Hi there PJ and welcome to the forum . Your post above is really well-written, lots of detail etc. Nice job .

I only have time for one post and yours looks like the hardest question here today and I like those ones . The great thing is that you haven't started BIAB'ing yet so we can get you started using the right tools etc. Firstly...

Beersmith2 or BIABacus?

The long and short of it is that the BIABacus is a far simpler yet more sophisticated tool than BeerSmith2 or any other brewing software out there. The BIABacus was actually developed because other software had so many problems with it. These problems begin with how to set up an equipment profile - the exact problem you are having. The most detailed info you will find on how to set up a BeerSmith equipment profile will be on this site. See BeerSmith2 Guide for BIABrewers. Note and read the link given in the first line of that thread.

So, to summarise, existing commercial software might look pretty but it has a lot of faults and these faults take a long time to learn and work around. The BIABacus is, in fact, the only tool that will handle a scenario like yours.

If, for some reason, you still do want detailed BeerSmith help.

This will still be the best site to get it. A search of Beersmith2 will end up in a lot of detail on the ins and outs of the program. Start with the guide linked above. You will need to study those posts for a few days (months probably), at least, before you can be confident you are using the program correctly and correcting for errors.

Your Scenario

Firstly, do a 90 minute mash not a 60 minute mash. This forum makes a strong effort to collect real information. This thread) shows there is a difference between a 60 and 90 minute mash.

Secondly, doing a dunk sparge creates a lot more work for very little advantage especially on the gravity brews you are planning on doing. If you learn the BIABacus it will show you this.

The Main Problem

"My hope is to net 5 gallons of beer for bottling after fermentation and trub loss." (Before this you have said, "I keep my grain bill to approx 10 lbs.").

Sorry, can't write any more. Have to race now. But, there are a lot of great questions in this post. The main problem though is that you are asking for too much beer from your kettle.

That's it from me for now,
PP

PJ, have I scared you off?

One of the hardest things about this commercial software stuff is that it takes a while for it to sink in that it is so difficult and that it actually does contain errors. One thing you will find is that anywhere questions are asked on say setting up an equipment profile, the answers are very few and they are very rarely correct.

The Answer You Would Like to Hear

Your profile is great!

To tell you the truth, it is well done. All your estimates of evaporation and trub losses are within the ball-park.

The big problem is, as always, with the 'Brewhouse' efficiency. Yours is way too high - about 14% too high for a normal gravity brew if you did no dilutions.

Why your 'Brewhouse Efficiency' is way too High.

For a start, over 25% of the water you are using in your set-up never 'sees' the grain. This has a big effect on how much 'sugar' you can extract from the grain. Commercial software pretends that all brews you do, high gravity/low gravity, diluted/un-diluted will always give you the same 'efficiency'. This is, of course, totally incorrect.

[In Section P of the BIABacus you will see various efficiency figures. In your scenario, your 'Brewhouse' efficiency is the equivalent of Efficiency into Fermentor (EIF)*.]

Let's put your Beersmith profile into the BIABAcus...

I have permission to put some BIABacus Pre-Release files into this thread. Here is your Beersmith Profile in BIABacus form...The first thing to notice are the red warnings at the bottom of Sections B and W. They are telling you, straight away, that the profile is impossible on a 1.050 beer.

(Beersmith2 has some red dot warnings buried away on the volumes tab but you would never notice them.)

Let's make things easy...

Firstly, I am going to delete all the values that were written into Section X of the above BIABacus file. The default numbers in the BIABacus will serve you well and shouldn't be changed until you have a few brews under your belt and have actually made several measurements. Fair enough?

Your scenarios is the hardest there is and, as I mentioned in my last post, the BIABacus is the only program that is capable of handling your scenario correctly. What I am going to do is change the above file to give you a safe amount to brew. Here you go... What you need to do...

If you are a good reader, I think I have written enough above to inform you that there is only one correct (and fast) way to go from here.

You'll need to do some reading on how the BIABacus works for a start. Read this link. That only takes about twenty minutes of study if you pretend you have a very big kettle and can full-volume which is what BIAB is really about.

In your situation, where you have a lot of limitations and restrictions, you need to juggle. A search of any posts written here by me that contain that word 'juggling' or juggle' will lead you to the right info on how to get the most out of a small kettle, sensibly.

A Note on Kettles

You say you have a 19 litre stock pot. In reality it is probably a little bigger. Make sure you measure the internal height and diameter of your kettle and type these into Setion B of the BIABacus.

Doing that is all that a brewer has to do to get the BIABacus working. (It even handles odd shaped kettles!)

Let me know if the above helps PJ and that we haven't lost you . If you put some time into studying the above you will be one very informed brewer.

For God's sake don't raqd the PS before you have studied all the above!!!!!
pp

*p.s. many Beersmith users set the program up a different way (for good reason as it fixed/s several critical formula errors) so that their Brewhouse Efficiency means Efficiency into Kettle (EIK). Unless they publish their Beersmith .bsm file, it is impossible to know which method they have used - lol!!!. In other words, most Beersmith recipes, such as those published "in the cloud" can be scaled or copied with any accuracy.

Good on you PJ,

If you are happy to work with the BIABacus, you will be able to skip a lot of very difficult reading as it will be unnecessary. A good read of the first post of this thread will take you a long way.

A lot of fast learning can be done by simply playing with the BIABacus. For example, with the files I posted above you can try changing the VIF in Sectin B and seeing how this effects the grain bill etc. Because you want to maxi-BIAB, then try changing some things in Section W and see how this affects the grain bill. You'll see volume warnings pop up etc and you can also see how the various efficiencies change in Sectin P.

And, of course, ask any questions you like.

Have fun
PP

PS, This post andthe summary of this post contain some basic proinciples of what to keep an eye out for on Maxi_BIAB. The files I have posted in this thread also have some red warnings re-instated that accidentally got lost in PR 1.2 and 1.3.