There's a lot that can go wrong on a single brew. For example, incorrectly weighed grain could be the simple answer.

Boil off is definitely not the problem though as boil off rate actually does not affect efficiency measurements. (The boil off formulas though used in BS2 are actually more accurate than in BS1).

I strongly suspect there is a problem in your equipment profile set up. For example, what do you mean by 78% efficiency? This is an acceptable mash efficiency (pre or post-boil efficiency) but would be a very high 'Brewhouse Efficiency' (efficiency into fermenter) figure unless you have your 'Loss to Trub and Chiller' set to zero or quite small.

10 gravity points is a long way out so I really suspect it is incorrectly weighed grain or that you have set your 'Brewhouse Efficiency' too high. It is also not uncommon to occasionally draw a bad sample from a wort. A double-check never hurts.

It can take a bit of study to get your head around setting up your Brewhouse Efficiency figure correctly. Just remember that any change made to your Loss to Trub and Chiller  figure will also require a reciprocal adjustment to your Brewhouse Efficiency figure.

Cheers,
Pat

I have a 5 gsllon Igloo gott cooler and use the same profile as the default setup in Beersmith 2. -What I mean about 78% is this is the average that I have seen over numerous batches on the same setup. -After thinking it over Im wondering if I sparged to quickly and if I did would this effect final gravity because everything was measured as usual and ingredients were corrected accordingly? Thinking it over a little more I was losing sparge temp quicker than expected and rushed my sparge a little. Not sure how much it would throw it off but Im guessing alot because I figured 68% eff on the batch    Either way Its bubbling away in the carboy and Im sure its not gonna go to waste Thanks,

It gets pretty hard working out some of this stuff over the net .

I was having a look at that profile and it has a mash efficiency of 82.8% and a Beersmith Brewhouse Efficiency of 72% which is close to the '68% on the batch' you mention. One real  possibility is that you might have opened up the original recipe and changed the equipment to the 'Pot and Cooler ( 5 Gal/19 L) - All Grain' profile in the recipe design tab instead of using the scale button to actually scale the recipe to the profile. This would cause you some grief and I'm suspicious that it might have been the cause as your 68% is so close to 72%.

If you haven't played with the recipe since you brewed, it would be interesting to post it up here as well as the original recipe. Alternatively, just check the original gravity of the source recipe against the original gravity in your BeerSmith2 recipe. If you used the scale button, they should read the same. If you didn't, the grain and hop bill will be the same but not the OG or IBUs. If you have been playing with the recipe/s checking this won't be an option though - c'est la vie!

As you say though, the beer should still taste great but it's always nice to work out if there is a set up problem before the next brew if you can.

Cheers,
Pat

Only thing I changed since brewday was that I entered my measured gravity on the fermentation page. The recipe is one I came up with myself. I Did not scale it. Yeah, I just noticed that the 5 gallon gott setup is set to 72% by default (I changed it to 78 like a jackass). On another note I recently marked all my equipment at every gallon to make sure I wasnt coming up short of 5 finished gallons. Is it possible that before this I may have been ending with less than 5 gallons and not topping up, making my efficiency seem higher than it really is? Next batch Ill use the default values and make sure everything is measured perfectly from start to finish/sparge slower. I guess this is the only way to see for sure where the problem lies. Let me know if you see anything that seems funny. Thanks,

Okay, it would have been the changing of the 'Tot Efficiency' ('Brewhouse Efficiency' or Efficiency into Fermenter) from 72% to 78% that caused your problems so that one's solved.

If your volume was not being measured correctly before, this will give you inaccurate efficiency readings so you might make some new discoveries with your newly calibrated kettle .

Assuming your volume and gravity measurements are correct, efficiency is not affected greatly* by things like boil off or adding too much water at the beginning. For example if you accidentally added an extra gallon of water to your mash and sparge, you would end up with more wort but at a lower gravity so this balances out. (*There is a small effect. For example, if we did add an extra gallon then we'd end up with a slightly higher efficiency as we will have 'rinsed' the grains with more water.)

Brewhouse Efficiency is simply the mash efficiency calculation with 'Loss to Trub and Chiller' removed from the volume part of the equation.

So to get your 'Brewhouse Efficiency' figure set correctly, record your measured mash efficiency and 'Loss to Trub and Chiller' over say 5 brews. Take lots of readings as these act as double checks. For example...

Mash Efficiency can be taken either pre-boil or post-boil. So, do both on these 5 brews. On average, you should find, that these end up very close. A single brew's figures should not be relied upon as many things can go wrong on a single brew - e.g. the incorrectly weighed grain we talked about.

You can then do a 'Brewhouse Efficiency' reading by measuring your volume and gravity into the fermenter.

Once you have these averages of efficiencies and 'Loss to Trub and Chiller' you will be able to determine a fairly reliable 'Brewhouse Efficiency' though some systems are less repeatable from brew to brew than others.

I'll attach a spreadsheet here that you can play with to see how you can use your mash efficiency and loss to trub and chiller to work out your Brewhouse Efficiency and vice versa. Notice how if you set 'Loss to Trub and Chiller' as zero then mash efficiency = brewhouse efficiency? So the relationship is simple but you can run into problems if you go changing your 'Loss to Trub and Chiller' in BeerSmith2 without also changing your Brewhouse Efficiency so be careful! I still sometimes forget to do this .

I promised Brad that I would write a few notes on this and post this spreadsheet up but I'm still fine-tuning a few things. I'll get there eventually but I hope this helps in the meantime.

Cheers,
Pat

Sorry, in the spreadsheet above, in the 'Boil-Off  Estimator' section, where I wrote 'Imperial' it should read U.S. Later I'll get all three systems in there.