Hi there chef,

Can you look up Palmer's book and tell me the name of the recipe, the original gravity and the style as something is not right here.

Double check in the book as to whether he lists volume into fermenter, kettle trub losses and/or end of boil volume.

Once we have that, we'll get everything sorted quickly.

Cheers!

Using a blender is not ideal and I wouldn't recommend turning it to flour, this will just increase your trub problems.

It would be much better if you could get your grain crushed at you LHBS or if you could borrow a mill off a local brewer.

Good luck

Hashie is spot on - don't flour up your crush. Now...

I'm really struggling to make sense of the original recipe too chef. No wonder you are confused. There's no way you can get 5 gallons into the fermenter let alone into bottles with those grain weights.

Not many recipes have me stumped but this one certainly does. Maybe it has a typo?

Did you end up using the 7277 gram grain bill? That certainly should have got you close to the 1.062 original gravity if you did. If however you used the weights of the original recipe, you definitely would have been scoring a very low gravity for 23 litres into fermenter.

Have you got Brewing Classic Styles chef? Or, can you find another recipe from another source that we can work on? Maybe even one from here? It would be nice to be able to work on a recipe that we are confident in.


PP

[Edit: Maybe send your equipment profile as well if you can.]

Great easy post to convert Michael - nice job!

Hey, can you make it even easier by uploading your Beersmith2 recipe? To do this...

1. Right click on the recipe and press 'Export selected'
2. Give the recipe a file name and hit save.
3. Come back here and upload the file which will be in your Documents/BeerSmith2 directory

This will make it easier for me to show you the numbers you should be seeing.

In the meantime, I'll have a look through the above.

Cheers,
PP

Howdy chef,

I'm a bit worried now. If you used the 7227 gram grain bill, there's no way you should have got that 1.042 gravity. You had this same problem on the other brews as well I think from memory???

I'm starting to think now that you have been converting the recipes properly all along but may have a dodgy thermometer, dodgy hydro or dodgy water etc. Have a look at this post and think on number 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.

Check your thermometer against other thermometrs at 66 C - forget freezing and boiling point. Also check your hydrometer at 1.050 by dissolving 130 grams of table sugar in about 0.9 litres of hot water. Let that cool to 15 C or 20 C depending on your hydrometer and then top it up to 1 litre and take your measure.

Make sure your measuring jug is right as well. You'd be surprised at how often these things occur. I once bought a jug that had 4 litres marked on the side of it and it actually held 3 litres .

Also if you use your own scales, use something of a known weight and test them on the scales.

If checking everything on the above list yields no results, we'll look at a pilsner recipe and go through it step by step.

Hope you find something above mate

Thanks for posting up the extra files Michael - that is excellent!

I noticed in your calculator file that there were some formulas over-written and a few errors in how you input the figures. So, what I thought we might do here, is test out stux's latest calculator and then after that we'll take a look at BeerSmith2. Looking forward to this!

[center]Converting using The Calculator 2.0 (Easy)[/center]
What I did was downloaded stux's latest Maxi-BIAB Calculator from here and then deleted the maxi-BIAB tabs.

Then I did the following...

Volumes Tab

I'm not using your volume or efficiency figures for now Michael for reasons I'll explain later.

Typed in 21.3 for 'Brew Length'
Typed in 81.7 for 'End of Boil Efficiency'
Typed in 1.062 for 'End of Boil Gravity' (from your .doc)
Typed in 40 for 'Diameter of Kettle'

Doing the above gives us the same figures (given a decimal point or two) as are used in the 'Pot (13 Gal/50L) - BIAB' BeerSmith2 equipment profile. This will make things easier later and give us all some common ground to work on.

Grain Bill Tab

Here I typed in the grain bill from your .doc file.

Hop Bill Tab

On your spreadsheet you had some funny things happening so I'll give a bit more detail here. (Wow! Just saw stux's hop chart on the right - somehow I had missed that before. Cool!!!)

We know from your .doc file that the end of boil volume on the original recipe was 6 gallons so I typed in 22.71 in Cell E6.

Next I typed in the hop bill from the original recipe in columns A,B,C and G. Notice how I have typed in the same AA% as in the original recipe? I have also made sure I put in the correct times.

Then in Column J, I typed in the default AA% for each hop as used in BeerSmith2. You can change these though to the AA% of hops in your fridge or if you intend substituting to a different hop then use the AA% of the different hop.

If your pot was 40cm in diameter, we would have to do nothing more. You would end up with this.You can change the 40 cm to the 34.3 cms of your pot and you will be good to go.

So, your recipe is the first conversion with stux's flash new calculator! Good on you stux . You will simply use the grain bill shown in column G of the 'Grain Bill' tab and the hop bill shown in column I of the 'Hop Bill' tab.

