Beer smith and setup

[GuyBob]

Hey there,

I have just moved to BIAB and purchased a new 16 gallon kettle. How in the heck do you set your equipment for this? There is also areas for mash, dead space, Lauder tun size. Anyone's expertise would be greatly appreciated. Thanks


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[Oginme]

After fooling around for a little while with modifying the stock BIAB profiles, I set up my system thusly:

Your mash tun size is your brew pot size. Unless you are using a false bottom, your dead space is zero. Set the weight and specific heat of the brew pot based upon the construction (aluminum, steel, etc).

For the mash profile, I took the single infusion profile and increased the water to grain ratio to account for the amount of water needed for a full batch and eliminated the sparge step.

I later went back and put the batch sparge back in and now I do a BIAB with a sparge. I get much better efficiency.

For the first couple of brews, measure everything from actual grain weight, water used, pre-boil and post boil volumes, trub amount, etc. Use this to adjust your water absorption by the grain, boil off volumes, trub, and adjust the brewhouse efficiency to match your actual results. After a couple of adjustments, you should have smooth sailing.

 

[enkamania]

For equipment, I have my boil off rate of 1.25 gallons an hour and grain absorption rate at .075. I have a 16 gallon pot with 18"" diameter. It confused me first setting it up, as a lot of fields just don't apply. Once you dial it in, it's gold

 

[GuyBob]

Thanks. Does anyone know the best way to find out what I need my strike temp at before adding grain bill? I want to do full boils but unsure where my temp needs to be. I know temp will drop once grain added. Must be a good way of figuring this out. For info purpose I am just getting into BIAB. I have a 16 gallon kettle that's about 17" tall by 16.5" diameter.


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[garvinator70]

Brewers friend app works great.


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[Calichusetts]

Thanks. Does anyone know the best way to find out what I need my strike temp at before adding grain bill? I want to do full boils but unsure where my temp needs to be. I know temp will drop once grain added. Must be a good way of figuring this out. For info purpose I am just getting into BIAB. I have a 16 gallon kettle that's about 17" tall by 16.5" diameter.


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You should be able to choose your equipment from a list...find the closest to your pot and you should be fine...can't remember if you can edit it

Once you create your recipe, click on the mash profile and you can switch to BIAB. From there, click the edit button next to it. It will bring up the calculated water amount, etc. You can edit almost all aspects of it. I actually add a specific amount of water and beersmith then recalculates my strike temp for me. Very accurate.

 

[Oginme]

To get BeerSmith to calculate out a fairly accurate strike temperature, select an equipment profile which closely resembles your set-up. Copy it and open it up, change the mash tun weight and specific gravity to match your kettle. Save and use this profile in your recipe, make sure that you turn off the 'Adjust Temp for Equipment' next to the mash profile, since you will be heating up the water in the kettle you will be mashing in. When you set the mash volume to match your total volume, the strike temperature will give you a pretty good target to reach your set mash temp. Make sure also that you set the grain temperature to match your grains.

 

[GuyBob]

Here's some shots as what I have set up so far. Let me know of I'm on the right track. I guess mash tun weight throws me off. Is it referring to the grain bill weight? Al so some other items I'm not sure if set right. Thanks again.


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[Oginme]

Mash tun weight is the weight of the empty mash tun. In order to figure out the temperature the water needs to be at, the software needs the thermal mass of the equipment. It uses this along with the weight and temperature of the grains, the amount of strike water being added and the target mash temperature to determine the temperature of the strike water. When you turn the 'adjust temperature for equipment' off, the software assumes that the equipment is at the strike temperature, but from my experience early on, it uses the thermal mass of the equipment to calculate the ending mash temperature.