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Brewsmith terminology question

beernutz

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I have been a satisfied Brewsmith customer for a year but recently ran into a hopefully simple question which prompted me to create an account here in search of an answer.

The Brewsmith software reports both a 'End of Boil Vol:' and a 'Final Bottling Vol:', the latter of which always appears to be smaller than the first.  For example for an upcoming 10 gallon batch it shows 
End of Boil Vol: 11.44 gal
Final Bottling Vol: 10.17 gal

My question is, what accounts for that 1.21 gallon difference between the two?  Also, is there a place in the Brewsmith documentation found using the Help menu where this question would have been answered?  I searched and couldn't find it.
 
beernutz said:
My question is, what accounts for that 1.21 gallon difference between the two?

In a nutshell: You do. ...I'll get back to this....

Also, is there a place in the Brewsmith documentation found using the Help menu where this question would have been answered?

Parts of brewing are so well covered and talked about that it's considered beyond the need for documentation. And yet for some very new to the hobby, the basics are not so obvious. Heck, the best part of brewing is the non-stop learning that goes on for everyone, yet we can to forget how far we come in a very short time.

At the end of your boil you're obviously not going to bottle right away. There is an intermediate step of fermentation. Bottling comes last and you may have other steps to follow.

On the way from the kettle to the fermenter, you'll chill the wort. This accounts for a 4% reduction of volume by default, because the hot wort contracts. Next, maybe you don't get every last drop out of the kettle. Hops and protein break are usually left behind, but they are wet, holding onto some wort.

After fermentation (which will reduce a little volume because some of the sugar is converted into carbon dioxide) you may rack into a clean carboy in order to let the beer settle, clear as well as maybe dry hop, add fruit or otherwise move forward with your recipe. In that transfer, you'll leave behind the vast majority of yeast, which again is wet, holding onto some beer.

Maybe you'll once again rack the beer into a bottling bucket, leaving behind more yeast and maybe some spent hops which are... wait for it.... Wet, holding onto some beer.

  So back to my cryptic opening. You determine what BeerSmith gives you for a bottling estimate in your equipment profile.

You can assign a number to losses between the kettle and the fermenter, plus losses between fermentation and bottling.  In each case, BeerSmith expects you to use an accumulated total in the losses field. In the best case, these reflect your actual average losses according to your brewing techniques and records.

You can also change the cooling shrinkage number and your boil off number.

BeerSmith is a very powerful brewing tool with a lot of moving parts. Some of them require more explanation than others. The equipment profile now has a setup wizard in it, which helps in determining some of the numbers.
 
Thanks for the quick answer.  It may not have have been apparent from what I wrote, though I've only used Brewsmith for only a year I brewed my first all-grain batch in 1991 and a few more since then. 

I've kegged for about 20 years and therefore don't use a bottling bucket so my end of boil volume is pretty close to my final bottling volume, certainly not 1.2 gallons different.  The size of that difference just confused me but I'm easily confused.

I am looking at the Pot and Cooler 10 gallon all grain equipment profile now to figure out how to make it more closely match my experiences.  Thanks again.
 
When you open that profile it has some defaults, as all of the equipment profiles do. In this case, 1 gallon loss to trub/chiller. Plus 0.75 gallon loss to fermenter. You can change these values to match your system performance.

You can also create a totally custom profile by using the profile wizard.

Once you have this profile, you'll need to update your recipes with it. BeerSmith keeps equipment, mash and carbonations profiles within each recipe independent of the global version.

This is to preserve each recipe as it was made at that time so you know exactly what happened. Plus, it's handy for some recipes, like highly hopped styles, where you may have more or less losses from ingredients.
 
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