Software Suggestions

Hello,

Purchased BeerSmith a while ago, and am really enjoying it.  I do have a couple of suggestions that would be great for future mods

1.  I do partial mash brewing.  BeerSmith doesn't appear to account for the volume of malt extract in the boil.  I end up with too much sparge water (not the worst thing in the world) and a boil larger than I intended

2.  It would be nice if there was a way to add notes into the brew notes/procedure.  For example, adding the wort chiller to the boil at flameout minus 15 minutes, and adding oxygen post yeast addition.

3.  Add a way to customize the fermentation (age on oak chips, fruit, etc.)

Thanks for making such a great product!

Hey sgauvain

I believe you can accomplish most of what you desire in #2/3 by adding in misc items then adding them to the recipe. It's how I have done it for my wort chiller

Basically open ingredients, select misc then select add. When you are done add the new items to the recipe

Good luck
Rick

sgauvain said:

1.  I do partial mash brewing.  BeerSmith doesn't appear to account for the volume of malt extract in the boil.  I end up with too much sparge water (not the worst thing in the world) and a boil larger than I intended

Click to expand...

IMO, the quickest way to understand your system and to improve the accuracy of BSmith is to focus on the volume of wort you collect in the boil.  It's the one thing you can accurately control every brew, and water volume has the biggest impact on dilution of the wort sugars collected, and also the subsequent concentration of the boil by evaporation.  In partial mash, it may be a little tougher, but you could still standardize the amount of water used to rinse the grains, and tell that to BSmith so it would know how much water came from the mash process, and how much to add straight to the DME. 

sgauvain said:

2.  It would be nice if there was a way to add notes into the brew notes/procedure.  For example, adding the wort chiller to the boil at flameout minus 15 minutes, and adding oxygen post yeast addition.

3.  Add a way to customize the fermentation (age on oak chips, fruit, etc.)

Click to expand...

Ditto.  You can add misc "ingredients" for wort chiller, yeast nutrients, whirlfloc, sanitize a spoon, oak cubes, etc. 

MaltLicker said:

sgauvain said:

1.  I do partial mash brewing.  BeerSmith doesn't appear to account for the volume of malt extract in the boil.  I end up with too much sparge water (not the worst thing in the world) and a boil larger than I intended

Click to expand...

IMO, the quickest way to understand your system and to improve the accuracy of BSmith is to focus on the volume of wort you collect in the boil.  It's the one thing you can accurately control every brew, and water volume has the biggest impact on dilution of the wort sugars collected, and also the subsequent concentration of the boil by evaporation.  In partial mash, it may be a little tougher, but you could still standardize the amount of water used to rinse the grains, and tell that to BSmith so it would know how much water came from the mash process, and how much to add straight to the DME. 

Click to expand...

I agree with sgauvain's original suggestion.  For PM, it's an issue because it can cause you to use more sparge water than you'd otherwise expect.  And for extract brewers, if you let BeerSmith calculate a boil volume, you can wind up with a dangerously-full kettle after adding the many pounds of extract, which are not being taken into account in the boil volume calculation.

I know that the brewer can take control of the volumes based on experience, but why not have the software take care of that for you, if it can.  Software should solve problems, not create extra work.