Radical Brewing Recipes and Beersmith WAY off?

[Fishin-Jay]

I recently bought Beersmith to try and help me with my brewing because I've found that in some cases I am missing my targets by huge margins. I figured using the software to help me plan would be a big help.

What I am finding as I enter in the recipes I have used in the past is that most recipes I use are pretty good, except for the recipes from Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing. When I input those recipes Beersmith projects FGs that are 10+ points below what Mosher says the recipe should yield.

For example. Mosher says his India Red Ale recipe should have a 1.065 OG. When I input the grain bill into Beersmith it says the OG will be 1.051.

I've brewed just two recipes from radical Brewing: India Red Ale and Old Barrel Flanders Brown. In both cases I found myself needing to add DME to the boil to reach the targets in Mosher's recipes. I thought I just screwed up my sparge, but now that I'm using Brewsmith I'm thinking maybe Mosher's recipe's are off.

Does anybody else brew from Radical Brewing? Are you seeing the same issues?

 

[QuercusMax]

In the first part of the book he should say what his expected efficiency is for these recipes. I'll check my copy when I get back home. My guess is it's probably on the high side, like 80%, and you're probably getting more like 60.

Also, are you doing 5-gallon or 6-gallon batches? That can also make a big difference. If you're expecting to lose half a gallon in the kettle but the recipe isn't, you'll end up short.

There is also a long list of corrections to that book: see here http://radicalbrewing.com/rberrat.html. You might have one of the erroneous ones.

 

[Oginme]

Have you customized the equipment profile and mashing profile for how you brew?

I do not have Radical Brewing, so I cannot comment to how his recipes are set up for efficiency. When I import recipes, I often have to make adjustments for the efficiency of my process.

 

[Fishin-Jay]

I used the tutorial to set up my equipment profile, which they say err's on the side of low efficiency and massive losses to trub (1.5 gallons). I bet that's the issue. Also, my efficiency has never been anywhere near 80% so I bet that's why I had my issues with the recipes when I brewed. Based on the equipment profile set-up tutorial I set my brewhouse efficiency at 61%, which based on past recipes seems pretty close.

Thanks for the tips! Hopefully I'll get that efficiency up a bit in the future.

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

I used the tutorial to set up my equipment profile, which they say err's on the side of low efficiency and massive losses to trub (1.5 gallons). I bet that's the issue. Also, my efficiency has never been anywhere near 80% so I bet that's why I had my issues with the recipes when I brewed. Based on the equipment profile set-up tutorial I set my brewhouse efficiency at 61%, which based on past recipes seems pretty close.

Thanks for the tips! Hopefully I'll get that efficiency up a bit in the future.

If you can, just double crush your grains. Below 70% is almost always just due to a bad crush.

 

[Fishin-Jay]

If you can, just double crush your grains. Below 70% is almost always just due to a bad crush.

My mash efficiency is at about 75% batch sparging. It's my brewhouse efficiency that is at around 60%, which is largely due to losses to trub.