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Beersmith Lost Strike Water

bobo1898

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Just started using Beersmith and I absolutely love it. I've been trying to understand my efficiency and part of that is understanding my equipment.

My mash tun is a kettle with a false bottom and spigot. My spigot is below my false bottom. My Lauter Tun Deadspace is 0.41 gallons (literally wort/water that is left behind when the spigot runs dry). This does not include the space above the spigot and below the false bottom. Which is wort/water that actually drains with the mash.

Let's say that the space between my false bottom and the base of the kettle totals 1 gallon. 0.41 gallons stays in the kettle while the 0.59 gallons drains from it. You can see that when calculating my strike water, I have a good portion of water that isn't in contact with the grain (effectively changing my mash). Is there something in the equipment profile that accounts for this?

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't change the Lauter Tun Deadspace to 1 gallon because the 0.59 gallons isn't left behind. Should I just manually add an additional 0.59 gallons to my strike water every time I brew? Or can I input this number somewhere in the software?

Please help!
 
The dead space is the amount of wort which cannot be drained during normal operations.  Thus the amount of dead space, as you have already figured out is 0.41 gallons.  You can enter this into your equipment profile.  Unfortunately, there is no really good way to account for the other 0.59 gallons which are not in direct contact with the grains other than setting your water to grain ratio in your mash profile to a figure that will more than cover that amount. 
 
Oginme said:
Unfortunately, there is no really good way to account for the other 0.59 gallons which are not in direct contact with the grains other than setting your water to grain ratio in your mash profile to a figure that will more than cover that amount.

Yeah I was thinking of that too. I just assumed that, that will change my mash efficiency within Beersmith since water to grain ratio and mash thickness effect the sugars being converted. In this case, it shouldn't affect the sparge water, right? I'm just mashing with more water and sparging with less?
 
bobo1898 said:
I just assumed that, that will change my mash efficiency within Beersmith since water to grain ratio and mash thickness effect the sugars being converted.

Not in the scenario you've initially outlined. Mash efficiency is made up of conversion efficiency and sparge efficiency. You can still get 100% conversion in the scenario you've outlined. Sparge efficiency may be less, if you don't fully recirculate the water under the false bottom. This may require you to recirculate first runnings longer than just clarifying the wort, so that the excess water has enough contact time to extract sugar.
 
hasn't that .59 gallons been in contact with the grain as it has made its way through the mash tun?
 
jtoots said:
hasn't that .59 gallons been in contact with the grain as it has made its way through the mash tun?

I usually fill the tun with water first, then add my grain. So it hasn't be in direct contact with the grain. If I did the reverse, or if I progressively added both, that 0.59 gallons may be in contact with the grain but only initially as it just finds it's way to the bottom.

I do the vorlauf several times until clear, so it does have a form of contact with the grain. But this contact isn't for the full amount of time I'm converting.
 
brewfun said:
Not in the scenario you've initially outlined. Mash efficiency is made up of conversion efficiency and sparge efficiency. You can still get 100% conversion in the scenario you've outlined. Sparge efficiency may be less, if you don't fully recirculate the water under the false bottom. This may require you to recirculate first runnings longer than just clarifying the wort, so that the excess water has enough contact time to extract sugar.

I guess what I meant was, will Beersmith give me inaccurate predictions in gravity while changing mash thickness and such? Because Beersmith doesn't know that I have 0.59 gallons of strike water that doesn't touch the grain. It now only thinks I'm adding more water. Am I not following? Sorry for any confusion.
 
Honestly, I think if you 'bake' the 0.59 gal into your mash profile using the water to grain ratio for low gravity beers, the change in the actual water to grain ratio for higher gravity recipes will most likely not be detectable.  It will have such a small effect in the long run compared to many other aspects of brewing. 

Braukaiser demonstrated an increase in 'No Sparge' efficiency correlated with a greater water to grain ratio (5.0 l/kg vs 2.57 l/kg) in mashing, but no significant change in the attenuation of the wort.  If you are doing no sparge, this may affect you to some extent, but it does not sound like that is what you are doing.

I realize that part of what you are looking for is probably consistency.  I have found that doing the same thing every time leads to consistency.  So once you set up your mash profile to account for the .59 gallons, and you stick with that profile, you will have achieved that goal.
 
bobo1898 said:
I guess what I meant was, will Beersmith give me inaccurate predictions in gravity while changing mash thickness and such?

Not in total gravity. What will change is the first runnings gravity, which BeerSmith doesn't predict anyway. The total volume of recovered wort plus loss to dead space is used to calculate the preboil volume and gravity.
 
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