Different equipment and brewing results

I am new to beersmith and have a question that i haven't been able to find the answer to or just don't see why it's happening.  Why is it that when i change my equipment profile, the outcomes of the beer change, such as gravity, bitterness, and alcohol?  If im using a 3 gallon pot or a 10 gallon pot, shouldnt that stay the same? 

Although the equipment is listed with kettle sizes, the math is based on batch yield to the fermenter. Each one is going to default to a different batch size and efficiency.

In real world brewing, surface area of grain, boiling and chilling change how the beer turns out. A 10 gallon pot will boil away a larger percentage of 3 gallons than 7.

well i guess i need to get my own profile setup.  I've been working on it but not sure about everything.  I think i have it about right but when i add my ingredients, i get an ibu of almost 100 and OG of 1.058. This is what im using for an ipa

0.5 oz                Simcoe [13.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min
1.00 oz              Chinook [13.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min
1.00 oz              Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 30.0 min             
1.00 oz              Chinook [13.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min   
1.00 oz              Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 0.0 min             
1 lbs                  Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L     
1 lbs                  Carafoam (2.0 SRM)                           
7 lbs                  Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM)                   
1 lbs                  Munich Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM)       

Also dry hop later.  Is that right, or should i change something in my profile or ingredients       

Now you're asking a different question. The answer depends on if you're boiling a full volume or partial.

The OG will be the same, but IBU is dependent on viscosity. There is a maximum saturation point for a volume of about 100 IBUs. Whatever percentage of top up water you use to get to 5 gallons you can sort of "rule of thumb" that percentage downward from 100, but BeerSmith does that math with more accuracy. In your case, about 100 IBUs assumes a full volume boil.

Well this recipe is what brought my original question up.  before i went to my lbs, i created the recipe with one of the extract equipment profiles and got my og and ibus where i wanted them.  When i came back and started playing around with my own equipment profile, i noticed that the ibu's shot up and could not think of why but you have answered my question.  I think now I am catching on to what you are talking about.  I will be doing a full boil.  That must be why when i was using one of the equipment presets, with a smaller kettle and more top off, the ibu's were lower. Is that correct?

With all of that being said, should I drop the hop amount to bring the ibu's down? Or should i simply use only a 3-4 gallon boil?

nickel78 said:

Well this recipe is what brought my original question up.  before i went to my lbs, i created the recipe with one of the extract equipment profiles ... I will be doing a full boil.  That must be why when i was using one of the equipment presets, with a smaller kettle and more top off, the ibu's were lower. Is that correct?

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That would be my conclusion, too.

nickel78 said:

With all of that being said, should I drop the hop amount to bring the ibu's down? Or should i simply use only a 3-4 gallon boil?

Click to expand...

Depends on how much you liked the original recipe. Your beers will always be improved with a full volume boil.

There is something magical that happens when the bittering becomes saturated. The hop flavors created and retained are something very different from lower IBU levels. As long as you have the malt backbone to hold it up, hop flavor made more complex through fermentation.

The bitterness as IBUs won't really matter because people can't really detect much more than 55. The palate saturates in such a way that the brain doesn't recognize the "more" and instead starts to perceive more of the flavors and complexity behind the bitterness. This is why some of the most popular DIPA recipes have a huge bittering charge to get up past 80 IBUs in one or two additions.

What you may notice instead is the texture of the bittering being more coarse, resinous and lasting because of the Chinook in your recipe. I have a New Zealand Pale Ale on that uses a 50 IBU charge of Chinook and it's pretty coarse, but leaves the aftertaste complex.