I use Beersmith to help me construct recipies. I use a 10 gallon cooler for the mash tun and HLT. I developed a recipie for a Blonde Ale and the mash water called for 41+ quarts. That’s over 10 gallons!
This seemed wrong to me.. I contacted beersmith and Brad stated that my system might have been incorrect. I checked everything and it was correct. 5 gallon batch in a 10 gallon cooler system.
Any thoughts on this? I had to scale back some on the water. I felt like it affected my ABV. (3.2)
The beer turned out pretty good, but a little bit more punch would have been nice. Does this sound right for a blonde ale? Any help, as usual, is greatly appreciated.
The estimated post boil was 6.25 gallons. The estimated OG was 1.055. I need to check my notes to see what it actually was. I’ll check and get back to you.
It just seemed like a lot of water to start with, more than my cooler would hold.
Typically I mash in around 1 to 1.1 or 1.2 qts / lb of grain. It varies as I want to hit an even amount of mash water say 2.5 gal. I fly sparge with 2 qts per lb and adjust adding makeup water to the boiL kettle or increase boil times for higher og beers
I also use BeerSmith for recipe development and it’s not unusual at all to use 9.5 gal of water for a 5 gal batch. Much of the extra water gets boiled off and absorbed into the grain.
In BS, once you achieve an accurate Equipment Profile, the software does pretty good with its predictions. But the Equipment Profile is key.
I would like to reiterate the equipment profile. Knowing these parameters is key to consistent outcomes.
For example: I brew 3.5 gal in the keg batches. I use no sparge full volume mash and target 4.75 gal in the kettle pre boil because I know I’ll boil off .75 gal at 2.8 kW. Due to absorption, system dead spaces, and hose/pump volumes for a 1.048 post boil wort I typically use 8.5 lb grain and 6 gal strike.
Again, knowing the parameters for your system is key to consistent outcomes. Once equipment profile is reliable, when changing gravity by adding/removing grain the predicted strike is remarkably accurate.
if your strike prediction exceeds MLT volume you have a cpl choices: brew a smaller finished batch or withhold the excess, drain the MLT, add the withheld amount, drain it into the kettle and boil as usual (aka Sparge)
Above comments are all relevant. Setting your equipment profile in Beer Smith is important.
There are several missing variables that are not mentioned such as grain bill amount and boil time. These will effect the amount of water you will need.
Just for informational purposes, I shoot for 1.4 - 1.5 quarts per pound of grain in my mash. I have found that a slightly thinner mash gives me better extraction than a thicker mash. I just brewed a 10 gallon batch of IPA on Sunday at 1.43 quarts/lb and got a mash efficiency of 90% with 8 gals. of mash liquor, 23.5 lbs. of grain and a 60 minute boil. Total water volume for mash and sparge was 15.5 gallons. As you obviously know you will need enough head space to account for the level in the mash tun when you add the grain.
While the mash is doing it’s thing, I heat my sparge water then transfer to another cooler where I always fly sparge to the level suggested in Beer Smith.
Almost certainly your equipment profile was configured incorrectly, or you used the wrong profile. You can go the Mash tab of the recipe to verify, and manually adjust if needed, the strike water amount.
I was just checking things out. I made some adjustments. I’m using the beersmith 4 now and I do like it better. It looks like some of the tabs are giving me different numbers. I imagine it’s me getting used to the new changes. I have a 10 gallon cooler system and usually always make 5 gallon batches. I don’t really understand why that would have gotten off, but I’ll check it again.
I do 5 gal batches in a RIMS system, batch sparge. On average my grain bill is 18 lb and treat 9 gal of h2o. That leaves 5.31gal mash and the rest for 2 equal batch sparges. Did you calculate for h2o grain absorption, boil off and dead space in mash tun and boil kettle? Don’t worry have a homebrew.
An update…I sent Brad a copy of my recipie. He noticed that my dead space was figured way too high. I was confused exactly what the dead space was. This is the space under my false bottom. I was thinking it was the space above the mash, usually 5 or more gallons. There is not a lot of space under the false bottom, so when I made this adjustment it corrected the water needed for the recipie. This last batch turned out good, but the next one will be even better!
Good observation from Mr. Smith. I actually have my dead space in BS4 set to “0”. This is because I preheat my mash tun (10 gal Igloo cooler) with 130° water. After about 10 minutes, I drain the tun and in doing so, my tun is left with about 1/2 gal on hot water under the false bottom which fills the “dead space”.
That’s a good idea. One of my biggest problems has been hitting my mash temperatures. I have pre-heated before and that seemed to help. I’ve also heated the strike water to about 10 or more degrees higher than the suggested temperature, but usually it drops way down when it goes into a 68-70 degree cooler. Is that why you pre-heat your tun?
Yes — my basement brewery is usually around 65°f year round. That means my mash tun is 65° also. So, by pre- heating it to about 130°, I get much closer to my target mash temperature. This process allows me to hit my target within 1-2° every time.
So, BS knows my tun temp (130°), AND my grain temp (65°). BS then calculates the strike water temp. I usually add about 3-4° because I loose about that much in the piping between my HLT and my tun.