Hi BeerSmithers,
Would appreciate some help from old hands at this. Just bought BeerSmith and am impressed by the level of detail in it. But my first two test brews have not hit anywhere near their target gravity – in one case I was hoping for a 1072 OG and got a 1050.
I have searched the forums and think I have found out why but don’t quite understand it and want to run it by you.
I am using quite a big kit (100 litre capacity) and did some relatively small test brews in them – 25 litre batch sizes. With the kit being slightly larger, the boiler dead space is relatively large – around 6 litres. I also lose around 4 litres to hops. So I set the Trub Loss to 10 Litres (Assuming the trub loss is wort left in the boiler). Beersmith then increases the amount I should sparge by 10 litres to make up the difference.
But this is where I am losing gravity – I've been adding more water to make up the loss but not adding more sugar to increase the points.
My question is whether this is a brewhouse efficiency issue or whether I am misusing the software?
Should I
a) Set the trub loss to 0 and add 10 litres to my “batch size” to make it 35, then expect 25 to land in the fermenter?
b) Decrease my brewhouse efficiency way down to around 55% to account for the extra water needed? This will clearly improve as I do larger brews and the 10 Litre of trub loss is not so great relative to the brewlength.
If a), is there anywhere to add in a calculation to account for loss to hop absorption and boiler deadspace that re-calculates the grain needed? Or do I need to just keep this calculation separate?
Many thanks
Michael
Would appreciate some help from old hands at this. Just bought BeerSmith and am impressed by the level of detail in it. But my first two test brews have not hit anywhere near their target gravity – in one case I was hoping for a 1072 OG and got a 1050.
I have searched the forums and think I have found out why but don’t quite understand it and want to run it by you.
I am using quite a big kit (100 litre capacity) and did some relatively small test brews in them – 25 litre batch sizes. With the kit being slightly larger, the boiler dead space is relatively large – around 6 litres. I also lose around 4 litres to hops. So I set the Trub Loss to 10 Litres (Assuming the trub loss is wort left in the boiler). Beersmith then increases the amount I should sparge by 10 litres to make up the difference.
But this is where I am losing gravity – I've been adding more water to make up the loss but not adding more sugar to increase the points.
My question is whether this is a brewhouse efficiency issue or whether I am misusing the software?
Should I
a) Set the trub loss to 0 and add 10 litres to my “batch size” to make it 35, then expect 25 to land in the fermenter?
b) Decrease my brewhouse efficiency way down to around 55% to account for the extra water needed? This will clearly improve as I do larger brews and the 10 Litre of trub loss is not so great relative to the brewlength.
If a), is there anywhere to add in a calculation to account for loss to hop absorption and boiler deadspace that re-calculates the grain needed? Or do I need to just keep this calculation separate?
Many thanks
Michael