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Conflicting Mash and Sparge Water Values using Grainfather and Beersmith 2

RyanGWpg

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I just got a Grainfather and am planning on brewing a stout recipe that I have and I downloaded the Grainfather Equipment Profile Add-on and all is good but I am getting conflicting Mash and Sparge Water calculations.
The Grainfather manual has two calculations, one for Mash Water and one for Sparge water and it based on the size of the grain bill. If I use the Grainfather calculations, I end up with 22.30 litres of Mash Water and 11.27 of sparge water. After entering the recipe into Beersmith, it is saying that I should use 25.16 litres of Mash water and 16.81 litres of Sparge water. It is a significant difference if I'm calculating right, I won't even be able to get all of the sparge water into the Grainfather as the capacity is 30litres so I think there may be something wrong with the Equipment profile but I think everything looks OK.
I have attached the recipe and was hoping someone could help me out with this and offer some suggestions.
TIA.
 

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  • AGoodStout.bsmx
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  • GF_Equip_Profile.bsmx
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It looks like you've used the Grainfather profile supplied in BeerSmith. That profile says there is 7 liters of mashtun deadspace. When that is zeroed out, the number comes closer to your calculation.

The remaining 1.4 liters may be a higher amount of grain absorption in BeerSmith. If you want to change that parameter, it's in Options > Advanced. Makes sure that you change the same factor that matches the sparge selected in the Mash Profile.
 
Thanks for the reply. I tried removing the 7l headspace but all it did was reduce the Mash Water and Increase the sparge water and I ended up with the same volume.
I found a post on the Grainfather forum (http://www.grainfather.com/#!forum/c11jy) that talks about a bug or miscalculation in the GF Equipment profile and the guy just manually entered his Mash Water based on the GF Calculations.
I found the Grainfather app and what I'm going to do is use Beersmith to create my recipes and my shopping lists and use the GF app for the brew session for volumes.
 
RyanGWpg said:
I tried removing the 7l headspace but all it did was reduce the Mash Water and Increase the sparge water and I ended up with the same volume.

I set the deadspace amount to zero. That brought the amounts closer to what you were calculating.

I found a post on the Grainfather forum (http://www.grainfather.com/#!forum/c11jy) that talks about a bug or miscalculation in the GF Equipment profile...

That link didn't work for me. It went to a newsletter signup.

IIRC, The profile that's in BeerSmith Add-ons came from the manufacturer. I suspect that the grain deadspace is more like 0.7 liter. Seven liters is a massive amount of potential extract loss.

Accordingly, the loss to trub of 2.5 liters seems like a large amount, as well.
 
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.
 
Very good and very comprehensive review! The resulting equipment profile is considerably different than was provided as the default. The amount of mash deadspace was always problematic, it seemed. You've narrowed down all of the other parameters.

Could you clarify something? For boiloff rate, are you allowing 7.2% to be the hourly rate, or is this the evaporation regardless of boil time? If it's hourly, then the value is 0.53 gal/hr.

Here is the modified Grainfather Equipment profile as you've laid it out.
 

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"Could you clarify something? For boiloff rate, are you allowing 7.2% to be the hourly rate, or is this the evaporation regardless of boil time? If it's hourly, then the value is 0.53 gal/hr."

If I understand correctly how BeerSmith works, it is an hourly rate, so that if you entered a mash time of two hours, it would be twice as much.
 
William TeBrake said:
If I understand correctly how BeerSmith works, it is an hourly rate, so that if you entered a mash time of two hours, it would be twice as much.

Exactly so. Though you mean boil time, not mash in your response, I'm sure.

However, you specified a boiloff percentage and I just wanted to be clear. Thank you.
 
The "Loss to Trub and Chiller" amount listed in the profile above at 0.53 is way below what I'm seeing.  When I pump the wort through the chiller into the fermenter and the pump stops on it's own because the level goes below the intake, I measured the remaining trub/wort loss in the Grainfather at 96 ounces.  I also measured 4 ounces of wort stuck in the chiller.  Translating ounces to gallons, my brewing experience is seeing a "Loss to Trub and Chiller" for the Grainfather of around 0.78 gallons.

On a separate note, I've been running into all sorts of issues trying to hit an average mash efficiency (say 70-75%) using my Grainfather.  I've missed low on several of my pre-boil gravities by a lot.  Open to any suggestions.
 
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%.
 
joegbeer said:
The "Loss to Trub and Chiller" amount listed in the profile above at 0.53 is way below what I'm seeing.

I think the acronym is YMMV. The default profile provided by the manufacturer is 0.66 gallons of loss to trub.  That's midway between you and TeBrake.