(You might be wondering why The Calculator says 50.8 IBU's compared to the original recipe's 82.2. This will probably be due to the Rager formula being used instead of Tinseth. We will check this in BeerSmith2.)

[center]General Comments on your BeerSmith2 Files[/center]
You have done a really good job at setting up your equipment profile. Only one problem mate and I think you forgot to tick your 'Calculate Boil Vol Automatically' box. Having this unticked can get you into all sorts of problems so open up your profile now, tick the box and save it. All else is great!

One thing I couldn't work out though is that in your profile, the Brewhouse Efficiency is 70% but in the recipe you uploaded it is 75%. Also your batch size/volume has been changed. Be really careful when playing around with these figures in the recipe design view. It is really easy to bugger things up. Until you have done a few brews, make sure that in your case Michael, the Recipe Design tab shows your Batch Size is 23 L, your 'Tot Efficiency' is 70% and double check your 'Est Mash Eff' reads as 81.6%. No playing

Finally I see that you have used Nugget hops instead of Chinook. This is fine but what I think I will do for our example here, is just use the same hops as in the original recipe and the default BeerSmith2 AA% for each hop. You can change these yourself later to whatever you want just the same as I suggested you do in The Calculator 2.0 above.

[center]Converting using BeerSmith2 & THe Calculator 2.0 - (Easy)[/center]
Now that we have a calculator file made up, things are easy to put into BeerSmith2 as The Calculator has already done the converting for us. All you would have to do in The Calculator file above is change the pot diameter and the AA% of any hops in column J to the AA% of the hops you intend to use.

Then you would 'Add Recipe' on BeerSmith2, make sure your equipment profile is selected and then transfer the grain bill from column D and the hop bill info from column G, I and J.

Another thing you could do is not change the cms in the Calculator file. Instead, you would select the 'Pot (13 Gal/50L) - BIAB' BeerSmith2 equipment profile, type in the grains and hops and then hit the 'Scale Recipe' button. You would then scale to the 'Michael's Pot' profile. Cool!

For those who do use the 'Pot (13 Gal/50L) - BIAB' profile, here is what your BeerSmith2 recipe would look like. [center]Converting using BeerSmith2 - (Harder)[/center]
If your recipe had come to you in the form of a beersmith file, you could simply use the 'Scale Recipe' button to convert the recipe to your 'Michaels' Pot.' Once again, easy peasy. But...

Yours is an external recipe so we have to do more work. Assuming we wanted to convert your recipe completely only using BeerSmith2 we would do the following...

1. Click Add Recipe

2. Click on the tick beside the equipment profile - I am assuming yours is the default and change the batch volume to 22.7 L and change 'Loss to Trub and Chiller' to zero. This will give BeerSmith2 a 6 gallon (22.7 L) end of boil volume to work on as was used in the original recipe.

3. Don't touch anything else, just click OK.

4. Now type in the ingredients from the original recipe exactly as they are using the same weights, AA%, hop names and times etc.

5. Now, see how the IBU's read as 55.4? This is still a long way off from the original recipes 82.2. In BeerSmith2, no matter what sort of hop formula I use, I can't get it to match the original recipes very high IBU. Unless you were able to contact the writer of the original recipe, there is no way to understand what he has done there. 82.2 is way too high for an American IPA so I would not be worrying about it.

6. The next thing I want to do is match the efficiency of the original recipe. To do this I will keep changing the 'Tot Efficiency' figure until I see the 'Est Original Gravity' change to 1.068. It ends up that 68% is correct. (Doing this has increased our bitterness slightly but this is fine).

7. Finally I am going to scale the recipe back to your equipment profile. So, I click on 'Scale Recipe' and even though 'Michael's Pot' is already displayed, I will click on it and then select it from the drop down list and press okay. Here is what your recipe would look like at this stage.8. Finally we have to go through and change the hops one by one to suit our AA%. This is a bit laborious and for this reason, 'The Calculator' is a faster tool to use to convert external recipes.

You might remember that we have chosen to select the BeerSmith2 AA% defaults for our hops. They are Chinook 13%, Centennial 10% and Cascade 5.5%. So, luckilly the only one we have to play with is Cascade - we need to change this from 5.75% to 5.5%. As two of the Cascade additons are at zero minutes or dry hopped, we really don't have to worry about these. Let's have a look at the 15 minute Cascade addition though.

See how it says this contributes 7.9 IBU's? Double click on that and change the 5.75% to 5.5% and click okay. You'll now see that addition is only contribuiting 7.6 IBUs. What I need to do now is play around with the weight until it equals 8.0. Typing in 44.8 grams gives this result.

