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Mini-mash sparging

cmbrougham

Grandmaster Brewer
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Sep 30, 2003
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At present, I'm a mini-mash brewer. One thing I've noticed about BeerSmith is that it says to sparge with the balance of your boil water when doing a mini-mash. For a 5 gallon batch I brewed yesterday, it recommend that I sparge with over 6 gallons of water! Is there a way to set BeerSmith to recognize that this is a mini-mash batch and not a full AG batch, and as such, give me a more realistic amount of water to sparge with?
 
Why yes there is... I assume that you either perform a partial boil or you add some water to the boil after you sparge.

If you do a partial boil, then you need to account for the Top Up Water you add after (or at the end of) the boil.  Enter this amount in the "Top Up Water" field under the boiler in your equipment.

If you instead add water after the sparge but before the boil enter this number in the "Top Up Water for Kettle" field in your equipment settings.

If you do either of these it will lower the amount of water in the sparge since you will either have a smaller boil or need less water going into the boiler.

For a complete tutorial on setting up your equipment look here:
 http://www.beersmith.com/equipment_setup.htm

Cheers!
Brad
 
 
I think that'll work. Basically, I usually mini-mash between 2 and 4# of grain... it varies depending on the recipe. I try to boil about 6.5 gallons or so, to hit 5.5 in primary. What I like to do is get water boiling in my main boil kettle, 5 gallons of it, to drive off chlorine and just to get it hot. In the meantime, I collect about 1.5 gallons of wort from the mini-mash. I guess I'll just continue this method. Basically, I was wondering if there was a more scientific approach to calculating the amount of sparge water needed for a mini-mash... I'll just carry on this way though as I have :D
 
I also ran into this problem as a partial mash brewer.  I've read somewhere (most likely rec.crafts.brewing) that when using a minimash you should sparge with twice as much water as you mash with (typically less than the full boil volume).  It seems a bit awkward to have to edit my equipment profile based on how much grain I'm mashing.  It would be more straightforward if there was a place to enter the sparge water/grain ratio in a mash profile.  Then this amount could be automagically subtracted from the kettle top up water.  Not complaining, just suggesting...
 
I also ran into this problem as a partial mash brewer.  I've read somewhere (most likely rec.crafts.brewing) that when using a minimash you should sparge with twice as much water as you mash with (typically less than the full boil volume).  It seems a bit awkward to have to edit my equipment profile based on how much grain I'm mashing.  It would be more straightforward if there was a place to enter the sparge water/grain ratio in a mash profile.  Then this amount could be automagically subtracted from the kettle top up water.  Not complaining, just suggesting...

I agree.  I too am trying to set up different equipment profiles depending on whether I do a mini mash, full boil extract, extract with specialty grains.  

I am just doing trial and error, but not too straightforward for me.  

 Is there a way to have Beersmith automatically calculate the amount of water I need to boil/sparge with/and add to the pot (for a minimash/fullboil) based on my preset 5.5 gallon pre-boil volume?  
 
Currently I do not have an option to do this.  Perhaps this would be a nice feature to add in the future.

Brad
 
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