Beersmith export to Grainfather giving different gravity values

[Geoffrey006]

Hello,

I would like for my next recipe to brew a small batch of 10L with Grainfather.
I've created this recipe on Beersmith (in French sorry):

Beersmith says that with these values I should have an OG of 1.056 and 36 IBUs
The problem is that when I export this recipe to Grainfather, I get completely different values:

I spent some time trying to understand why I got this big difference but I don't get it. It might be because it's late and I'm tired, so I'm asking your help guys.

It's very strange because when I try to put 94% (the estimated efficiency given by Beersmith) in the efficiency in Grainfather, I get Beersmith values. But this shouldn't be the case right ? Beersmith should have made calculations using the 80% efficiency I specified, not his estimated 93.9% ? What am I misunderstanding here ? Oh, also why is Beersmith estimating such a high efficiency ?

Thank you for your help I'm getting mad

 

[Oginme]

You are looking at two different efficiency numbers. The 80% from your equipment profile is Brew House Efficiency which is the amount of sugars from the grain bill which make it to the fermenter. The 93.9% estimated efficiency which is grayed out is the mash/lauter efficiency which is calculated based upon the brew house efficiency and process losses. If you meant for the 80% efficiency in BeerSmith to represent the mash efficiency, then you need to estimate the percentage of volume losses (post boil) and use that percent loss (or conversely the % of post boil volume retained) to estimate the brew house efficiency from the mash efficiency.

 

[MaxM]

Without digging too much into it, the only thing that strikes me is the difference between mash efficiency and brewhouse efficiency. What do the different efficiencies mean in each software (sorry, I don't have either one)?

The only other thing I can think of (and it's much less likely to be the cause) is that maybe the PPG for one or more grains is different between software. If you can check that value in Beersmith, it might be useful to compare it to Grainfather's values.

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

Your brewhouse (mash tun to fermenter) efficiency will be lower than your kettle (mash tun to post-boil) efficiency. As an example a 78% brewhouse efficiency can translate to a 90% kettle efficiency.

Since everyone’s brewing system has different wort volume and sugar losses it’s better to share recipes with other brewing systems using the higher kettle efficiency percentage. While using brewhouse efficiency to create your recipe taylored to your own system.

 

[Rackrunner]

Hi - Grainfather user here. The Grainfather website does use brewhouse efficiency, or at least so they say in all their help text. I can see why people would guess this was the issue (mash vs BH) but I suspect this is not what's going on in your case. I see the same thing in all my recipes as well.

After some playing around, I think it has to do with how the GF website handles "losses". If I zero out the losses in the GF website recipe, the values match exactly what I get in Beersmith, both for OG and estimated IBUs.

Not sure if this is something funky with my Grainfather profile in Beersmith vs what the website assumes or if it's just the way the site works, but it seems pretty consistent across all my recipes.

Easy to test - just try setting your losses in the Grainfather site to 0 for the recipe and see if it matches up

 

[jody.roy]

Hi - Grainfather user here. The Grainfather website does use brewhouse efficiency, or at least so they say in all their help text. I can see why people would guess this was the issue (mash vs BH) but I suspect this is not what's going on in your case. I see the same thing in all my recipes as well.

After some playing around, I think it has to do with how the GF website handles "losses". If I zero out the losses in the GF website recipe, the values match exactly what I get in Beersmith, both for OG and estimated IBUs.

Not sure if this is something funky with my Grainfather profile in Beersmith vs what the website assumes or if it's just the way the site works, but it seems pretty consistent across all my recipes.

Easy to test - just try setting your losses in the Grainfather site to 0 for the recipe and see if it matches up

Had the exact same issue and it was driving me crazy. I you zero your loss, it's giving you the same as beersmith.