Est. Mash Efficiency

I believe I understand the difference between mash efficiency and brewhouse efficiency, but I’m still confused as to how Beersmith calculates them.

I just finished an English Barleywine brewday. Beersmith had my estimated mash efficiency at 101.2%, so it estimated my pre-boil gravity as 1.084. In reality my mash efficiency was 81.5% (closer to what I’d expect) and my pre-boil gravity was 1.068. The problem is that when I'm developing a recipe in Beersmith my IBU, ABV, etc calculations are off because Beersmith is calculating too high an estimated gravity.

What variables in Beersmith do I need to adjust so that it calculates the estimated mash efficiency closer to my actual values of around 80%?

Take a look at your equipment profile.  Enter your total efficiency in there and BS will calculate your mash eff using that along with loss to trub/chiller.

Mark

"loss to trub and chiller" is usually the culprit. 

If you post your gravity, and volume measurements from preboil, post boil, and into fermenter. We can help sort it out.

My measured pre-boil gravity was 1.068, which was an actual mash efficiency of 81%.  My pre-boil volume was 9.5 gal.  I boiled for 90 minutes.  In my equipment profile I have the evaporation rate set to 11%, but under the "vols" tab in the recipe it shows an evaporation rate of 15%.  The boil off which equated to 3 gal, cooling loss at 0.26 gal and trub loss at 1 gal for a volume into the fermenter of 5.25 gal.

In my equipment profile, if I put my brewhouse efficiency down to 70% then the estimated mash eff gets lowered to something much closer to what I actually achieved.

Is my trub loss and cooling loss set too high?

What was your gravity into the fermenter? What was your recipe?

Gravity into the fermenter was 1.094.  The recipe was an English Barleywine.  21 lbs. pale 2 row, 12 oz. special B and 8 oz. caramunich.