Beersmith Step/infusion mash question

[eluterio]

I apologize of what I have written ahead of time. I might sound confusing to everyone but me. I was up late and had to be up early to take the kids to school.

Ive been playing around with doing a triple step infusion mash using the Beersmith program. I have my system plugged in for a single infusion mash and I'm getting close to or spot on with my efficiencies. I plugged in my equipment profile and brewed a batch. This is the second Triple infusion I have done and both times I have missed my targeted temps on the sacc rest. The first time I only missed by 5 degrees but I chalked that up to human error and I didn't double check my mash temp before I added the Sacc infusion vol.

My second batch I was off by 10 degrees on my scc rest. I accounted for the temp drop and plugged that into beer smith and gave me an increase of infusion water temp. I went from 127 to 137 and I was supposed to be at 148 so 11 degrees off. BS told me to infuse 2.18 gallons of 178.2 to reach the temp needed. I don't have the correct temp I infused with on hand but I plugged in the volumes I had for the protein rest and temp for the adjustments. I had to do a direct fire and was able to raise the temp to 146. My mash step to 158 with 2.18 gallons of water at 190.5 landed me at 156 with the corrected temp readings. I can live with a degree or two.

My question is why I missed on my sacc temp by 10 degrees? What am I missing that I didn't account for? If I need to clarify anything please let me know.

Ted

 

[shaky6]

I've never hit my temp doing it with calculators. Probably not 10 degrees, but definately by 5. I just take good notes and eyeball subsequent batches. Plus you have to take into account temperature strarification effects on different water/grain ratios.

 

[DurtyChemist]

I'm having the same problem. I have the equipment wizard setup with a plastic mash tun and when it says to add water for my mash out I've missed temperatures by 10 degrees both times. On Sunday my mashout was only 160F. I'd like to be able to actually hit my mash out temperatures without needing to add more water than Beersmith is accounting for.

 

[pricelessbrewing]

I gave up on beersmiths volumes and temperature calculations a long time ago, I just use it to formulate recipes. Everything else I do using my calculator.

 

[Oginme]

I've had no problem with getting good strike temperatures with BeerSmith and am usually within a tenth or two of my target mash or step temperature. It comes down to making sure that you have the current and correct grain temperature and temperature of your equipment in the mash tab, and then accurate weight and specific heat for your mash tun in the equipment profile. Once you have the weight and temperatures down, use a brew session to figure out the specific heat to get the actual strike temperature and subsequent step temperature estimates to match your actual values.

One of the things that BeerSmith is poor at is being able to take into consideration heat loss between infusions for step mashes. If it allowed for an initial temperature and heat loss rate or ending temperature, it could be a bit more accurate in it's estimations of temperature required to obtain the next step. Though the majority of what I do are single infusion mashes, the couple of times I have done step mashes, I use the temperature estimate form BeerSmith as a minimum and usually target a half a degree higher in the subsequent infusion water temperature than the software predicts to compensate for the loss during the step rest.

 

[Big Monk]

I've had no problem with getting good strike temperatures with BeerSmith and am usually within a tenth or two of my target mash or step temperature. It comes down to making sure that you have the current and correct grain temperature and temperature of your equipment in the mash tab, and then accurate weight and specific heat for your mash tun in the equipment profile. Once you have the weight and temperatures down, use a brew session to figure out the specific heat to get the actual strike temperature and subsequent step temperature estimates to match your actual values.

One of the things that BeerSmith is poor at is being able to take into consideration heat loss between infusions for step mashes. If it allowed for an initial temperature and heat loss rate or ending temperature, it could be a bit more accurate in it's estimations of temperature required to obtain the next step. Though the majority of what I do are single infusion mashes, the couple of times I have done step mashes, I use the temperature estimate form BeerSmith as a minimum and usually target a half a degree higher in the subsequent infusion water temperature than the software predicts to compensate for the loss during the step rest.

I used to have an Excel based mash infusion calculator that used user inputs for current temperature between rests. Maybe I can dig it up.

 

[eluterio]

I see we have all struggled with this. Thanks for the input brewing again soon I will have to make sure I'm more vigilant in reading my temps and seeing what I can do to get me within a few degrees. 1-5 I can live with but 10 was way too much.