A couple of Beersmith questions

[brewstaedt]

I'm using Beersmith for the first time to brew a small (2.5 gal) batch tomorrow. I've set up my mash equipment and entered 66F as my grain and tun temps. I'm assuming Beersmith accounts for these temps when it calculates my strike and sparge temps, so there is no need to pre-heat my tun, correct? Also, it has me sparging in two steps, but the first sparge is only about 0.6 gal. Is this added prior to draining my first runnings? Sort of a mash out? Thanks for any info you can supply.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

As long as the thermal specs are reasonably correct for the material, then yes. It compensate for preheating.

Yes.

 

[Homercidal]

Although I have taken to striking just a couple of degrees higher because I'd much rather try to cool a mash than try to heat it up.

 

[brewstaedt]

OK, thanks.

 

[Patrick604]

I found that when I went with the default numbers for the 10 gallon cooler, my mash temps would be a few degrees too cold. I now preheat with hot water from the tap for about 20 minutes while my mash water is on the burner, dump the pre-heat water, add the grain and mash water and my numbers are right on the money.

The only way you will know for your equipment is to try it and see what the numbers do. You may have to add some boiling water or a SMALL amount of cooler water to adjust the temps. I will tell you this though, raising the mash temp takes a whole LOT of hot water. Lowering the mash temp only takes a little bit of room temp water.

I could play around with the default numbers in BS for my cooler's correct coefficient, but the system I describe above works for me.

 

[brewstaedt]

Patrick
Thanks. I went ahead and didn't pre-heat and hit my temps OK. I would agree with everyone that cooling a too high mash is easier than the opposite.