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Equipment Profiles

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The Equipment profiles are used to store your personal equipment settings for building recipes.  It is very important that you create your own personal equipment profile to match your particular set of brewing equipment and set that as the default for future recipes.

 

New Feature: BeerSmith now has the brewhouse efficiency as part of the equipment profile making it easier to scale and match recipes based on recipe profiles.

 

Important Note!: Please take a few minutes to create your own equipment profile for your brewing setup.  As the equipment profile is used throughout the recipe calculations, an accurate equipment profile is important particularly if you want accurate water calculations when brewing.

 

See Also: Recipe Design Tab, BeerSmith Support Page - has videos on building your own equipment profile

 

Online Articles: Understanding Brewhouse Efficiency, Improving your Brewhouse Efficiency

 

Using the Equipment Profile View

oSelect the Equipment view from the profiles menu or ribbon
oFrom here you can add, edit or delete new equipment profiles using the large buttons on the ribbon

 

Creating an Equipment Profile of Your Own

oSelect the Equipment view from the profiles menu or ribbon
oClick on the Add Equip button to add a new equipment profile, or you can copy/paste an existing profile and edit the copy to make it your own
oDetails for the equipment profile dialog are shown below
oPress OK to save your equipment profile
oIf you want to make your new equipment profile the default for all new recipes, use the Brewing tab in the Options dialog

 

Details of the Equipment Dialog - Setting up your own profile

oName - Give your personal equipment profile a descriptive name
oBrewhouse Efficiency - If you are an all-grain or partial mash brewer, this should be set to the overall gross efficiency for your system from grain to fermenter including losses.  For most brewing systems this is in the range of 68%-76%.
oHop Utilization Factor - Should always be set to 100% unless you are working with a very large system (more than 20 gallons) in which case your utilization might be higher.
oMash Tun Volume - The volume of your mash tun (for BIAB brewers, you should set this to the volume of your boil vessel).
oMash Tun Weight - Approximate weight (mass) of your mash tun - used to compensate mash temperatures for the thermal mass of your tun
oMash Tun Specific Heat - The specific heat of your mash tun - generally this is a number between 0.10 and 0.50 with lower numbers associated with all metal mash tuns such as stainless steel and higher numbers representing plastic thermal coolers.
oLauter Tun Deadspace - Represents the deadspace in the lauter tun - how much wort will likely be lost to the lauter tun screen and piping
oTop Up Water for Kettle - Enter zero here for most cases unless you add additional water between the mash and the boil
oCalculate Boil Volume Automatically - When checked this will determine the boil volume based on the Batch volume into the fermenter minus losses and evaporation.  Generally it should be checked.
oBoil Volume - The volume of water at the start of the boil
oBoil Time - The time that you usually boil the wort - typically 60-90 minutes for an all grain batch or slightly less for an extract batch
oBoil Off - An estimate of the water boiled off or evaporated during the boil
oEvaporation Rate - Calculated from the boil off - this represents the percentage boiled/evaporated off during the boil
oCooling Shrinkage - Water typically loses about 4% of its volume when cooled from boiling to room temperature
oCooling Loss - Simply the cooling shrinkage expressed as a volume
oLosses to Trub/Chiller - The amount of wort lost in the trub or chiller during the transfer from the boiling vessel to the fermenter
oTop Up Water - Typically zero for a full boil batch, but many extract brewers do add a few gallons of water at the end of the boil
oBatch Volume Into Fermenter - The target batch size as measured into the fermenter - typically a bit over 5 gallons for most home brewers
oFermentation Loss - Losses to trub and transfers during the fermentation process
oBottling Volume - The batch volume minus fermentation losses - represents the volume of beer left to be bottled or kegged