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Is 'Ajust Mash Vol for DeadSpace' used correctly...?

Alex Red

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Hello,
I have a little question on how the 'Ajust Mash Vol for DeadSpace' works exactly...
THis should just add water compensating the water loss in the Mash Tun deadspace, so, being such water quantity a 'lost water', I would expect that  the 'Water Avail From Mash' reading in the Vols Tab would not change... instead it appears that such a rading result is added with the dead space water, while effectively you should not get that water out of the Mash... So, is this calculation correct...?

More, adding the Mash Tun deadspace water to the mashing, should not it lower of few points the extracted Pre-Boil Gravity...? It appears this is not taken in account for the calulations, and so, is also this calculation correct...?

Could someone explain me batter this point....?

Thanks

Alex
 
There are two places in your equipment profile for additional water for calculation. 

The first 'mash tun water addition' refers to recoverable water which sits under a false bottom.  Since this water is not in direct contact with the grain, it takes a secondary role in solubility of the starches for enzymes to break down into sugars.  The use here is to allow the user to control the water to grain ratio of the water in contact with the grain and not end up with too little to conduct a proper mash.  It will end up draining from the mash tun and contributing to the pre-boil volume.

The second is 'lauter tun losses' which is the volume of water which will not drain from the mash tun.  This volume will not contribute to pre-boil volume.

Depending upon where you added the volume and whether or not it is a recoverable quantity will determine the calculation of total water volume in.

The way BeerSmith does its calculations, you specify the volume into the fermenter, volume losses throughout the process, and the total efficiency of your process.  BeerSmith does the volume calculations backwards from the fermenter volume to determine the total water needed.

Now it applies the total efficiency to determine the amount of sugars which end up in the fermenter and, taking into account losses of sugar at each step, calculates how much sugar is needed from a particular grain bill.  When you change a volume loss in the process, and the associated sugar losses assumed to be included, BeerSmith just increases the amount of sugar which gets extracted from your grain bill.  Note this only works with all-grain or partial mash recipes.  So when you add another water/sugar loss to your process, you will see your mash efficiency change and not your ending gravity reading.

Having worked through the calculations many times by hand, I can assure you the calculations are correct.  I would prefer the software work on a more consistent value, such as mash efficiency, for the sugars extracted into the system but I am not writing the software.  I understand the calculations and cal work within the parameters to make the software work efficiently and correctly for me and my processes.



 
Hello Oginme,
ok, thanks, now it is more clear to me, so investigated and found that probably the recipe had not such parameters updated from the Used Equipment setup, for as I assigned again the same equipment to the recipe, all parameters were then calculated correctly. I though that recipes calculations were done real time looking at the latest settings for the used equipment...
My fault...

Thanks again

Alex

 
One thing to note in BeerSmith is that every recipe is its own little archive.  If you make a change outside of your recipe to a mash or equipment profile, you need to update that recipe to the new profile.  I usually tak on the date of the last version of my equipment profiles so that when I open a recipe, I can see at a glance if it has the latest version represented.

 
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