A couple of questions on equipment size options

I have a couple of questions about setting up the profile for equipment that I can't figure out. I have made a lot of wine, and have decided to make some beer as well (due to a faster return lol). I have a 44 gal fermenter (it had a 1" in diameter hose leading to a bucket), a 100qt mash tun cooler, a 30 gal pot for boiling and 5 6 gal carboys. I have tried to set up the recipe to scale to keep everything the same, and unfortunately the beer in the picture always changes from dark to light. I am new to beer brewing, so unfortunately I do not know what to put in the profile for boil off and the other number settings. I also made a wort chiller out of 20ft of copper tubing that I attached a male and female connector to about 5ft of vinyl tubing on both ends. I do not know how much to calculate for the amount lost with that either. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I've only been using beersmith for about 6 months, so I can't help with much.  I can however help you with boil off.  The easiest way to get the accurate amount of boil off, is to actually measure water into your boil kettle to the same amount of wort that you would boil.  Then boil it for 15minutes.  Start the timer as soon as it comes to a good rolling boil.  At the end of 15 minutes, measure how much water is left.  The difference in starting volume and ending volume is your boil off for 15 minutes.

Let's say that you boiled off 1/2 a gallon.  For a 60 minute boil, you would have lost 2 gallons (4 x .5 gallons).  For a 90 minute boil, you would have lost 3 gallons (6 x .5 gallons).

This is how I did it.

On the practical side, you're going to need something for a hot liquor tank, that can hold sparge water as your boil kettle receives wort. You're probably also going to want a wort chiller that's 4 to 5 times longer than what you have. Or a plate chiller.

Figuring out boil off and mash tun losses is a pretty easy task as Scott pointed out. You can start with putting a few gallons of water into the 100 qt cooler and measure what's left after it drains. This would be your mash tun deadspace. Same with the kettle, which gets entered in loss to trub and chiller.

Setting specific heat can be a challenge on some systems. Here is one method: http://www.beersmith.com/forum/index.php/topic,9324.0.html

There are video tutorials on Youtube. This one is on equipment set-up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYrHmduuJfY

I actually ignore specific heat for my Mash Tun.  I have found that I can just put my strike water in 8-10F hotter than my strike temperature and it will settle at about 4-5F above my strike temperature.  I leave the lid of my mash tun up and stir, while monitoring the temperature of my strike water.  As soon as I drop to my strike temperature, I stir in my grains well, check the mash temperature (it's usually within 1F) and shut the lid.  Sometimes it takes 5 to 10 minutes for it to drop those few degrees to strike temperature, but I've taken the specific heat out of the equation.

The main reason that I do it this way, is because I'm usually using two 48 quart cooler mash tuns.  They aren't identical and specific heats are different for each one.  If I were to heat my strike water up and used specific heat, I'd have one or the other low or high, since they are different.

Plus, the extra 5 to 10 minutes, gives me time to have a beer!  ;D

Scott Ickes said:

Plus, the extra 5 to 10 minutes, gives me time to have a beer!  ;D

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Of course! Running your set-up, your way. That's what being a brewer is all about!  8)

The OP was asking about software setup to match his equipment. I'm just addressing that.

Trust me brewfun, in my opinion, your advice was dead on point!  My apologies is if it seemed as if I was disagreeing with you.

If I only had one Mash Tun, I'd probably dial in my specific heat too. 

You can calculate your CFC loss here

http://www.calculatoredge.com/enggcalc/volume.html#cylinder

then scroll up to and enter your result to change cubic inches to whatever value you need

Thank you again for your advice guys. I will measure out the boil off when I get everything set up (we are moving into a new house with a six stall garage and an unfinished basement, so I am imagining the possibilities.) A couple more quick questions when setting up the new equipment information (please forgive my ignorance, this is way more complicated than making wine)-
1. Kettle top up. What is this exactly?
2. With the hop utility usage- if I want to brew about a kegs worth at a time would it still be at 100%?
3. I was going to follow recipes for a while to get used to what I am doing, so would you just take the ingredients and multiply the recipe times however many gallons of finished beer I was aiming for?
4. I have yet to buy my boiling pot, but I was looking towards a 25-30gal stock pot over a turkey boiler. Would that be sufficient for what I was planning on doing?
5. If I was to get say 1/2" flexible copper tubing, would it still be about 100ft worth to make an adequate wort chiller, or would the larger volume of water be able to dissipate the heat more efficiently?
6. In regards to the hot liquor tank, would another cooler be okay? What if I kept another pot of hot water ready to go on a burner to pour over it for batch sparging?
7. Is there a better way to go about this haha.

Again, thank you guys so much for all of your help. And please forgive my barrage of newbie questions. I have only made 10 gallons of a Founders Breakfast blend from extract and loved it, so I am looking to learn how to do all grain

msattler said:

1. Kettle top up. What is this exactly?

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This is water added to make the initial boil volume or batch volume. It applies most to partial mash and extract brewing. Typically in all grain, the full pre boil vlume of water goes through the mash to sparge out available sugar.

msattler said:

2. With the hop utility usage- if I want to brew about a kegs worth at a time would it still be at 100%?
3. I was going to follow recipes for a while to get used to what I am doing, so would you just take the ingredients and multiply the recipe times however many gallons of finished beer I was aiming for?

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2) Yes.
3) Yes, you can do that. There is also a "scale recipe" button that is on the far left of the control ribbon in the design view.  You could enter the recipes and efficiencies as given in the original recipe, then use the scale recipe function to make it match your system.

msattler said:

4. I have yet to buy my boiling pot, but I was looking towards a 25-30gal stock pot over a turkey boiler. Would that be sufficient for what I was planning on doing?

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Scale up a couple of recipes to find the optimal kettle size. Figure 10 to 14% evaporation during the boil (set that in the equipment profile). That will tell you the boil volume required. Figure 15% headspace for expansion and boil vigor. I certainly would prefer a stainless stock pot over an aluminum turkey fryer, but lots of brewers use aluminum.

msattler said:

5. If I was to get say 1/2" flexible copper tubing, would it still be about 100ft worth to make an adequate wort chiller, or would the larger volume of water be able to dissipate the heat more efficiently?

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In your original post, I read it as an immersion chiller. In that case, yes the use of a longer coil will help chill wort, faster. Multiple tubes to increase surface area would boost its efficiency, too.

If you're talking about a counter flow chiller, 50 feet would be optimal. In that distance, the wort should flow reasonably quickly and use water efficiently. I think 20 feet is too short for your batch volume because flow would have to be restricted pretty severely.

msattler said:

6. In regards to the hot liquor tank, would another cooler be okay? What if I kept another pot of hot water ready to go on a burner to pour over it for batch sparging?

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Both of those options are fine.

msattler said:

7. Is there a better way to go about this haha.

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That's the thrill of the hobby. There is no one way to do things and gadgeteering is part of the attraction.