• Welcome to the new forum! We upgraded our forum software with a host of new boards, capabilities and features. It is also more secure.
    Jump in and join the conversation! You can learn more about the upgrade and new features here.

BeerSmith Mashing Process Water Volumes

InVinoVeritas

Apprentice
Joined
Oct 26, 2013
Messages
13
Reaction score
0
Location
Milwaukee, WI
Here are my questions:
Where is my failure in getting BeerSmith to drive the mashing process?
Why doesn't BeerSmith auto update absorption rates based on grain amounts and hop additions?

Background (sorry, a lot of info):
Ok, I'll lead off saying I'm perhaps trying to learn and consume too much at the same time and I have a lot going on in my head.  I'll try and be as clear as possible.  My experience thus far has been with extract brewing and one BIAB brew.  I plan on making a rectangular mash tun cooler, with a sparge arm and incorporated copper tube manifold.  I have read How To Brew nearly front to back and this has been my biggest reference.

With that background, I recently purchased BeerSmith and have as my first fun task started converting my pumpkin ale BIAB recipe, which I liked to a fly sparging recipe.  I'm confused with the numbers I'm getting from BeerSmith for the mashing water infusion, getting a total volume of around 9 gallons (seems high), a pre boil of 6.47 gallons  (seems high) and a sparge 0.7 gallons (seems low).  I'm updated my equipment and recipe with the following numbers (all in gallons):

Grain Absorption: 0.72
Hops Absorption: 0.06
Fermentation Absorption: 0.3
Mash Tun Deadspace: 0.39
Boil Off: 0.54
Batch Size: 5.3
Bottling Size: 5.0
Total water Needed: 7.01

Mash Process:
Protein Rest: 122 F, 10 minutes
Saccharification Rest: 156 F, 90 minutes
Mash Out: 168 F, 10 minutes

Brewer's Friend Infusion Numbers:
Grain weight is 10.87 lbs
1. So assuming 1 qt/lbs, that gives 10.87 quarts (133 F strike) to get grain to 122 F
2. Add 7.9 quarts (@ boiling) to reach 156 F
3. Add 5.7 quarts (@ boiling) to reach 168 F
Total water by this recommendation: 6.12 gallons

If I take my first 7.01 and the 6.12, the difference could be the sparge at 0.89.  This still seems to low.  Referencing Palmer, he recommends 1 to 2 quarts per grain pound for mashing and that sparging should be about 1.5 times the volume of your mash.  Is every one running long boils to boil off the extra fluid.
 
You could export and post up the recipe file .bsmx that would be the easiest way to look at it.
 
Just off the top of my head, without seeing the recipe, your grain absorption looks low to me.  You should be losing at least 1.25 gallons with 10+ lbs of grain.  But do upload the recipe and double check that you have the recipe set to all grain and your equipment profile keyed in.
 
grathan said:
You could skip the protein rest no?

Are my ingredients sufficiently modified to eliminate the protein rest, in particular the 6-row, which I've only used once with a protein rest?  I got my basic recipe blueprint from homebrewtalk, had no protein rest and from Zymurgy, which had rest.
 
I did a recipe last year that needed a protein rest. I just mashed in the kettle. That way I could apply heat to do the steps without adding water. Then after mash out step I dumped into my regular mash tun to lauter the grains. Though i don't typically do protein rest or mash out steps.

 
Found my mistakes and think this is the final brew, see attached.  I made a custom add for pumpkin puree.  Marked it as an adjunct, which had the software adding grain absorption.  Another mistake, I thought "Loss to Trub and Chiller" was the same as grain absorption.  All things have been righted.  Thx!
 

Attachments

  • Headless Horseman Pumpkin Ale.bsmx
    24.7 KB · Views: 173
Back
Top