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Beersmith predicted 63, measured gravity was 92 - how?

bbshopplf

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When building my recipe in BeerSmith 3, I couldn't find my sole fermentable (Briess CBW Munich DME) in the database, so I had to add it, copying another that I -thought- was similar. The potential was set to 1.035, which I now believe was the problem.

But I don't understand how to add that into BeerSmith, bsaed upon Briess technical sheet. They don't have a field that simply says "Potential" or whatnot, and of course they have a table of several gravities and the appropriate amount of product to add. I wish I'd confirmed BeerSmith's numbers against that, but that's just a valuable lesson learned there.

Today I've been playing around with that "Potential" field in my recipe's fermentable, to see if I can use that to force BeerSmith to predict an OG closer to what I ended up with.

I can get it to where BeerSmith almost predicts the gravity I ended up with, however I can't add a Potential higher than 1.046 in that fermentable (no matter what I add, it reverts back to 1.046), and that still doesn't get me quite there. It now predicts an OG of 1.084, which is closer to what I ended up with, but my brews are -never- that far off from BeerSmith. Of course I acknowledge there's a first time for everything.

Any advice/insight would be welcome. To be clear, I love this software, and I remain completely supportive of it. I picked up BS3 during the pre-sale, as there was no question I was going to upgrade.
 

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The potential of most DME is 1.045. The potential for most LME is 1.035 - 1.038 because it is a little less concentrated. I agree that the Briess datasheet is not as clear as it could be. Looking at the Golden Light DME sheet (the only one I have) it says for an OG of 1.040 use 0.89 lbs/gal and for 1.050 use 1.22 lbs/gal. Taking the average of these, you can conclude that 1 lb/gal will give OG of 1.045. That is the number to put into BeerSmith. You will also be getting some contribution from the Caramel 40.If you change it from Steep to Mash  you will see the predicted OG go up by a few points. Beyond that any issues are likely to be with the volumes. If you boiled off more than expected you would end up with a smaller volume of higher gravity wort.


--GF
 
Wow, I really appreciate the quick and thorough reply!

Changing Steep to Mash did make quite a difference.

Do you feel like what I did is more like a mash than a steep:

1. I added my 2 lbs of DME to cold water, then began heating it.
2. At 157 deg, I added the Crystal and stuck the pot in my warm oven for 30 minutes, with temp fluctuation limited to 157-159.
3. Resumed heating the water and boiled as normal, adding my remaining DME 15 minutes prior to the end of the boil (it wasn't until this point when I thought to myself, "man this a LOT of malt").

Would you consider what I did with the Crystal more of a "mash" than a "steep" (hence contributing more to the OG)?
 
Steeping vs mashing depends on the type of grain. Steeping will not allow enzymes to convert the starches to sugar, so for most grains steeping will not add any sugars to the wort. For caramel or crystal malts, though, the conversion has already happened before the malt was packaged. Steeping them dissolves the sugar into the wort. The way to be sure that BeerSmith knows this is to call them mashed.

--GF
 
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