Help with setting up equipment profile

I am having troubles with sparge temperatures.

This week I brewed a batch of beer. It was 80*F (grain, tun) I had 13lbs of grain and put in 3.5gallons of 173*F water to hit 152*F mash temp.

Beersmith says use infusion temp 165.3*F. It doesn't let you change this number so I assume my equipment calibration numbers must be off? What numbers do I tweak to get my equipment to better match?

I change the tun weight, specific heat, volume of the equipment profile used by the recipe, but it still doesn't change the infusion temperature. thanks


I do see that with the infusion tool that If i use 0.7 instead of o.3 specific heat it gets close to the numbers I want. Perhaps recipes are not linked to their equipment profile changes?

OK, so why would the infusion tool use 0.83 specific heat to get 174*F initial strike when My Equipment recipe uses 1.76 ?


Settings for infusion tool:
Calculation: Initial Strike
Target: 152
water to add: 14qt
Initial mash temp 80
grain weight: 12.75
mash tun weight 5
mash tun specific heat 0.83
infusion water temperature: 174.2

settings for My Equipment:
Batch Size: 5.00 gal
Mash Volume: 12.00 gal
Boil Volume: 5.70 gal
Mash Tun Weight: 5 lbs
Evaporation Rate: 8.8 % Mash Tun Specific Heat: 1.76 cal/g-deg C
Boil Time: 60 Mash Tun Deadspace: 0.00 gal
Top-up for Boiler: 0.00 gal Equip Hop Utilization: 100.00 %
Losses to Trub/Chiller: 0.00 gal Cooling Loss (%): 4.00
Top up water for Fermenter: 0.00 gal

Mash Profile:
Single Infusion, Light Body Batch Sparge
grain temp, mash tun temp: 80
Mash steps: Mash In  Add 14qt water @ 174.1  step temp 152 for 60minutes
adjust temp for equip = yes

my recipe
12.75 lbs of grain

from what I can tell the infusion tool acts independently from the equipment profile. Also I find by setting my specific heat in the equipment profile to .98 instead of the .3 for plastic ( I use a 10 gallon Rubbermaid cooler ) I come much closer to what I know works for my system. Finally if you need to change your sparge temps in a already existing mash profile you can select profiles - mash - ie. single infusion, medium body- then select the step and change the step temp to whatever you like. If you just want to change the one recipe on the upper tabs click on mash then just look for the box that says sparge and edit it there.

cool, thanks. I think I've got it close to dialed in. It took 4 or 5 batches of missed strike temps though.  8) 

It's weird ..... it seems alot of beersmith users have problems with equipment setup and missing strike temps either high or low myself included. There should be a dedicated section just for this IMHO and a list of specific heats and other variables because I literally have seen on the internet 100's of threads on multiple forums with people not know ing how to setup there equipment profile. Just saying.

I noticed you have mash set at low body which makes for higher alchol and low body by lowering mash temp. Try setting to medium or high body if thats what you want and BeerSmith strike temp will go up.

condog said:

I noticed you have mash set at low body which makes for higher alchol and low body by lowering mash temp. Try setting to medium or high body if thats what you want and BeerSmith strike temp will go up.

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I would have if the target wasn't 152*

aschecte said:

It's weird ..... it seems alot of beersmith users have problems with equipment setup and missing strike temps either high or low myself included. There should be a dedicated section just for this IMHO and a list of specific heats and other variables because I literally have seen on the internet 100's of threads on multiple forums with people not know ing how to setup there equipment profile. Just saying.

Click to expand...

I agree.  The support of Beersmith is almost completely community based with only a handful with good knowledge of the software who rarely visit this forum and even those have no idea of the formulas used. The videos are as useless as the help files. The interface is way more complicated than it needs to be. Though it becomes manageable after weeks of tearing your hair out and living with a fear of ever making any changes to the profiles used and is a good tool to have. Though you have to wonder about the direction the software is taking with charging people to store simple recipes. I wonder if it wouldn't be better just to code up a spreadsheet that does everything Beersmith does and not have to worry about one day not being able to access my own recipes.