Is this calculation wrong,...or I am reading it incorrectly

Hi there,

Okay, so I was brewing my first all-grain the other day. Finally managed to get all the gear, and get set up, so set off to do a Robust Porter. I put the ingredient list into BeerSmith (bought a ingredient kit of my LHBS). Now, my grain bill was around 5Kg, but as you can see from the BeerSmith screen shot, it tells me (if I am reading it right) that I need 6.35l to mash. Having not really done this before I don't know much better, so off I went. Mash looked pretty thick and paste like, and I have subsequently read that I should be using about 2.6L per Kg of grain. Ended up with an OG of about 1.079,..which is way high.

My question then, if why is BeerSmith showing such a low ratio of water to grain. Is this a bug, or am I misreading the page? Help!

Hi,
  I'm not sure how you got this thick a mash.  The default mash profile for "Single Infusion, Light Body, No Mash Out" in BeerSmith uses 1.25 quarts/lb of mash.  That does not change when you apply it to a recipe so I don't know how you got to such a low level without changing it.

Brad

Hi Brad,

I think I have figured this out. As I am in New Zealand and brew in metric, I have set all my values as KGs and Litres under settings. When I went into "edit step" under the mash profile to have a look what was under the hood it was showing a water / grain ration of 1.183 L per Kg. This would be correct if it was L to pounds, as 1.183 litres is 1.24 qts. So I think the software isn't converting this amount to reflect the change from pounds to Kgs. I haven't messed with it,...I'm not smart enough to edit settings.  I have however now changed this to 2.6L per Kg of grain, which is now giving me a reading of around 14 kgs which sounds a lot better and closer to the mark for a grain bill of 5.37kg.

Great software package by the way, as a newbie to brewing this is making brew day both easy, and fun!

R,

Damon
Wellington
New Zealand