Hello! And...help?!

Hi, all! I've been brewing for a few years now, but just (ie, finally) picked up the Beer Smith software. I set up my equipment profile today and plugged in a few of my favorite recipes, but I'm wondering if I did something wrong. Essentially, the few recipes that I have input are all showing up as much higher gravity, much higher IBU, and much higher overall ABV than has been my experience with the beers, at least according to the Beer Smith style chart. So...

1) Do you think I'm inputting something wrong, either in the recipe itself or from my equipment profile (FTR: I mostly brew 1-gallon all-grain batches, so I set up the equipment profile for my 2-gal stainless steel pot, and after looking it over several times, I *think* the profile is as correct as I can make it.)

2) Have I really just not been brewing to "true" style all these years?! I don't enter any homebrew contests and so I don't get super strict about brewing exactly to style -- I mostly just brew what tastes good to me within a general style range. Even so, none of my brews are totally wacky or crazy hop bombs or anything, so the fact that my recipes are showing up off the charts was a little perplexing to me!

Any thoughts? Mostly, I just want to make sure I'm using the software correctly before I go galavanting off to the homebrew store!

EmmaC said:

I mostly brew 1-gallon all-grain batches, so I set up the equipment profile for my 2-gal stainless steel pot, and after looking it over several times, I *think* the profile is as correct as I can make it.)

Click to expand...

One-gallon batches are pretty small, so I would suspect some volume or sizing issues in the Equipment Profile is to blame.    However, making batches 1/5 the size of the typical 5-gallon batch could magnify any variances due to "normal brewing hazards."  By that I mean if I'm off by two points of OG because I boiled too long, you'd possibly be off ten points. 

You'd have to post some output from your setup to get much insight from users here.