Measured Efficiency Problem with Honey

So I fully do not understand why my measured efficiency numbers are WAY off of the total efficiency numbers. And everything is fine when I delete the honey from the recipe. With the original recipe, I got about 72% efficiency, ended up with 1.070 OG with 5.5gal in the fermenter. BeerSmith predicted I should get 1.073 with 75% efficiency. All's well and good. BUT... when I put in the 1.070 OG into the measured variable, it tells me I got something like 87% efficiency. Something is wrong...

So I looked at the recipe, tried changing something... I deleted the honey and altered the OG to mimic what Beersmith says I should get. After that it tells me I got 75% efficiency (which is exactly what it should be and what Beersmith told me I should have).

So, I'm guessing that Beersmith is not playing well with simple sugars and measured efficiency. Not sure if this is something others have seen or not, or if I'm just doing something wrong. I have two screen shots of the before and after of what I just described. 

I think first picture indicates you told BS that you got 7.0 gallons pre-boil of 1.070 wort; the second says only 6.5 gallons of 1.060. 

Since this is post brewing, the pre-boil volume you achieved should be fixed and known, and so I would not change that.    And you either added the honey, or you did not, so I would not change that. 

This is sometimes hard to explain, but BS2 is not really a good "what if" scenario manager with regard to these efficiency numbers.    Your equipment and your process has a "typical" efficiency, and unless something dramatic changes, it should hold steady from batch to batch.  So the benefit of brewing software is more along the lines of this pattern:  I build a system, I enter 75% EE%, but I miss my targets, and learn it is more like 65%, and each brew I measure things more accurately, and I tweak my process and each time I play with BS2 after the brew, and tell it what really happened.  But nothing I enter changes the batch I just brewed.  It's done and the results are static. 

Finally I repeat 70% over several batches.  At that point, I'm dialed in and done.

With your given system, you can play with ingredients such as honey/no honey, or time/amount of hop drops, etc., but you can't really play "what if" I get 75% EE% or what if I get only 65%.  You have to make your best estimate of the efficiency you'll achieve tomorrow and BS2 will tell you how much grain it takes, hops, etc., to reach the desired targets given the EE% you assumed. 

If you come up short on volume for some unexplained reason, that is the same to BS2 as if you had spilled wort on the ground.  If the OG is short, it's the same to BS2 as if you had poured extra water in the boiler.  The solution is to measure those differences precisely, and try to diagnose the cause, and then enter that as a loss somewhere in BS2 so that BS2 can account for it next time.  Once all the known losses are measured and accounted for, the remaining result is the typical efficiency of the given system.....unless I make a high-gravity beer, or use 12 oz of leaf hops, or do something that affects efficiency.  Like using 50% rye, etc. 

I can understand the use of Beersmith and I think what you said makes sense. The one thing that I'm still wrestling with is that regardless of the pre-boil gravity, the measured efficiency stays the same (I could theoretically change it to 100gal pre-boil and it wont matter, all that matters is the final volume from what I can tell). So that tells me that the pre-boiled gravity does not enter into the calculation for the measured efficiency. I guess what I'm saying is that I dont believe that I am getting 87% efficiency. I have used other calculators (eg. Brewersfriend) and they tell me that I got between 70% and 72% efficiency. This is based on the information from the same exact recipe/brew session. The first picture is from a brew session that I already had and I don't believe that I got 87% efficiency like it said.

According to BS if I hit 75% efficiency I should have gotten 1.073 with 5.5gal. I instead got 1.070 with 5.5gal (actual measured values). From that alone, I summize that I got worse than 75% efficiency. Correct? But, BS tells me that my measured efficiency is 87%. I have a hard time believing that is correct or even knowing how it came up with that number. Does that make sense?

One additional thing that I tried. Changing the amount of honey does not change the measured efficiency, but it theoretically should. So I'm guessing that BS is not taking honey into account when calculating the measured efficiency. Otherwise it would change when I change the amount of honey in the recipe.

I didn't test this, but I believe BS2 treats DME, LME, sugars and honey as 100% efficiently added to the boiler.  Whatever their PPG is, goes into the math. 

Which makes sense......just because your system gets only 75% of the potential sugars from grain malts does not mean it will get only 75% of the PPG of corn sugar or honey.

I agree with your assessment of how BS2 uses EE% numbers.  I seem to recall it being different in BS 1.4, where I brewed, wrote down actuals, and then entered them and found out what my actual EE% was much more clearly than how BS2 presents that information.  But I'm dialed in on my current set-up and usually get within two points on most brews.