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Grainfather profile

waxwing

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Used a modified profile that I found on the forum for my Grainfather equipment profile, but the mash water and sparge water are off, where did it go wrong?

Can anybody help me with some tips?




 
Keep in mind that all profiles you find out there... even the provided Beersmith equipment profiles.. are for someone else's system and the way they use it. Best to measure these volumes yourself and make the changes in that profile then save it with a new name to indicate that it is your profile.
 
Kevin58 said:
Best to measure these volumes yourself and make the changes in that profile then save it with a new name to indicate that it is your profile.

^^ This ^^

What were your actual measurements?  Did you verify the markings on the grainfather to make sure they were correct before you started?  What was your pre-boil volume?  post boil volume?  Process losses?  It takes good measurements and notes to determine how to customize the profile to match your equipment.  There are several videos on YouTube and Brad has quite a few blogs and videos on setting up your equipment and mash profiles.
 
To second what has been said above - the posted profiles are only a starting point, but you will need to make the adjustments yourself.

I was involved in some of those profiles - I believe that the new app may have changed the way it calculates water additions, compared to the more simple version previously (but I could be wrong on this). I currently calculate my own water, based on my measurements, which is totally different to the app's calcs, so can't comment on how to get them to match anymore
 
But even measuring will only give some small adjustments, the values are still too much off.

6l mash, 33 l sparge, that can't even fit in the Grainfather.

It should give me something like 25 l mash and 10 l sparge. With 5 l water in malt and 2 l loss it should give me around 28l of preboil liquid.
 
From your last comment, it appears that the major issue may be with the mash profile which determines the mash thickness and split between mash and sparge volumes.  You can, and should, create or edit a mash profile which allots the water as you want it to be divided.  BeerSmith is a modeling program and you should take any of the profiles included as a template and not as best practice.  Customize them as you need to make the program match how you want to brew and do not allow it to dictate how you should run your process.

 
Ok, then I understand, but how do you change the values, I don't seem to get the hang of it, I can not click in the box to change the values.
 
To edit the mash profile within the recipe, you can go to the 'mash' tab.  In the dialog box where the mash steps are listed, highlight the initial step and underneath the box the option to 'edit step' will become active (mash profile step 1).  Click to edit the step and a pop up box with the step details will appear (mash profile step 2).  You can adjust the volume of the initial infusion by either specifying the 'water/grain ratio' (highlighted) or by direct input of the volume of water you want to mash with [the box above] and the program will calculate out the water/grain ratio for you.  Save this and check how your volumes work out for you.  Adjust as needed to match how you want to operate your process.


Now, when you step out the mash profile for this recipe will be saved only within this recipe.  You can save this as a standard profile by clicking on the disk icon next to the mash profile title near the top of the page.  Doing this will not affect any other recipes you have written in BeerSmith until you update the mash profile for each recipe with your newly saved mash profile.
 

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