Boiloff vs. OG

[scottyb332]

Hi. I just brewed a 2.5gal. batch of an IIPA. This is my first time using brewing software. Using Beersmith 2.1.

I've always winged it in the past and my beers have been drinkable but nothing spectacular. Never have I hit my OG so I know my personal calcs. have been wrong.

This is also the first time I did a full boil. I've always done partial boils and added roughly 1.5gal to make my 2.5 batch volume.

So, with using Beersmith and doing the full boil, I hit my OG spot on, but my post boil volume was more like 2.8 gal. instead of 2.5.

So now that I know my boiloff rate, is my OG going to be off when I adjust that 1/4 gallon for boiloff? Or will the software fix that for me as I add grain to the bill?

 

[Devilsnight]

How do you figure for a 2.5 gallon batch? Set up a recipe as a 5 gallon and just figure on using half? Beersmith is a pretty awesome program, but I do only half batches so. I haven't figured out yet if recipes will workout for my application.

Sorry to answer you with a question. I guess i'm kinda in the same boat as you!

 

[scottyb332]

How do you figure for a 2.5 gallon batch? Set up a recipe as a 5 gallon and just figure on using half? Beersmith is a pretty awesome program, but I do only half batches so. I haven't figured out yet if recipes will workout for my application.

Sorry to answer you with a question. I guess i'm kinda in the same boat as you!

It's cool. That's what the forums are all about. In looking for answers we can often help others with questions related to our own.

Let me start by saying, If you haven't bought Beersmith yet, I highly recommend it. It does have some minor calculation issues but they all have work arounds that make the issues irrelevant.

The most important thing you must do before building a recipe is to create an equipment profilein Beersmith based on your personal brewing pot and burner. That will solve your dilemma. Once you know your boil-off rate and you've built your equipment profile, you don't need to scale down your recipes. You can build them from scratch and BeerSmith will calculate the OG, IBU, SRM, etc for 2.5 gallons based on your equipment.

Now if you have a 5 gallon recipe someone else brewed and you want to brew a half batch of it, plug the 5 gallon recipe into BeerSmith then choose your equipment profile and then scale the recipe using the scaling tool. It does it all for you and then you can tweak it to get it just like you want it. You might not have to tweak at all if you dont want to.

For figuring out your boil-off rate, there are a lot of threads explaining good ways to do it. You can guesstimate it on your first batch in Brewsmith if you don't mind being a bit off. All I did was a google search on Boil-off rates for the same size pot I had and I guesstimated. I was a little bit off... probably because I'm Brewing in Arizona in the middle of summer which will make my boil-off rate lower than most brewers. But now I know from my first Beersmith batch and my next batch will be more accurate because of it.

Good luck