Greetings. I am new to BeerSmith, but have been home brewing for many years. I have worked my way through some of the tutorials, and think I have a pretty good handle on how the program works. There has obviously been a large amount of incredibly good work put into the development of this software, and I am highly impressed. That said, I can't help but express disappointment in some aspects of the way mash profiles work, and in the way BeerSmith handles batch sparging.
In my process, all infusions are done with boiling water. The thought of bringing my hot liquor tank to a specific temperature less that boiling, and having it ready at that temp at the moment it is needed, is very daunting. With that in mind, when I design an infusion step I want to be able to specify the infusion temperature, and then have BeerSmith tell me (a) how much water to add to achieve a specific mash temp, or (b) what mash temp will be achieved by adding a specified amount of water. Please correct me if I've got this wrong, but BeerSmith will not allow me to specify the infusion temperature.
Regarding batch sparging, I think that the batch infusions, vorlauf, and runoff steps should be included as steps in the mash profile. The main reason for this is so they will appear on the Timer tab, with appropriate time budgets. Denny Conn taught a lot of us how to do a batch sparge several years ago, and the instructions are still on his website. My process is very close to his. In general, I find Beersmith very difficult to adapt to that process.
I've attached a .pdf file containing what I think a proper mash profile ought to look like, along with some specific comments regarding areas where I think BeerSmith could provide better support. The file is more than one page, and has 9 total steps.
Please take all of this as constructive criticism. Like I said, I am highly impressed overall, and I think I can make BeerSmith work within my process, although a number of workarounds are necessary. If I am missing the easy way to do some of these things, I would love to be set straight.
thanks,
Mike
In my process, all infusions are done with boiling water. The thought of bringing my hot liquor tank to a specific temperature less that boiling, and having it ready at that temp at the moment it is needed, is very daunting. With that in mind, when I design an infusion step I want to be able to specify the infusion temperature, and then have BeerSmith tell me (a) how much water to add to achieve a specific mash temp, or (b) what mash temp will be achieved by adding a specified amount of water. Please correct me if I've got this wrong, but BeerSmith will not allow me to specify the infusion temperature.
Regarding batch sparging, I think that the batch infusions, vorlauf, and runoff steps should be included as steps in the mash profile. The main reason for this is so they will appear on the Timer tab, with appropriate time budgets. Denny Conn taught a lot of us how to do a batch sparge several years ago, and the instructions are still on his website. My process is very close to his. In general, I find Beersmith very difficult to adapt to that process.
I've attached a .pdf file containing what I think a proper mash profile ought to look like, along with some specific comments regarding areas where I think BeerSmith could provide better support. The file is more than one page, and has 9 total steps.
Please take all of this as constructive criticism. Like I said, I am highly impressed overall, and I think I can make BeerSmith work within my process, although a number of workarounds are necessary. If I am missing the easy way to do some of these things, I would love to be set straight.
thanks,
Mike