Conflicting Mash and Sparge Water Values using Grainfather and Beersmith 2

RyanGWpg said:

I was having issues with my pre-boil gravity also. Partially because I was not stirring before taking my reading but my LHBS mentioned that they use a bit more mash water than the GF calculator.
I use the Grainfather calculator for my Mash and sparge water but I generally add one litre to my mash and remove one litre from my sparge volume. Last brew I ended up with an efficiency of 85% and my preboil volume after sparge was pretty much dead-on-balls accurate at ~28litres. My last couple have been between 82-85%.

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William TeBrake said:

- Check Use boil off as an hourly rate
- automatically calculated
- automatically calculated (should be 7.2 %/hour)
- automatically calculated

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William TeBrake said:

After reading many comments on the problems of using BeerSmith to calculate correct mash- and sparge-water in the Grainfather All-Grain System and a lot of tinkering, I believe I have come up with a set of changes to make within BeerSmith to exactly calculate the figures derived from the formulas found in the Grainfather operators manual.  The comments of David M. -- http://www.forum.realbeer.co.nz/forum/topics/the-grain-father?commentId=1500433%3AComment%3A210609&xg_source=activity -- and the postings by Cameron Browne and Andrew Hammond on the Grainfather Facebook forum -- https://www.facebook.com/groups/grainfather/files/ -- put me on the right track, and some trial and error provided the needed refinement.  One of the key changes turned out to be setting the Deadspace in the equipment profile at 0.90 gallons (3.41 l.), checking "Adjust Mash Volume for Deadspace", and setting "Top Up Water for Kettle" to 0.90 gallons (3.41 l.) instead of the 0.86 suggested by David M.

Changes need to be made in three different areas of BeerSmith:
1) Go to Options>Advanced and change the Grain absorption from 0.96 to 0.8.
2) Go to Profiles>Equipment and click on "Add Equip" and enter the following information
- Give it a name
- Brewhouse Efficiency: 75%
- Hop utilization Factor: 100%
- Mash Tun Volume: 7.93 gals. / 30.02 l.
- Mash Tun Weight 8.82 lb. / 4 kg.
- Mash Tun Specific Heat : 0.12
- Lauter Tun Deadspace: 0.90 gal. / 3.41 l.
- Top UKp Water for Kettle: 0.90 gals. / 3.41 l.
- Uncheck Calculate Boil Vol Automatically
- Boil Volume: 7.40 gals. / 28.01
- Boil Time: 60 minutes (you can change this as you like)
- Check Use boil off as an hourly rate
- automatically calculated
- automatically calculated (should be 7.2 %/hour)
- automatically calculated
- Cooling Shrinkage: 4%
- automatically calculated
- Loss to Trub and Chiller: 0.53 gals. / 2.01
- Top up water: 0.00
- Batch Volume: 6.08 gals. / 23 l.
- Fermenter Loss: 0.40 gals. / 1.51 l.
- Bottling Volume (w/o starter): automatically calculated
3) Go to Profiles> and choose one of the Temperature Mash profiles and make the following change (or click on Add Mash and create a new one based the temperature profile of your chosing): Double click on the Temperature Mash profile you prefer and then double click on the line that reads "Add ___ qt of water at ___ F." and change the value of "Water/Grain Ratio" from 1.250 to 1.360 qt/lb (for metric, multiply the original by 1.088).

That should do it.  Let me know if you don't get absolutely the same values from BeerSmith as the calculators produce.  I think I have listed all the possible changes, but I have bee tinkering with this for a while, and I didn't always remember what the starting values might have been.

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JandKBoucher said:

Question, for: "- Lauter Tun Deadspace: 0.90 gal. / 3.41 l."

in version 3 on my MAC my two options are

1)Recoverable Mash(Lauter) Deadspace
&
2) Mash Deadspace Losses

Where should I annotate you're 0.90 gal as seen above?

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