I have only done one post here before so firstly, let me say hello and that I am Pat from the BIABrewer podcast.
Secondly I'd like to thank Brad who made the interview process extremely easy. During the interview I acknowledged the many hours and the quantity and quality of information he constantly produces here. He seems to have edited those compliments out
.
Thirdly, I'll try and answer your questions...
brewmoreblack
Your kettle size question is correct and I should have posed this as a disadvantage. It did not occur to me because in Australia, most brewers jump from 'kit' brewing (which requires no boiling) straight to all-grain. When they do this, they always seem to start with at least a 13 gallon (50 litre) kettle or a 10.5 gallon (40 litre) electric urn and using the above equipment it is easy to produce 5 gallons (19 litres) of beer into your keg or bottles.
Having a kettle smaller than the above will force you into either reducing how much beer you produce or into incorporating some "Maxi-BIAB" techniques. "Maxi-BIAB," is not a great term but basically it is a compromise between the techniques of BIAB (single 'hard' vessell, 'passive' sparge, 'full-volume,' brewing) and/or batch-sparging (at least two 'hard' vessells plus an 'active' sparge) and/or some wort dilution.
Maxi-BIAB is a method that should be investigated only by those brewers who are restricted to brewing on a stove-top or by brewers, like yourself, who are finding their existing kettle is a bit small. If the latter, dilution techniques should be sufficient and so a second hard vessel (HLT or MLT) will not be required.
I think a bit of dilution will be your answer brewmoreblack. Once you get a feel for things, you may or may not decide to move to a bigger kettle.
Time-Travelers
Like the above, your question is also an excellent one. Recipe conversion from one source to another is extremely difficult at present. Terms such as 'batch size,' 'efficiency,' and 'brewhouse efficiency,' are widely abused or incorrectly used. You currently have to be a 'brewing,' detective to decipher what any single brewer means by these terms.
So, as a new brewer, unless someone holds your hand through recipe conversion, there is considerable room for error. I know that Beersmith 2.0 will solve most or all of the existing issues of recipe conversion but my advice for now is to get someone to hold your hand
.
Even when BeerSmith 2.0 comes out, our policy on BIABrewer.info will be to encourage new brewers like yourself to learn how to use
The Calculator for their first five or so brews. It's just a very basic but solid spreadsheet with clear definitions. But, once you understand this spreadsheet it should be a smooth step up to gaining
all the benefits of BeerSmith 2.0.
On BIABrewer.info, we also have a thread dedicated to questions such as yours. It is called,
Use this thread to convert your recipes to suit your equipment so posting your question there will give you a detailed answer as well as put you in an excellent and early position to understand and utilise the benefits of BeerSmith 2.0 upon it's release.
Our registration process on
BIABrewer.info is a bit onerous. To avoid spammers and keep the forum of high quality, we require you, even after your initial registration, to actually write a post to
this thread to become fully registered. It's not hard to do and I think you'll find it worth your while.
Hopefully Time-Travelers, you and others will become masters at recipe conversion and be able to put other fellow brewers on a fast path to getting the maximum use out of quality brewing software.
Many thanks for the feedback above and for the great questions. Most thanks though has to go to Brad. It's quite easy to produce a basic bit of brewing software but to make brewing software full of features that is also easy for us to use is an incredibly difficult, almost impossible task. From the little I know, I can't wait for BeerSmith 2.0!
Cheers,
Pat