So, here is the recipe I came up with for your equipment.[center]Finally[/center]
Okay we are finally done! When I come to NZ Michael, I expect a few pints of your Celebration Sierra Nevada Yum! It was actually quite interesting though exploring Stux's new calculator and BeerSmith2. You'll see a few differences in the conversion methods but nothing to worry about and it has given me a couple of questions to ask so thanks for the challenge and thanks for providing all the good info to work with.

Don't think converting a recipe takes ages though. It really would only take about 5 minutes to convert it in The Calculator and then another 5 to type it into BeerSmith2. The above makes it look hard but there are some easy traps to fall into. Once you get the hang of things it is all fairly quick and easy.

I haven't double-checked the above but let me know if anything is unclear etc.


PP

Great to see you are getting through it all Michael . Good find on the overflowing mash tun as well .

There's a few things or a combination of things you can do with this problem...

1. Use a hop bag in the boil and/or whirlpool to reduce your 'Loss to Trub and Chiller' and therefore increase your "Brewhouse Efficiency".

2. Decrease your boil time to 60 minutes.

3. Brew smaller batch sizes.

If none of these are suitable, you could, in your profile, change your 'Top Up Water for Kettle' to 5 L. Changing this figure simply decreases the initial amount of water you use and then assumes you will top the kettle up with 5 L at the start of the boil which should then make your start of boil volume correct.

If you do this, you might have to lower your efficiency by a few percent as the grain is being soaked/rinsed with a bit less water.

You can add 5L of cold water after mash out or if you don't want to slow things down, heat the 5 L up on your kitchen stove.

Does that make sense mate?

Cheers,
PP

Hey Michael, one thing I'd suggest is try not to let brewing software's faults/ imperfections dictate how you brew!
I'm not trying to make things more complex for you but if you have a look at the Maxi-BIAB guide, it shows you how most of the mind- numbing calculations (and challenges for software developers) are banished by virtue of the process using full vessels and dilution to concentration*. What that means is I don't use brewing software for much other than as a simple recipator (eg. I could go back to QBrew), which is part of the reason why I've yet to actually test BS2 (Sorry PP- I know I promised that I would, but I've not actually been home much and the build I downloaded won't run under Linux anyway!).
* The dilution to concentration trick really makes the efficiency and boil off issues evaporate. If you're still having strife, it would be worthwhile considering, it comes at the expense of variable fermenter volume but no biggie in 99% of cases.

Michael, the difference is only about a litre on the recipes I have here so nothing to worry about.

It could even be a 'hot water' volume versus 'cold water' volume thing or maybe slightly different grain absorption rate is being used? I haven't checked these out in detail as I saw they were very close. I'll have a look down the track as a matter of interest though.

The thing to remember is that all that the calculations in BeerSmith2 and The Calculator can do is give you a starting point. From there you need to measure for 5 brews as many things as you can and then get your averages and change the calcs/settings in the programs accordingly. In The Calculator this means over-writing some formulas such as the evaporation and trub loss fields etc.

Even once you do get set up correctly, you'll find that each brew varies considerably for lots of reasons. Atmospheric conditions, how many hops you use etc.

Have to race for work but more later on the dilution stuff as there are whole two pholosophies on this and both are right. (Cheers Ralph )

