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Why is this so complicated ---- Partial Mash Partial Boil equipment profile

SleepySamSlim

Grandmaster Brewer
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A lot of things have improved in BeerSmith and many features added - yet I still feel the equipment profile is still a disjointed bunch of numbers. I think it works pretty well if you are doing straight extract brew or full all grain brew. But anything else it just becomes a bunch of conflicting numbers. Trying to setup a profile for partial mash partial boil and its just loopy - below is a sample profile included in BeerSmith 2 that is along the lines of what might work but is unclear where some of these base numbers are derived from.

How is the Boil Volume determined?  If my pot can only easily handle 3.5gal then that should be a driving number not a resulting number. In the screen shot below where does the 4.28gal Boil Volume get determined ???? How do you control that?

Its also totally unclear how the recipe/profile  includes / adjusts for for my mini mash gravity in the boil pot ---- do I need ot build a profile for a mash of 1.5lbs or a mash of 2.5lbs of grain? Does it matter?









 
You are looking at a stock equipment profile written around a 5 gallon capacity pot (as described in the notes section).  I am guessing that you have not customized much this yet to match your equipment and process.  The key factors to focus on are the numbers you can edit and change in the profile.  The approximated calculations are there as a guide so that as you customize the profile to match your process you can see estimates of these values.  In themselves, they mean nothing until you apply your equipment profile to a recipe. 

So where you have an arrow pointing to boil volume and post boil volume, realize they are there to guide you in setting up your profile.  The software has no clue your boil kettle is 3.5 gallons and it is up to the user to adjust the numbers to have the values fit their process.  If it fits in the equipment profile, you have a good chance that it will work for the majority of your recipes.  So your goal here is to adjust your top off water to the fermenter to get the boil volume down to below 3.5 gallons, if you are producing a 5-gallon batch.

 
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