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Equipment Wizard
- Thread starter Jdtirado
- Start date
tom_hampton
Grandmaster Brewer
- Joined
- Oct 8, 2011
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....and....http://beersmith.com/equipment-setup/
The things that generally vary from one setup to the next are:
Mash Tun Volume - Fill it full to the brim with water.
Mash Tun Weight - Simply put your vessel on a scale.
Lauter Tun Deadspace - Measuring this can be a bit tricky without making a batch, unless you have a REAL empty space below a false bottom. Most false bottoms don't really hold much volume. If you have a manifold, I would set this at 0.25 quarts or so. If you have a false bottom, maybe 1 quart. If you have a bucket in bucket, then fill and measure.
Boil Volume - Again, fill your kettle to 2" from the brim. That is the most you can realistically boil. Anything more is just a lot of work.
Boil off - Some consider this equipment related, I consider it recipe specific. Anyway, you should be targeting 12-15% pre-boil volume per hour. Generally, that's 1 gallon per hour.
Losses to trub/chiller - For a regular pot and siphoning this should be about 1 quart. For a keggle with a spigot, fill with water and drain. Dump out what won't drain, and measure it.
fermentation loss - 1.5 - 2 quarts per 5 gallons...unless you have some advanced fermentation vessel (conical or some such).
All of these will likely require some tweaking after you make a few batches. Measure, measure, measure. Brew several batches with similar results before you make any changes. Once you start to get similar results from batch to batch I would only make half the change you think you should between batches.
Brewhouse efficiency is the hardest to nail. My best advice is to set this low...60-65% until you get some experience to determine your real number. It is much easier to compensate for getting better-than-expected extraction (just add water to get the right pre-boil), than it is to adjust for getting worse-than-expected extraction (you have to add dme or lme to compensate).
The things that generally vary from one setup to the next are:
Mash Tun Volume - Fill it full to the brim with water.
Mash Tun Weight - Simply put your vessel on a scale.
Lauter Tun Deadspace - Measuring this can be a bit tricky without making a batch, unless you have a REAL empty space below a false bottom. Most false bottoms don't really hold much volume. If you have a manifold, I would set this at 0.25 quarts or so. If you have a false bottom, maybe 1 quart. If you have a bucket in bucket, then fill and measure.
Boil Volume - Again, fill your kettle to 2" from the brim. That is the most you can realistically boil. Anything more is just a lot of work.
Boil off - Some consider this equipment related, I consider it recipe specific. Anyway, you should be targeting 12-15% pre-boil volume per hour. Generally, that's 1 gallon per hour.
Losses to trub/chiller - For a regular pot and siphoning this should be about 1 quart. For a keggle with a spigot, fill with water and drain. Dump out what won't drain, and measure it.
fermentation loss - 1.5 - 2 quarts per 5 gallons...unless you have some advanced fermentation vessel (conical or some such).
All of these will likely require some tweaking after you make a few batches. Measure, measure, measure. Brew several batches with similar results before you make any changes. Once you start to get similar results from batch to batch I would only make half the change you think you should between batches.
Brewhouse efficiency is the hardest to nail. My best advice is to set this low...60-65% until you get some experience to determine your real number. It is much easier to compensate for getting better-than-expected extraction (just add water to get the right pre-boil), than it is to adjust for getting worse-than-expected extraction (you have to add dme or lme to compensate).