Beersmith water

[Tipsy]

Finally got back to brewing now that the rainwater tanks have filled up a bit.
I'm still working out Beersmith for the Braumeister.
When I print out the brew steps it says total water needed: 35.21

Lower down the page it says Mash in 25.61 then after all the rests it say to batch sparge with 15.21l of water.

This doesn't seem to add up.
Any suggestions to what I'm doing wrong?

[drsmurto]

Grain absorption accounts for approximately 1L per kg.

[Tipsy]

Grain absorption accounts for approximately 1L per kg.

Shouldn't that be taken into account in the 'Total water needed'?

It's funny, when I had it set up with my esky mash tun the total water always matched the mash in and sparge water.

I better have a more detailed look when I get home.

[Oliver]

Did you end up figuring this out, Tipsy? I am yet to perfect Beersmith recipes that work without adjustment on the Braumeister.

[Tipsy]

Yeah I did Oliver, but I'll have to wait til I'm on my home pc to explain what it was.

[Tipsy]

Hi again Oliver.
Dr. Smurto was right with the grain absorption but I was trying to fix my problem in the equipment profile.
I finally realised that I had to go into the mash profile and change it there.

The grain weight basis was set to 4.5kg where all my old recipes were set to 5kg.

[Tipsy]

Did you end up figuring this out, Tipsy? I am yet to perfect Beersmith recipes that work without adjustment on the Braumeister.

I spoke to soon Oliver.

Brewed a couple of whiskey washes, one with a 20min boil and 1 with no boil.
I ended up with an extra 3 ltrs of wort left in the kettle.

In the advanced options you can change the grain absorption figures. It makes sense that we would be able to drain more from the grain than using a regular mash tun.
When you tick BIAB the absorption figure drops dramatically.

I'm going to try setting mine to 0.66 as Dicko suggests here

I think I am going to do a bit of experimenting.

[claricelinton]

I think it will need little bit of experimentation. It is always advisable to match the water level with mash and batch sparge.

[Tipsy]

It's all good now.
Since following Dickos set up I hit all my targets.
I fill the BM to the 25lt mark and sparge with the difference that BS tells me.

[Oliver]

Thanks Tipsy. I am reliably hitting my gravities, using a very dodgy method (namely use 25 litres of mash liquor, set efficiency to 64% in Beersmith, mash, top up to 25 litres then add 2.2 litres/hour for boil-off. Hitting gravities exactly and ending up with about 22 litres of wort.

But it'd be nice to set up Beersmith based on something resembling science, particularly given the possible/likely effect of my method on hop extraction and bitterness.

Oliver