Regardless of user experience, BeerSmith's equipment profiles are meant to be a starting point for the user to modify according to actual experience. Even though the Grainfather appears to be mass produced, this difference illustrates that it's not cookie cutter.

On a separate note, I've been running into all sorts of issues trying to hit an average mash efficiency (say 70-75%) using my Grainfather.  I've missed low on several of my pre-boil gravities by a lot.  Open to any suggestions.

One consistent point in the equipment profiles is mash efficiency around 80%. If you're getting less, the two most common causes are milling too coarsely and improper mash pH.
 
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%.

Thanks for the feedback.  I'll give this a try on my next batch.

Do you wait for the mash water to go below the top plate in the basket before starting to sparge or do you try to keep the mash water above the top plate about 1 cm at all times from the get go?
 
brewfun said:
On a separate note, I've been running into all sorts of issues trying to hit an average mash efficiency (say 70-75%) using my Grainfather.  I've missed low on several of my pre-boil gravities by a lot.  Open to any suggestions.

One consistent point in the equipment profiles is mash efficiency around 80%. If you're getting less, the two most common causes are milling too coarsely and improper mash pH.

Thanks for the feedback.  I started milling at 0.38, move to 0.34 with no improvement.  I'm using distilled water and building water profiles using the Brun spreadsheet.  Guess I need to invest in something to measure the PH during the brew process.
 
joegbeer said:
I'm using distilled water and building water profiles using the Brun spreadsheet.  Guess I need to invest in something to measure the PH during the brew process.

That will help. A solid pH meter with an accuracy of +/-0.02 if going to give you the most reliable results.

With distilled water, about 5 gm of Calcium Chloride per 20 liters is a good starting point for adjusting the mash. Even then, you may need some acidulated malt or other acid source to get into the correct range.
 
Hi all,

I just got BeerSmith for this first time (went ahead and purchased, why not). Designed a recipe with 12.13 pounds of grain setup with the equipment profile listed in this thread. 5.5 gallon batch size with 6.8 gallon pre-boil volume.

BeerSmith is telling me to mash with 20.09 qt (~5G), mash out with 8.49 qt (~2.125G) and sparge with 0.87G.

Grainfather calculator for 5.5G batch with that grain weight is telling me to mash with 4.85G and sparge with 3.13G.

The overall quantity of water is basically spot on, 8.01G vs 7.98G. However the mash vs sparge quantities are still drastically different. I would assume I should use the quantities listed on the grainfather calculator since it should be properly set-up for the system. Is that right?

Thanks!
 
I have had a Grainfather for just over a week now and so far done one brew which turned out ok so far.  I am trying out Beersmith  but having a bad time calculating mash and sparge water volumes when compared with the Grainfather website calculations.  I have done the mods that William TeBrake had very kindly supplied but as an example 23L batch with a 5.18 grain bill I get 11 ltrs of mash water and 21.33 ltrs of sparge water.  This differs a lot from the Grainfather website calculation of 17.49 mash and 14.66 sparge.

The grand totals on each are about the same.  Any ideas where might have gone wrong.
 
I know I am resurrecting an old post, but, I had to format windows 10 and go back to 7, it was constantly dropping hardware.
Since I downloaded the latest BeerSmith 2.3.7, the Grainfather's profile seems to have changed.
I have tried several different amounts of grain, and each time it has worked out the strike and sparge exactly the same as Grainfather's own calculator.
So I presume the program profile has been updated.
 
Thank's Gandalf.  I must admit fudging the figures was a bit of a pain and I gave up in the end.  I hope that means setting up the equipment profile is easier.  I will have to re-visit Beersmith.
 
Hi, I know this post is a year old, but still valid.

I've just started using the Grainfather, and I measured the volume left in the deadspace to 2.6 litres, should I still user your suggested 3.41 litres to get the correct calculations ?

I think wasting ~10% in dead space is a lot, do you tilt your grainfather to loose less, or do you just accept it?

Kind regards
S?ren
 
I'm not sure about the 3.41 L for the Lauter tun losses now as I think that setup below was prior to the most recent changes to BS2, which solved all the previous issues with getting it to match the GF calculators (now has the mash tun addition of 3.5L, with the check box ticked - I have nothing in my profile for lauter tun losses or top-up).

Make sure you have the correct mash profile setup and grain absorption as well.

Just remember though, that the GF calculators are a global average, and your own values may vary.  I have moved away from trying to get them to match, as I get batch variations, different boiloff, and different losses.  By treating it like any other piece of equipment and dialling it in based on what I see, my final outcomes are much closer to the BS2 predictions.

See my profile in this thread - http://www.beersmith.com/forum/index.php/topic,15224.0.html.  It was matching previously (before I started customising to my system)
 
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