Miscalculation error after changing water/grain ratio

[freudhawk]

After hearing Basic Brewings podcast on water/grist ratio's effect of efficiency I decided I would try it out on my latest recipe (Scottish Strong Ale). I changed it to 2.0 quarts/1lb grain instead of my usual 1.25. Well, I was able to edit my mash in the recipe view and when it came time to brew, my brewsheet looked normal. In the top part it was calculating 8 gallons of brewing water to get me to a pre-boil volume of 6.31 gallons which would boil down to 5.25 gallons. GREAT, I thought!

Unfortunately, as I am a new father and am not getting much sleep,  I blindly followed the rest of the instructions and didn't see Beersmith's error. For my mash it stated: Mash in with 29.62 quarts (about 7.5 gallons). It then said to drain my mash tun and sparge with 3.36 gallons of sparge water. As my brewpot is getting near the top (a 10 gallon pot), I'm groggily thinking...crap, I'm going to be having a VERY long boil. As you can guess I had to boil 2 hours to get it down close to where I needed. I missed my OG badly (1.062 instead of 1.074) so this will obviously more of a Scottish "sorta kinda heavy" instead of a "wee Heavy"  .

So, how do we get Beersmith to calculate the mash correctly after editing the water/grist ratio?

[BeerSmith]

Hi,
  I'm not absolutely sure, but is it possible you had a lot of sugars, adjuncts, extracts or other non-grain ingredients in the recipe?  While working on BeerSmith 2.0 over the weekend I noticed that the program blindly totals all of the "fermentable" ingredients when scaling the mash profile rather than just the mashable grains.  If you had a lot of sugars or other adjuncts this could be a problem.  If this is the bug, I apologize.  Surprisingly no one caught it in the last 5+ years or I would have corrected it much sooner.

  If not, could you post the recipe so I can take a look at it? 

Cheers,
Brad

[freudhawk]

I will post the recipe when I get home later tonight, but my recipe didn't have a lot of adjuncts. Off the top of my head it was 12 lbs 2-row, 1.5lbs Munich, 1.25 lbs CaraMunich, .06 lbs Chocolate Malt. Hop additions were Northern Brewer (60 min, 8% 1oz), and Perle (15 minutes, 7.7% .5 oz). Yeast White Labs California Ale. 

[MaltLicker]

....I noticed that the program blindly totals all of the "fermentable" ingredients when scaling the mash profile rather than just the mashable grains.

I've run into a variant of this issue with pre-boil gravity.  BSmith includes all sugars, even cane, honey, and DME that many brewers add late in the boil.  I've freaked out a few friends, saying their pre-boil grav was really low, until we realized the syrup, cane or DME wasn't added yet. 

Would be neat to have a pre-boil grav from just the mash, and then another number with all sugars included. 

[BeerSmith]

Thanks Maltlicker,
  I'll take a look at that - I'm already planning some extended statistics for recipes and of course I'm going to correct the issue with mash scaling for future versions.

Cheers,
Brad

[freudhawk]

Here is the recipe on Beersmith.

[BeerSmith]

Thanks,
  I looked at the recipe you just posted and I'm having trouble following your problem above.  Both brewsheets I could see list 1.08 gallons as the sparge water for batch sparging, which seems roughly right.  Did your printout show a different amount for sparging?

Thanks,
Brad

[freudhawk]

Thanks,
  I looked at the recipe you just posted and I'm having trouble following your problem above.  Both brewsheets I could see list 1.08 gallons as the sparge water for batch sparging, which seems roughly right.  Did your printout show a different amount for sparging?

Thanks,
Brad

I agree 1.08 gallons sounds right, but my brewsheet says 3.36 gallons. I attached a screenshot, and I really appreciate your help with this!!!

[BeerSmith]

OK,
  It looks like some kind of bug as far as I can tell - I'm not sure exactly where the problem is as an earlier version of BeerSmith I had on my laptop correctly calculated 1.08 gallons of sparge, but the latest version is showing 3.3 gal.

  I'll take a look at the code this weekend and see if I can find out what is going on - it is obviously a problem in the batch sparge options.  It looks like it is splitting the batch sparge evenly but not correctly taking into account the large first batch drain.  Interestingly if you check the "Drain mash tun before sparging" it generates the correct amount of 1.08 gallons.

Cheers,
Brad

[atarlecky]

Hiya,

I have a similar problem in where sometime my batch sparges don't show up at all!

See the following topic:

http://www.beersmith.com/forum/index.php?topic=2156.0

- alex

[freudhawk]

OK,
  It looks like some kind of bug as far as I can tell - I'm not sure exactly where the problem is as an earlier version of BeerSmith I had on my laptop correctly calculated 1.08 gallons of sparge, but the latest version is showing 3.3 gal.

  I'll take a look at the code this weekend and see if I can find out what is going on - it is obviously a problem in the batch sparge options.  It looks like it is splitting the batch sparge evenly but not correctly taking into account the large first batch drain.  Interestingly if you check the "Drain mash tun before sparging" it generates the correct amount of 1.08 gallons.

Cheers,
Brad

Sounds great Brad, thanks for the help. Just another reason I really love your product!!!

[BeerSmith]

I'm hoping to have this fixed over the weekend...give me a few days.

Brad

[freudhawk]

bump 

[BeerSmith]

Hi,
  I made the fix today and posted it in the following link:
    http://beersmith.com/beersmith_patch.zip

  The file contains the beersmith.exe executable only, which you need to drop into your BeerSmith directory to overwrite the old one.

  Please give it a try and let me know if it fixes things.  If it does, I will post it as an official patch.

Thanks,
Brad

[freudhawk]

Brad,

It worked. Thanks for the fix!!! (Ironically, I just kegged this beer today)