HERMS Coil Losses in equipment profiles.

[jekeane]

I'm sure this is located somewhere but my google / search skills are coming up empty.

I have had a few batches where my volume numbers have bounced around a bit and I'm not entirely sure why. Although, I assume user error at some point.

I am trying to better understand my equipment profile in beersmith when it pertains to losses.

My HERMS coil, pump and hoses hold .5 gallon of liquid.

In my equipment profile,

Should I be adding .5 gallon to the "Mash Tun Addition" cell?

Should I be adding .5 gallon to the "Lauter Tun Losses" cell?

[Oginme]

Mash tun addition is wort which is under a false bottom or in recirculating lines that is recovered during the draining of the mash tun.

Lauter tun losses is volume losses in the mash tun or in recirculating lines which cannot be recovered when draining the mash tun.

Does this clear it up any?

[jekeane]

Yes and no.  It seems that works for the mash tun addition in a herms coil because that is recoverable when I start my sparge.

My question i guess is with the lauter tun loss. If I am pumping through the coil to the top of the grain bed for fly sparging important if I'm going by the volume loss on my HLT sight glass?  I can see how it is thinking about it.  If I'm just marking off 5 gallons on the sight glass only 4.5 is actually making it into the Mash.

[Oginme]

So if you took 5 gallons of water and ran it through your HERMS coils for a few minutes and then drained the water out and measured it, that would give you your mash tun losses.

[jekeane]

yeah I get the mash tun loss now.

the latter tun or really just my spare addition is what I am wondering about now.

Normally if beer smith tells me I need 5 gallons sparge water I mark off 5 gallons on the HLT sight glass and pump till there.  I am now realizing this means I am sparging with .5 gallons less water than necessary because of what is left in the coil. 

So do I just need to set the tape .5 gallons lower and not adjust anything or does adjusting the latter tun loss to .5 somehow account for this?  When I change that number it seems to only change the mash volume not the sparge.

[Oginme]

When I tried fly sparging, I would sparge to my pre-boil volume in the boil kettle.  I didn't worry about how much actual water I used, only what I collected.  In your case, given that you have 0.5 gal left in the lines (if I am reading this properly), then you would sparge such that 5 gallons of sparge water sent into the mash tun (i.e. with 5.5 gallons of water).

[jekeane]

and then just leave the latter tun loss blank as I am self accounting for the coil loss?

[RCorley]

I don't know if this will help or not but here goes.  We used to have volume issues with our HERMS also.  What we do now is flush the coil completely when we raise to rest at 170F.  We subtract this water from our sparge volume.  Then after sparging we end up with the correct amount.  We do this without changing any of the Beersmith 2.0 profiles.  We're using the stainless kegs profile btw.

Rusty