It does not judge if that information is possible or not for your given system/process. Hey, it is only a program which runs maths on information given to it. Thus, if you set your brewhouse efficiency before you have your water balance corrected, you may find that you have additional volume at the end of the boil and record a 101% efficiency or end up with an unreasonable mash efficiency to draw the sugars from the grain. It always assumes that there is more sugar available in the grains to be extracted. Once you have your volumes pretty much on target, then you can use the calculated Brewhouse efficiency from BeerSmith (as stated above) to adjust your equipment profile to more accurately predict your gravity readings.Īnother thing to note: BeerSmith uses the Brewhouse efficiency and volume to fermenter as the basis for its calculations. So if it predicts a 1.040 gravity with 6.5 gallons and you end up with 5.2 gallons at 1.050, the program thinks everything is fine with regard to your efficiency numbers. It tracks the extraction of sugar from the grains and uses both of the measurements to figure out the mash and brewhouse (total) efficiency of your system once you brew. Why must you look at both independently? Since BeerSmith (or any brewing software) does not do volume corrections for errors. This number, if not reasonably close in pre-boil vs post boil will give you an indication of the accuracy of your measurements (both volume and gravity) This number should be consistent between pre-boil and post boil since there should not be a loss in sugar, just a concentration of it. 'sugar points' is the gravity reading minus 1 and times 1000 times the volume. You can do some initial adjustments if you track the 'sugar points' through the system. This is only useful when you have your volumes fairly accurate. Next is the sugar extraction, as tracked by the gravity readings. Did you get the right volumes throughout? how far off were you? I would recommend focusing on getting your water/wort volumes corrected first and then using the calculated efficiency from BeerSmith to modify your brewhouse efficiency in your equipment profile. There are two things to look at when trying to get the right efficiency into BeerSmith. 101% isn't even possible! I plan to brew in the next few days and want to make sure I am narrowing in on my system's total efficiency.Īny and all advice or comments on the topic are absolutely welcome. For instance, when I do the guess/check comparison thing mentioned above, I get 68% for one brew and 101% for the next. My last two batches had very drastic differences in mash efficiency and after comparing numbers over my last few brews, they seem to be all over the place. Maybe it really is just that easy? I'm struggling to understand the math behind it. Here's one more thread that seems to follow that same idea. Is this accurate and if so, is this new Brewhouse Efficiency what I should plug in for future batches? It ends with him doing a guess/check technique with his Equipment Profile Brewhouse Efficiency until his Est Mash Eff and Measured Mash Eff from the Mash tab were close in value.
Brewhouse efficiency beersmith how to#
This video for example, walks through a mock brew day and how to find your overall total efficiency. Does anybody really know how to use and adjust this thing? I feel like I've seen so many different articles and videos of people offering their own thoughts, but nothing too concrete.