Creating an Equipment Profile in BeerSmith

BeerSmith has built in support for your personal beer brewing equipment.  One of the most important first steps you can take when setting up BeerSmith is to create your own equipment profile based on one of the existing profiles.  The equipment settings are used extensively in BeerSmith to calculate water needed, sparge water volume, boil volume, and even adjust mash temperatures.  

If your equipment settings do not match your actual brewing equipment it can lead to errors in calculating the above - especially for all grain brewers using and any brewer using the "Preview Brewsheet" features.

Creating Your Own Equipment Profile

The first step is to create your own equipment profile based on one of the existing sample profiles provided with BeerSmith:

• Go to equipment view by selecting the Equipment command on the View menu.
• Select an equipment profile that is closest to your actual equipment profile.
• Pick the Copy command (Edit menu) to copy this profile to the clipboard.
• Pick the Paste command to create a copy of the selected equipment profile.
• Double click on the new profile and give it a unique name such as "Joes Equipment"

From Boil to Fermenter...

BeerSmith calculates water needed and other parameters by working backwards from your final volume, so that is a good place for us to start.  We will enter our data starting from the bottom and working our way up the dialog.

• Final Volume - Enter the batch size or amount of wort intended to go into the fermenter at the end of brewing.  Many brewers use a 5 gallon or 19 liter batch size - but enter the appropriate amount here.
• Top Up Water - The amount of water added to the wort after the boil has completed to bring it up to the target volume.  If you boil your full batch this number is usually zero, but if you are doing partial batch boils as is common in extract brewing, then put the amount of top up water you usually add after the boil in this space.
• Cooling Loss Percent - The percentage amount that the water shrinks while going from boiling to room temperature.  Unless you have detailed knowledge of your setup, using the default value of 4% provides a very good estimate.
• Losses to Trub and Chiller - Enter the amount of trub and wort left in the bottom of the boiler after the clear wort has been siphoned into the fermenter.  Also may include losses to the wort chiller or tubing if a counterflow chiller is used.  For a small 5 gallon batch this number is usually from 1-2 quarts (liters).
• Evaporation Rate - Enter the percent of wort that boils off in an hour with your system.  You can start with 9-10% to get you in the ball park.  If you do not know your rate, you can run a test next time you brew - just record the volume at the start of boil and record it again after an hour of boiling.  The evaporation rate is:

    Evap_rate = 100 * (volume_at_start - volume_at_end)/ (volume_at_end)

• Boil Time - The amount of time you normally spend boiling your wort.  Most brewers boil for between 60 and 90 minutes.
• Calculate Boil Volume Automatically - Check this box to see what your starting boil volume should be based on the data you have entered so far.  If you have entered the parameters listed above correctly this number should be very close to your normal starting boil volume.  This is a good way to see if you have the right elements entered.

Mash Tun Settings

If you are currently an extract brewer, it is not critical that you set the Mash Tun settings to use BeerSmith. 

If you are a partial mash brewer, please enter the settings for your mash tun.  If you do not have a separate mash tun and use your brew pot to mash, enter the parameters for your brew pot instead.

If you are an all grain brewer with a separate mash tun, you should fill out the data in this section to accurately reflect your mash tun since it is used extensively in water and mash temperature calculations.

• Mash Tun Volume - Enter the total volume capacity of the mash tun.
• Mash Tun Weight - Enter the weight of your mash tun (excluding extra equipment/tubes/etc)  This parameter is used to calculate the thermal mass of your mash tun when adjusting mash temperatures for your equipment.
• Mash Tun Material - The material your mash tun is made of.  Different materials have different specific heat constants - which are again used to adjust mash temperatures.
• Mash Tun Specific Heat - The specific heat of the mash tun which depends on the material the mash tun is made of.  If you selected the correct material, this field should automatically be filled in for you.  You also have the option of entering other values for unique materials.
• Lauter Tun Deadspace - Enter the amount of deadspace in the lauter tun, usually below the lautering screen and in the tubes and plumbing.  Represents the amount of water that will be lost when lautering your grains.  This parameter, along with the boil volume and mash volumes is used to determine how much sparge water you will need to lauter the grains.
• Top Up Water for Kettle - This number represents the amount of water you are adding water AFTER you have lautered your grains, but BEFORE you boil.  In most cases this number is zero, but for partial mashes with larger boil volumes you may have to add some water here to achieve a full boil volume.

What about Hop Utilization?

The last field, Hops Utilization, represents an equipment specific hop utilization factor.  It is used primarily by professional brewers who brew very large batches.  Large size professional equipment achieves much higher hop utilization than small home brew setups.

For batches less than 20 gallons, the correct setting is "100%".  Very large brewing setups (36+ barrels) may have settings of 300% or more, but this setting is both size and equipment dependent.

Saving and Using your Equipment Profile

Once everything looks good - you can save your equipment profile by pressing the OK button on the dialog.

To use the profile in a recipe, simply press the Choose button next to the Equipment Profile name on any open recipe and select your profile.

To set your equipment profile as the default profile for new recipes, select the Options command on the Tools menu.   Pick the Choose button next to the Equipment name and select your equipment profile.  Save all of your options by pressing OK and now any new recipes you create will use your equipment profile.

Scaling Recipes to use your Equipment

Now that you have created your own equipment profile you can use it to adjust other recipes to your equipment.  For example, suppose you have downloaded a 10 gallon recipe from our web site that you want to convert to your 5 gallon setup.  Use the following procedure:

• From My Recipe view, select the recipe you want scaled.
• Choose the Scale Recipe command on the Actions menu.
• Pick the Choose button next to the equipment name.
• Select your own equipment profile from the equipment list.
• Press OK on both dialogs to save your changes and the recipe grain and hops amounts will be scaled to match your new recipe.

Conclusion

The equipment profile settings are a very powerful feature of BeerSmith.  Though it takes a few minutes to create your own equipment profile, once it is done you can apply it to any recipe in a few seconds - and all of the hops, grain, water and mash calculations will be updated for you.

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