Dead space under false bottom of mash tun

Hi,

I did my first all grain brew last weekend and I never took into account the dead space under the false bottom when I was working out my strike water.

My app tells me to use 44.97 L of water @ 168.9F to mash 36lb of grain (60 min at 152F)

What temp should the strike water be if I add another 6 liters of water to account for the dead space under the false bottom of the mash tun?

Are there any calculators or would anyone be so kind to tell me what the new strike temp should be?


Many thanks!

Molly

Molly said:

What temp should the strike water be if I add another 6 liters of water to account for the dead space under the false bottom of the mash tun?

Are there any calculators or would anyone be so kind to tell me what the new strike temp should be?

Click to expand...

You can add the deadspace volume to the mash tab in the recipe. Click the "Adjust..." box below the volume field. BeerSmith will recalculate your strike water volume and might lower the temperature a little.

The space under the false bottom is truly deadspace if the wort is unrecoverable. Other wise, it is just additional water in your liquor to grist ratio.

Here's a link to a detailed guide to creating an equipment profile: http://www.beersmith.com/forum/index.php/topic,5140.0.html

The dead space should be accounted for in your equipment profile.

Brewfun mentioned that the space under the false bottom may not be "dead space". What he's referring to is that some systems have drains below the false bottom, so can drain part of that volume. Try filling your mash tun with water to a bit above the false bottom, then drain it the same way you would if you were brewing (I get greedy and tip the mash tun so I leave only about a quart of wort in my mash tun. Others just let the tun sit there.) then measure the water remaining after you drain.

It's a good idea to measure your other losses the same way. The more accurate the measurements you put into the profile, the more accurate the predictions it delivers.

What I did for the next version of BeerSmith (2.3 coming in July I hope!) is add a second field for a mash tun addition to the equipment profile.  This would let you add extra water to the first mash step to account for recoverable volume under the mash tun without recording it as lost deadspace.

This should resolve most of the issues people are having with setups that have large volumes under the mash screen but it is not necessarily "lost" space.

Brad

Thanks Brad, can't wait to see v2.3 and that new feature.  I struggle with that on my More Beer 1550 Tippy Dump.  The flat false bottom sits above the drain.  There is 2.08 gallons under the false bottom.  True "dead space" is 1.50 gallons and 0.82 gallons when using a dip tube.  The dead space field on BeerSmith is something I have truly never really figured out and do not see much commentary on around the web. Until the new version, how would you suggest handling these variables and the software?