M
msavage4
This was posted in another forum but got no response:
"It seems the OG calculation is only related to grist bill & "Batch Size" field. Nothing else changes it. This is a problem. I'll give a simple example. Lets say I want to collect 5 gallons of 1.040 wort into my fermentor. One would think that I should set my batch size to 5 gallons and add grains to hit 1.040 based on my brewhouse efficiency. But I also need to keep in mind the amount of water needed and wort lost elsewhere in the process. BS provides a handy tool to calculate and keep track of all these issues, boil-off, deadspace, etc. My kettle holds about .75 gal of lost wort in the trub and dead space. If I set this value to .75 in Beersmith it correctly back-calculates the water needed at the start of the boil. HOWEVER it does not change the OG to reflect the fact that I am now brewing 5.75 gallons of wort! A simple experiment will show this and why it is wrong. Go into BS and set the "Lost to Boil Trub & Chiller" value to 10 gallons. You are now making 15 gallons of beer with the same amount of grain yet the OG does not change! In my set up I really do need to end up with 5.75 gallons of wort to get 5 gallons into the fermentor. Of course I can just change the batch size to 5.75 gallons and set the trub/chiller loss to 0 and get the right OG but that is counterintuitive and makes the trub/chiller loss field useless. There are other fields that behave in the same way. Of course the efficiency calcs are completely wrong in all cases because they take none of these losses into effect. Am I missing something here?"
"It seems the OG calculation is only related to grist bill & "Batch Size" field. Nothing else changes it. This is a problem. I'll give a simple example. Lets say I want to collect 5 gallons of 1.040 wort into my fermentor. One would think that I should set my batch size to 5 gallons and add grains to hit 1.040 based on my brewhouse efficiency. But I also need to keep in mind the amount of water needed and wort lost elsewhere in the process. BS provides a handy tool to calculate and keep track of all these issues, boil-off, deadspace, etc. My kettle holds about .75 gal of lost wort in the trub and dead space. If I set this value to .75 in Beersmith it correctly back-calculates the water needed at the start of the boil. HOWEVER it does not change the OG to reflect the fact that I am now brewing 5.75 gallons of wort! A simple experiment will show this and why it is wrong. Go into BS and set the "Lost to Boil Trub & Chiller" value to 10 gallons. You are now making 15 gallons of beer with the same amount of grain yet the OG does not change! In my set up I really do need to end up with 5.75 gallons of wort to get 5 gallons into the fermentor. Of course I can just change the batch size to 5.75 gallons and set the trub/chiller loss to 0 and get the right OG but that is counterintuitive and makes the trub/chiller loss field useless. There are other fields that behave in the same way. Of course the efficiency calcs are completely wrong in all cases because they take none of these losses into effect. Am I missing something here?"