Question -- Water Use

[mr_beer]

I have a variety of recipes for some forms of mead and beer.

What I am trying to do is specify the grain/other bill and the amount of water. Given that, I would like to see the OG and estimated ABV. The Boil Time is set to 0 so evaporation is not an issue.

What I seem unable to do is specify the amount of water. BS does something but the OG and estimated ABV do not change – 10 gallon or 75 gallon – everything stays the same.

What am I missing here?? Is there a way to change the amount of water and keep all other ingredients the same and see the effect??

 

[stevebonny]

If you have everything set up right, you just change the batch size and it will give you the answers you are looking for. Not sure why you would set the boil time to zero?

 

[mr_beer]

Thanks for your help.

To answer your question, BS has an extensive database of ingredients and does a good job of estimating the OG and ABV.

If you were making a 'mash recipe' that did not need to be boiled then you would not want the evaporation element to come into play, merely the grain absorption estimates.

And of course you want to be able to limit the size to the available pot capacity.

A mash can be boiled and turned into beer or if treated differently the same mash can be fermented without boiling and distilled. In both cases the OG and ABV are important characteristics in recipe planning.

 

[BeerSmith]

If you want to "scale" a recipe up or down you can use the Scale Recipe command to adjust for a new size.

As for the OG not changing, that is quite odd. Why are you not using the Mead recipe type (which avoids the boil and has a much simpler equipment profile)?

 

[mr_beer]

The simple answer is I did not know about BS for mead. I have used BS since 2008 or so for beer, nothing else.

I wrote my own software when I started making mead in about 2003. I have not used the BS mead capability but it certainly looks interesting for my needs.

Thank you for pointing out the obvious -- I fool feelish now!

 

[stevebonny]

Thanks for your help.

To answer your question, BS has an extensive database of ingredients and does a good job of estimating the OG and ABV.

If you were making a 'mash recipe' that did not need to be boiled then you would not want the evaporation element to come into play, merely the grain absorption estimates.

And of course you want to be able to limit the size to the available pot capacity.

A mash can be boiled and turned into beer or if treated differently the same mash can be fermented without boiling and distilled. In both cases the OG and ABV are important characteristics in recipe planning.

Interesting, thanks for the explanation. I have never made mead, didn't realize it was no boil. The software seems to calculate correctly for me. If I set boil time to zero and play around with batch size, it varies the OG and ABV.

 

[BeerSmith]

Let me know if you need anything else.