beersmith fine tuning

[jhennigar]

Good morning! I'm fairly new to beersmith. Every time I brew I get a better result, but I thought I'd check in on this one before I follow it's advice. I'm brewing a 1 gallon test batch, a Falconer's Flight extract ale. John Palmer says to use 1lb of extract per gallon, but beersmith is telling me to use closer to 2lbs. I did a similar batch with citra about a month ago and followed beersmith's recommendation of 2lbs... as you can guess, it came out as a strong beer, approx 8%. It tasted decent though! I have a feeling the problem is with my boil kettle settings, since it's telling me my pre boil volume is a negative amount...

Here are pics from beersmith. The boil kettle page seems to be the root of the problem. I can turn off the auto calculate volume box, but it seems like there must be something I have in there wrong to make it happen in the first place. Anything jump out as strange that would make it give me such high extract amounts to add?

Thanks for the help,

Jeff

[jhennigar]

main page pic

[AllanMar]

Looks like you have 3 gallons of top up water in a 1 gallon batch

[chicanuck]

The Evaporation Rate of 2816% per hour seems just a touch on the high side.

[mr x]

[jhennigar]

Adjusting the top up water to 0 fixed the boil amounts and evaporation rates, thanks! not sure how I missed that...

it still says to put in 1lb and 14 oz of extract. That is a lot of a gallon batch, isn't it?

[jeffsmith]

Depends on the OG you're trying to achieve.

[jhennigar]

I'm making this so I can taste the hops, so I was aiming for a low 1.045ish. In the batch I did that beersmith said to use 2lbs It came out at 1.072!

[gm-]

I'm making this so I can taste the hops, so I was aiming for a low 1.045ish. In the batch I did that beersmith said to use 2lbs It came out at 1.072!

According to my beersmith profile, with the batch size set at 1 gal, you need 0.55 kg to achieve O.G of 1.045. 2 lb is around 1.074, using my settings.

[jhennigar]

I'm making this so I can taste the hops, so I was aiming for a low 1.045ish. In the batch I did that beersmith said to use 2lbs It came out at 1.072!

According to my beersmith profile, with the batch size set at 1 gal, you need 0.55 kg to achieve O.G of 1.045. 2 lb is around 1.074, using my settings.

I wonder what is different in my settings that is making it not accurate.... Thanks for taking the time to put it in!

[AllanMar]

Save the recipe and post the BeerSmith file

[jhennigar]

I appreciate the help!

[AllanMar]

You've got loss to fermentation/trub at 0.5gal. So beersmith is actual calculating to brew a 1.5gal batch, hence the extra extract amount.

If you ditch the trub loss it comes out at ~1lb 4 oz extract, which sounds about right to me.

[Two Wheeler]

Shouldn't efficiency be set at 100% for extract?

[jhennigar]

Between the trub loss and the efficiency, I think I figured it out. Thanks for the help! Well, it will help for next time. I brewed it before all this good advice with 700ml of extract--my best guess estimate based on 1.3kg per 1L (I should really get a scale). The OG was high, 1.062. I'm getting closer! I don't plan on doing many 1 gallon batches, but it's helping me with using beersmith and tweaking recipes.

Thanks for the help everyone!