Later,
PP

Hey Michaelvw, sorry, I hastily dropped that in this morning without much in the way of explanation.
One of the Maxi-BIAB 'philosophies', for the want of a better term, is to use the vessels full to the brim to set the volumes and not your software or a particular brewing science. So firstly, with the kettle at mashing, it is firstly filled to 3/4 and overheated to at least mash temp + 5C, the overheating is to allow some heat loss to warm up the insulation and resting surface, after a brief pause to do that, reserve some water (about 3L is OK with a 19L pot), drop the grain in and stir, then either use the reserved water to fill the kettle at mash temp, or use boiling or cold to adjust, often a combination is required. This was a bit long winded, but the idea is to get the kettle completely full and at exactly the right temperature for mashing- the reason for this is we don't care* what the first runnings volume or SG is because we're going to sparge it in another vessel, just so long as it has mashed anywhere between roughly 2 and 4L per kg of grain, we really don't care about the specifics though.
The sparge bucket (12 or 15L is good) then accepts the drained bag and once more it is just filled to the brim with near- boiling water, stirred and after a brief rest lifted to effect the sparge. Multiple sparges are necessary if your bucket is the smaller kind, but the single bigger sparge should be fine in a 15L. Again, the idea is not to focus on a particular volume but on filling the vessel at around the right temperature (it is not critical to reach a particular temperature for this sort of sparge- unless that process takes hours, but it doesn't with this method). This sparge will also fill your kettle during the boil, that's fine, we don't really care what volume of wort is there, nor its SG, so long as there's a full kettle to start the boil but we'll also top it up during the boil, hopefully all of the sparge is consumed and at the end there will be a little less than the kettle volume of slightly concentrated wort. Just before the end of the boil, do get a sample before chilling (just to minimise chances of contamination).
The reason we don't really care much about these actual volumes is that it is going to be over- gravity pretty much regardless. Also, instead of boiling wort down and hoping to hit a particular SG (that's the Original Gravity if boiled conventionally) through evaporation, the wort is going to be a little stronger to begin with and we're then going to dilute it to exactly where we want it later. That is the critical bit, from start to finish the process is dealing with concentrated wort.
OK, so in some circumstances the efficiency may be low but we still have this kettle full of slightly concentrated wort, what do we do? Simple- just don't dilute it quite as much! What about if evaporation is much less than expected? Same deal, just don't dilute it quite as much! Because we have a sample of wort from the end of the boil (a 'must have'), we'll work out exactly how much to dilute it by to reach our pre- determined OG. This simple full to the brim methodology comes at the expense of variable brew length, but usually that is only a few litres either way unless something really drastic went wrong. For my mind, this small added uncertainty in brew length is well worth the positives the method brings.

So, how does this help you? Well, there's not really a simple answer to that, but my real reason for suggesting it is that you don't be afraid to use some of the Maxi-BIAB philosophy to scrape a few more litres of beer out of your kettle, and it should help you to overcome that overflowing kettle. My advice is to fill it right up to the brim at mashing, I doubt sparging will be that helpful as you'll still be in the conventional BIAB L:G, you should also be able to add hot water to the boil to reach your desired volume, if not, then just dilute it at pitching. I've held the view though that you may as well do something constructive with the near boiling water, sparging is the obvious choice.
BTW, the dilution formula is quite simple:
Boil SG/ Target OG * Wort Volume = Final Diluted Volume, Final Diluted Volume - Wort Volume = Water Added
You may want to allow some loss to trub, if that's the case subtract it from Wort Volume values beforehand.

Pardon the marathon essay...

* Sometimes it is still helpful to measure all of these things to see how each part of the Maxi-BIAB process performs. I'd recommend that for novice brewers, in case the material hitting the fan isn't evenly distributed.

To keep things a bit clearer, I am going to do two (three if I get time) consecutive posts here. First up...

Chefeffect

Thanks for getting back to us. I appreciate that and great to hear that everything worked out well! Excuse me being very brief here (busy day!)...

1. Please read my post here re the '20 minute mash myth.' The link that post contains will show you graphs on mash conversion over time.

2. Seeing how your next brews go is exactly the right spirit! Measure as much as you can on the next four or five brews and you'll learn a heap!

All the best,
PP

Michaelvw

It is great to see you are closely examining and questioning figures etc. You'd be amazed at how many people out there incorrectly set up their software or who use software that is incorrect and don't realise it. These same people swear by it. And these are the same people who are mysteriously able to have the same evaporation rate on every brew and hit their gravity and trub targets every time. Furthermore, they go to great lengths to tell everyone of these incredible feats .

May the brewing gods bless them . And may we all realise that they are incredible.

For mere mortals like us, it is best to realise that we (and even all the experienced homebrewers and all the boutique brewers I know) can never expect to reach these lofty heights.

What we can do, is learn to understand the brewing process like you are doing. You don't have to know gravity formulas and bitterness formulas. What you do need to understand is what things affect these. Playing around with The Calculator and studying the effects will teach you heaps and, if you keep your questioning up Michael, you will become a very informed brewer. Many brewers actually miss the basics.

Anyway... having said all that , here is what I am seeing on your BeerSmith2 versus Calculator stuff. BeerSmith2 is telling me you need a mash volume of 42.88 L. The Calculator is telling me you will have an 'Approximate Mash Volume' of 42.14 L. So, neither will fit in your kettle . But, the figures are almost identical.

There is a chance you have accidentally changed something at your end so I will re-post the files here. I have added 'Check' to the files so as you don't confuse them with your existing ones. See if you can find where the difference is. (If you have a laptop and another computer, load BeerSmith2 onto both machines so as you can compare the recipes side by side. If not print a recipe report from your file and my file and look for the differences. Same goes for The Calculator.)

I could well have stuffed up so, after you have checked the above, don't hesitate to let me know if I have been at fault.

Fingers crossed that you find something simple that has thrown the calcs out. (There will be some differences between The Calculator and Beersmith2 but nothing major.)


PP