Top up with water as BeerSmith2 says or leave it?

[farmskis]

I have noticed that BS2 says to top up with water at certain points. I have never done this and usually just go with what I have. Do you guys top it up or leave it and if you leave it, is there a way to tell BS2 not to top up with water and maybe allow you to change the values to match measured? I looked for a different setting but I did not see one. I have all settings that I have seen dealing with topping up set to say that I do not top up so I am a little confused as to why it tells me to top up yet...

I am new to brewing with BS2... I have used it create recipes but have never used it per say while brewing. I am planning on using it now for measured values while brewing to keep track of my recipes and numbers. It looks like the little column on the bottom right of the design page is a handy place to make the values easily accessible to enter the measured info. Is this what this area is used for?

 

[Homercidal]

I really need to look into this as well. I've had issues with volumes when using BS2 and I finally noticed that it was wanting me to top off. The main reason I started using BS was so that I could figure up how much water to use WITHOUT having to top off!

I will try to get my equipment and volumes dialed in on the next brew. Seems like the program should be smart enough to figure this out, so I assume it's probably my own errors.

Lastly, you can visit their website and get help. They actually have pretty decent help and lots of information already loaded, you just have to look or ask. I'm betting this has come up a few times over the years.

 

[farmskis]

I guess theoretically if you nail the adjustments in the setup portion you should not need to top off. So I am thinking I will record any top off water that would be needed and in the future I can update the profile for grain absorption, trubb loss, dead space etc. to eliminate the top off water. It can definitely be worked with I will just need to fine tune my equipment profile. Sorry if I am just rambling to myself!

 

[brewfun]

Are you guys referring to what a Brew Steps report says? Or is this because some of your equipment profiles have top up water included?

I think the instructions are embedded in the Brew Steps report, not actually calculated. This is just a reminder for getting to boil/batch volume if you're a little short. The Vols tab will always tell you the amount of water you need and whether there is an actual top up required.

If you've imported someone else's recipe, top up water might be specified in their equipment profile. Whenever you have an imported recipe, you should use the scale recipe function to adapt it to your equipment.