tulip34 wrote:Nimus - one thing that has not been covered here is you question regarding volume - as in the calculator exceeds the kettle dimensions. The issue is that the software assumes you have a kettle big enough to handle the grain bill you've entered. The likely solution is to brew a smaller batch or decrease the grain bill. If you want to brew with a stronger ABV beer, use the cooler and press on.
A simple way to calculate mash volume is: Grain x .12 oz + bottling volume + evaporation loss + trub loss. The total mash water volume will be about 2L per lb of grain, which is sufficient to produce a 70% base grain conversion in 60-75 minutes (likely less) - optimum conversion occurs with a mash that is 2.6L per lb of grain.
Several things here sorry Tulip,
Firstly, your website is the second one to pinch BIABrewer.info's slogan of, "It's in the bag." This site was founded by the original BIAB pioneers and this site would like to have the time to be able to make and sell bags however all the time it does have has been spent on developing and providing quality information and tools for brewers.
The most time though gets spent on correcting misinformation from other sites.
For example, on your site you have written about "no sparging". Most sites, including premium ones get that wrong. See
here for the proper definition of no sparge brewing. By the way we have done actual side by side experiments here on active sparging versus passive sparging (pure, full-volume BIAB) and yes there is no gain in active sparging but we did the experiments.
In the post above, you wrote that the software does not account for kettle size. The BIABacus certainly does. Clear red warnings pop up to warn you if your kettle is too small. In fact another warning pops up if you are starting to get too close to exceeding your kettle volume. (Beersmith2 has a little dot or something if your kettle is too small.)
But the main reason I am writing here is to address your second paragraph. The paragraph starts with, "A simple way to calculate..." The problem is that sentence assumes the brewer will know how much grain they will be needing, how much wort they will evaporate and what their kettle and fermentor trub loss will be. No new brewer knows anything about those things and existing software is very poorly designed. That's why this site spent thousands of hours designing clear terminology and The BIABacus. The BIABacus only needs the new brewer to type in...
1. Their kettle dimensions.
2. The volume of beer they can comfortably fit in their fermentor.
3. The original gravity of the beer.
4. Boil duration
and then all the information they need weight and volume-wise appears. It might take ten or twenty minutes of study to get comfortable with the BIABacus but unlike other software, you won't spend the rest of your life scratching your head on it.
As for the last sentence, all that does is send a mixed message. Proper, pure BIAB is a single vessel, full volume brewing method so a liquor to grain ratio of 2.6 L per pound is irrelevant. (This info is incorrect anyway. The correct info on this is actually 2.5 litres per
kilogram and higher or 1.2 qt/lb and higher. Regardless it is not relevant in a BIAB brew.)
Finally I have no idea what you mean by mash volume equalling 2 L per pound. Here, mash volume means the volume taken up by your grain bill and water in the mash which does not work on a ratio.
So, far from simple, that last paragraph of just two sentences is about as confusing as one can get. Take some time to have a look a t The BIABacus and the terminology in it. It will serve you well.
PP
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