BeerSmith 2.0 for Mac: How Do I Adjust Mash Efficiency?

Hello,

I just upgraded to 2.0 and, and I am very excited to be able to use BS on my mac (before I had to run in on my Linux partition using wine). However, I am having trouble finding a way to adjust my mash efficiency for my equipment. The only easily adjustable efficiency I am able to find is brewhouse efficiency, which looks at the whole process from grains to bottle. What I need is somewhere to manually enter my mash efficiency, which should allow me to calculate my OG correctly. Is there an easy way to do this?

If not, I think this should be a top priority for an addition to the program; how else are you supposed to predict OG accurately without busting out the old pen and paper? Isn't this why I'm paying for BeerSmith? The help file isn't clear and even when I adjust the brewhouse efficiency, it still just gives me an estimate mash efficiency of about 80% (this is too high for my brewery) In the old BS, I could just click on the brew efficiency button and it brought up a window with options to adjust both brewhouse efficiency and mash efficiency. Where did this handy feature go?

Thanks for the help!

Mr Finstad

I have the exact same question.
In 1.4 I changed the efficiency depending on the base grain I used.
This is a must have feature for 2.0...

Hi,
  You could not adjust mash efficiency - even in BeerSmith 1.4 it used Brewhouse efficiency as a basis for all calculations.  The mash efficiency is calculated and displayed (both in 1.4 and 2.0).

  Mash efficiency is displayed clearly on the Mash tab.  It is calculated based on both estimates and also your actuals if you enter your measured volumes and original gravities.  The data on the mash tab is equivalent to what was in the little efficiency popup before.

Brad

I know this topic is old, but I was hoping that I could get an answer to a similar question.

If I am consistently getting a different mash efficiency than that estimated by BeerSmith, how do I adjust?  Do I just keep decreasing brewhouse efficiency until the estimate mash efficiency matches the actual mash efficiency of my system?  I am not sure if that will mess up the other volume calculations.

dermotstratton said:

Do I just keep decreasing brewhouse efficiency until the estimate mash efficiency matches the actual mash efficiency of my system? 

Click to expand...

In a nutshell, yes. But make sure that your loss to trub number is correct. The higher this number is, the lower your brewhouse efficiency will be because it represents the percentage of sugar that won't become beer.

I am not sure if that will mess up the other volume calculations.

Click to expand...

If what you want to measure is strictly mash/kettle efficiency, then set the trub loss to "0". That adjustment means that your post boil volume becomes your batch size. That's probably a number that you've measured lots of time and are very familiar with.

Thanks brewfun.  I'll try setting trub loss to 0 and see if that makes more sense to me.  I think I have finalized my brewing setup ( but I've said that 5 times already in my home-brewing career).  It's hard to really lock in numbers until you keep the setup consistent.