Small Boiler - numbers for a concentrated boil

Hi,

I'm about to put on my first AG, and I think I have it pretty well sorted (thanks Stagger). I've been playing with Brewsmith quite a bit, and it looks pretty good.

My question is this.

My boiler capacity is only probably about 40L (I want to avoid boil overs), but I was hoping to eventually do double batches of 44L. By fiddling with the numbers in Beersmith, I can actually create a 44L batch with a 32L boil, and then "dilute up" to my required 44L. All the calculations look ok - if I do a 32L boil, the OG is higher (1060), and after dilution to my required 44L, the SG hits the style target of 1043.

Obviously the water I use would be clean etc. Has anyone tried this kind of thing before? Will boiling at a higher concentration / SG and then diluting have any negative effect?

Also, Beersmith seems to be doing something funny with the sparge volume. The mash in is 17.91L, and then it asks for 4 "rounds" of sparging, of 4.9L each (total volume in boiler now = 37.51L). Beersmith then says "Add water to achieve boil volume of 31.68L"!!! Does anyone know what I've done wrong here?

Thanks for the help.

Benno

Benno,
 You can add water after the boil to create a larger batch.  Only obvious concern is making sure that the water is sterile and won't contaminate your batch.  In BeerSmith this shows up as "Top up water" in your equipment profile.

 I'm not sure about the second question without knowing your equipment and recipe settings - it would be best if you could send me your sample recipe and I can probably look at the equipment settings and tell you what is wrong.

Cheers!
Brad

Thanks Brad.

I have saved the recipe -  what e-mail address should I send it to?

Cheers

Benno

Send it to:
 beersmith @ beersmith.com

Brad

Thanks,
 I found the problem - for some reason you have the mash profile set with the following setting (click the details button in the "mash profile" section of your recipe) :

  "Sparge with batches that fill 50% of the mash tun"

 As a result you are only using 15L of your 30L mash tun capacity, resulting in really small batches (the rest of the space is taken up by grain and absorbed water).

 Change it to a larger number (perhaps 90 or 100%) and you will get much more reasonable size batches for your sparge.

Cheers!
Brad

Hi Brad,

I'm not sure you understood what I meant.

I "told" beersmith that I only had a 32L boil capacity, but it asked me to mash with 17.9L, and then go on to sparge with an additional 19.6 L of water, bringing my final volume to 37.5L.

Clearly, 35.7L exceeds the 32L I specified!  Where have I gone wrong???!!!

Thanks again mate,

Benno

Benno,
 Some of the water gets absorbed by the grains during the mash.  BeerSmith accounts for this, which is why the total water added is greater than the amount you want for the boil.

Cheers!
Brad