Mofo said:
Maybe the best way to express my confusion is to say I don't know which techniques work with which profiles.
I see two learning curves at work. The first is just learning to brew all grain. Lucky for you, barley does everything possible to turn itself into beer. So, from that most basic standpoint, you can't do anything wrong because all you have to do is add hot water to grain, then drain it to get wort.
Your second learning curve is BeerSmith. So, here's a secret: each of the profiles is flexible enough that it'll describe any technique.
Start by picking a mash that describes what you want to do and how you want the beer to turn out.
Single infusion? Check.
Medium Body? Check.
Those two describe your
mash.
BIAB? Decoction? Temperature Mash? These describe your
equipment.
Why? because these processes make assumptions about the capacity of the mash tun and whether it doubles as the boil kettle. These also describe the heat source and intensity.
Say that you're going to use two temperature rests, but heat the wort through an external source, with a pump. These are RIMS and HERMS systems where wort is continuously recirculated. This is described by the "Temperature" option. BeerSmith doesn't care what the source of heat is and you tell the program how fast the temperature rise will be.
Say you're going to use two temperature rests, but will add boiling water to achieve the second temperature. This is a double infusion. Modify that by how many infusions you want, and you've again described your equipment, because BeerSmith will show you the mash capacity needed to achieve your goals. Same thing with Decoction, which describes a separate kettle to boil part of the mash, but doesn't reinfuse with more water to get a new temperature.
Mashout usually describes a second water infusion to stop the mash, but can be modified to be a temperature step, instead.
Then there's various BIAB, batch sparge and fly sparge techniques to get yourself to a full volume boil. Sparging is a different step, but is part of the overall mash profile because it is part of extracting sugar from grain. You simply check or uncheck boxes in any mash profile to get the sparge technique you desire. If all sparge boxes are unchecked, then BeerSmith assumes you are fly sparging and you'll see the instructions.
The bottom line is to just get in there, modify any mash template to your liking and rename it with all the detail you need. If you eff up, you can always start over.