Brewing software question

[JustBeKind]

I have set up my equipment in both Beersmith and Brewers Friend and have the same problem with each of them.

I write in a recipe that comes up at, say 1.050 OG for 21 litres in the fermenter. Due to dead spaces etc, I know that I will need 24 litres in the kettle at the end of boil whereas others will need 22, 26 etc so clearly we will need to put different quantities of grain in to get different volumes of boiled wort at the same OG. I thought putting my equipment profile in took account of that but it doesn't seem to.

I played around today with both Beersmith and Brewer's Friend expecting if I put a huge dead space of say 10 litres it would affect the OG of the wort as I am using the same grain to make 10 litres of extra wort. However, although both correctly adjust the volume of water I need they leave the OG the same. Surely, if I have a 10 litre dead space, I am making 50% more wort with the same grain so the software has to identify that the OG will drop considerably. One of the main reasons I wanted to use software was so that if I use someone else's recipe, I can tailor it to my equipment. Currently, I just add 20%ish to reflect my losses, but surely the software should do that for me?

Obviously the same applies to IBUs with hops.

 

[RoomWithABrew]

Have a look at brewfather. That allows you to put percentage of grains in, your equipment profile and then you can scale to your volume to fermenter.
David heath has some videos on using brewfather and explains this well. Also short circuit brewing and also home brew network.

You just need to put the real profile for your equipment in and it does work it out for you including water adjustments.

 

[Benfleet Brewery]

There’s an option in Brewers Friend too to create your own equipment profile to account for this. I use a Brewzilla which has a dead space of about 6.7 litres below the malt pipe so I account for this.

 

[JustBeKind]

There’s an option in Brewers Friend too to create your own equipment profile to account for this. I use a Brewzilla which has a dead space of about 6.7 litres below the malt pipe so I account for this.
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I've put my equipment profile in and if I increase the dead space in my kettle it tells me to add more water to the mash but it does not adjust the OG going into the kettle. If I use the same quantity of grain to mash 35 litres then it has to be lower gravity than if I mash 25 litres. The workaround is to input the volume in the fermentor to account for kettle losses, but surely the whole point of entering your equipment profile is for the software to do that for you, i.e. to spot that you will need 23 litres of wort in the kettle to get 21 in the fermentor so your OG will be lower. As I say, I have put 0 and 10 litres of dead space in my kettle profile and it merrily tells me my OG will be the same with the same grains whether I make 21 or 31 litres of wort.

 

[peebee]

Different software goes about things in different ways (according to the "thinking logic" of the software's author). If your "thinking logic" is out of step with the author's, you will forever fight with how things work in the software. You've got advice to use Brewers Friend or Brewfather, but I can assure you Beersmith will do the calculations you want. Just try things until you find what makes sense to you!

I can tell you to use Beersmith and that Brewer's Friend is cr&p. But that would be missing the point; lots of people will say Beersmith is cr&p, you should use Brewer's Friend.

Keep trying different ones, but when you've got what you are looking for don't expect everyone to follow your decision. Just feel lucky you are in an environment that doesn't dictate how you do things (within reason!).

 

[JustBeKind]

Different software goes about things in different ways (according to the "thinking logic" of the software's author). If your "thinking logic" is out of step with the author's, you will forever fight with how things work in the software. You've got advice to use Brewers Friend or Brewfather, but I can assure you Beersmith will do the calculations you want. Just try things until you find what makes sense to you!

I can tell you to use Beersmith and that Brewer's Friend is cr&p. But that would be missing the point; lots of people will say Beersmith is cr&p, you should use Brewer's Friend.

Keep trying different ones, but when you've got what you are looking for don't expect everyone to follow your decision. Just feel lucky you are in an environment that doesn't dictate how you do things (within reason!).

Thanks for the reply. I am getting the same problem with Beersmith. I'll take some screenshots as it may help.

 

[Rodcx500z]

earlier today i plugged cml gamma ray twist into brewfather, recipe says 5.2% bf says 4.6% for 23L in the fv, then i noticed mash time was 70 mins so i put that in and it went down to 4.5% i then deleted my brewzilla profile and put it in again and got 4.7%, i am brewing on Wednesday and just going with it will post a pic of gravity reading, in the mean time head scratching

 

[Benfleet Brewery]

earlier today i plugged cml gamma ray twist into brewfather, recipe says 5.2% bf says 4.6% for 23L in the fv, then i noticed mash time was 70 mins so i put that in and it went down to 4.5% i then deleted my brewzilla profile and put it in again and got 4.7%, i am brewing on Wednesday and just going with it will post a pic of gravity reading, in the mean time head scratching

I’ve not used Brewfather but could it be to do with quoted BHE perhaps?

 

[RoomWithABrew]

It could easily be, I find that even with the standard physical factors in the profile, ie deadspace, grain absorption there is still variance across recipes. Particular confounders are if lots of oats are used they don't seem to release as much sugar as the software predicts and also the amount of hops in a recipe is not accounted for in volumes. I find that if I have 100g of kettle hops I have about 1800 ml of trub which is made up of break and hop residue. This effects brewhouse efficiency but not mash efficiency/extract efficiency.
When you first start with a profile and are guessing on these efficiencies it's a bit of a lottery.