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New to BIAB and BeerSmith.. Question about boil time in equip setup..

geardaddys

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Oct 19, 2014
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Hello,

  I've been doing extract brews for a few years now, and I'm taking the leap into BIAB soon (as soon as I get this question figured out!).. I will be using a 15 gallon kettle, and have done some boil testing and found that in 60 minutes I get 1.75 gallons of boil off.. I gathered all of the data for my kettle and set up an equipment profile and entered 60 minutes as the "boil time" in my equipment setup field, and 1.75G for my boil off.. All seems well at this piont..

  I've downloaded a recipe from BS cloud that calls for a 90 minute boil. In the recipe design tab, I entered 90 minutes for boil time, then choose my new equipment profile that I'd made for my kettle. (Also, in the equip profile I checked the box for "calculate boil volumes as a percentage of boil time"..) In the volumes tab, BS is calculating 8.93 gallons of water total needed.. This number is a bit (about a gallon) below 3 other online calculators that I've looked at.. So tonight, I started playing with the equipment profile and changed the 60 minutes to 90.. This put my total water volume up to approx 10, and is more in line with what I can manually calculate.. ?? My question for you guys is this: What is the purpose of the boil time in the design tab if it appears that the boil time in the equipment profile takes precedence over the recipe design tab. A friend who knows much more about this has told me to set up a generic equpment profile for my kettle, with a 60 minute boil.. 1.75 GPH boil off, and then change the boil time only in the design tab.. I'm not convinced this is correct because I'm getting funky numbers..

  Hoping someone can shed some light on this for me.. I'm sure I just don't understand how the program "thinks" yet.. Thanks very much in advance..

Cheers,

John
 
When you change the boil time in the recipe tab, it is reflected in the equipment profile within that recipe. However, you have to have the "Use Boil Off as an Hourly Rate" box checked, too.

Tip: Don't just change the recipe equipment to yours. Use the Scale Recipe function to change it to your specs. Then change the mash to your preferred BIAB profile.
 
Brewfun,

  THANK YOU. That makes perfect sense, and you just saved me from a giant error with your second tip.. I downloaded the recipe and then changed it to my equip profile right on the design tab.. Had no idea I needed to use the scale wizzard to adjust the recipe to my equipment.. That changed the quantity of every ingredient in my ingredient list.. whew.. Thank you again for your time in responding!

Cheers,
John
 
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