BrewZilla Gen 4

[Leard6891]

I recently bought myself a BrewZilla Gen 4, and have completed my first brew on it.

All went well, more or less. I didn't have any issues with the equipment, although I did with Beersmith.

I used the add-on profile for the BrewZilla 4 35L. It estimated my pre-boil volume to be 3L lower than what I actually achieved.

Has this happened to anybody else? How is your equipment profile set up for the BZ4? I suspect it might be because of the mash tun deadspace? Although I'm not sure.

 

[AndyEW]

Did you use the full sparge volume it specifies in the Mash tab under the Sparge/Lauter heading?

 

[BOB357]

A couple of things to note:
1. The factory markings on the kettle shouldn't be trusted unless their accuracy is verified. It's common for them to be off.
2. Most all of the equipment profiles have been added by users. They work well as guidelines, but you need to verify the volumes at different stages of your process. Equipment profiles are customizable and should be altered to match the performance of your specific system.

For your dead space entries, the recoverable dead space is the volume of liquid it takes to reach the bottom of the malt pipe and the dead space loss is zero.

 

[Doc B]

I found that you need to correct for temperature at the various measurement stages in BS3. For example if the software asks you to add X litres at 68 deg, this volume will be lower at room temp (approx 4%), at the time you fill up the digiboil if using a all-in-one system. In an all-in-one brew vessel setup, you need to therefore start with the lower volume, which expands to X litres at 68 deg as the digiboil warms up the water. This lower volume is also used in the salt addition calculator. The pre-boil water volume in the BS3 software is again larger as the water is heated to pre boil and more expansion takes place. The only other corrections needed are the losses. If the BIAB option is set, make sure the grain absorption is correct, as BS3 uses a much lowered default, presumably on the assumption the the bag is squeezed. So if a malt pipe is used the grain absorption will be higher than a bag. Overall it will take a few test brews to dial your equipment and system in.