Enjoying the read and pics Ade. Thank you

The joys of brewing Ade

There is lots of fun in building an automated system however, it often ends up that the more parts we add, the more complications occur and our brew day becomes longer and sometimes harder. If there is a God, he/she seemed to have installed in brewer's brains, not only a love of beer but also tinkering - possibly a design error ? I've had heaps of fun tinkering but I must say that I do have a room full of discarded "time-saving" devices I dreamed up.

Main thing is to keep in the front of your mind when tinkering, "Can I easily keep my system cleaned and sanitised?" That's the key I reckon.

Once again, thanks for your great read
PP

AdeDunn wrote: ↑

6 years ago

That's the good thing about this build, PistolPatch, it all comes apart for cleaning.

That is music to my ears Ade

It's really one of my biggest worries in brewing when I see a brewer embarking on a build with massive enthusiasm. I see their passion and want to encourage that most valuable quality but often the build they are working on I can see will eventually destroy their passion . What am I meant to say in those situations?

I'm so pleased to see your reply above. So far, I've just been a reader of your thread and really enjoyed it. I have only read it in glances though, not with the concentration I would have liked to have spent on it. Things are freeing up a bit for me now though so a pleasure for me will be to re-read your thread in entirety. I'll focus on finding any potential "passion-killers," as I think, if there are any, you'll use your brain/passion to solve them.

In other words, I'll try to be super-critical, because, if there is anything wrong, I have a feeling you will take it on board*. (Don't worry though, if there was some glaring error, I would have already registered it in my brain and it would have niggled at me as I'd have an overwhelming desire to correct it )

Love your attitude and passion Ade
Pat

* And I expect you to teach me or some others some stuff as automation is not my specialty.

Your beer looks good...!

Hello AdeDunn,

Can’t taste a picture, but your brews certainly look tasty...!

My preferred brew setup is a more simple full volume BIAB, as I feel that I have enough complexities in life and don’t want to complicate it more necessary to make great beer. But that said, more complicated setups like yours score high in the COOL department! And who knows... Good job researching things and doing a good job documenting for me and others that are intreagued. Will be interesting to see if your additional equipment and labor allows a couple points higher efficiency. (Probably will...) So anyway, good job! There are many ways to make good beer.

Ade, thanks again for keeping us posted. I know this site has a button planned so as you will be able to give a post a thumbs up (like) however it still needs some work. If it was working, I'm sure you'd find yourself with plenty of thumbs up.

I've been short on time lately and so have only been able to read here not make any comments. Lol on, "Oh, and it's probably going to give you nightmares, but I've done quite a lot more since my last post." Let's hope you never get the garage . You should see my place. I shuld open it as a hardware (home depot?) store but it's really a collection of my past misadventures explorations

Just one thing on the education/terminology side... You've used the term "efficiency" a lot and I'm guessing you're using mainstream brewing software which, due to its ambiguous terminology and the model its based on, has lead to a massive misunderstanding of what "efficiency" is and what affects it. Start tinkering with the BIABacus and Clear Brewing Terminology. Mainstream software works on a principle where you type in your "efficiency." There are two problems with that:

1. They usually fail to define what efficiency they are talking about (search for posts written by me here that contain the word "cousin" and you're sure to find an essay on this).
2. The user has to type in their "efficiency." This means that they just type in something like 70%. What the user does not realise and what is never explained, is that "efficiency" is not a constant.

In contrast to the above, instead of the user typing in an "efficiency" figure, the BIABacus looks at what you are brewing and sets it for you. For example, the other day, I brewed a massively big beer (OG of 1.097) and the BIABacus auto-set my "Efficiency into Kettle (EIK)" to a very low percentage, probably about 55%. Whereas, my next brew was a "normal" one with an OG of about 1.050 and the BIABacus auto-set my EIK to about 85%. On a low gravity brew with an OG of say 1.035, you should be seeing an EIK of around 90%.

Due to mainstream software, "efficiency," is seen as some fixed number that must be achieved whereas "efficiency" is a variable that is quite predictable. This treating it as a fixed number has lead to a mass of confusion; the poor brewer whose last brew had an OG of 1.045 and achieved a "kettle efficiency" of 85% then does a brew with an OG of 1.058 and can't understand why their efficiency into kettle dropped by 5%. They think they have done something wrong.

The problem gets even worse when the software's meaning of "efficiency" refers to the "Efficiency into Fermenter" (EIF). A highly hopped beer, regardless of OG, will always have a lower EIF than a lightly hopped beer of the same OG simply due to the fact that there will be more kettle trub and subsequently less Volume into Fermenter.

Did I just write all that?
At least I didn't get onto refractometers

Keep up the great posts and work Ade

Hi AdeDunn,

Question for you... You mentioned better results @ 75 minutes of super hard boil vs. 90 minutes roiling boil (so higher temperature???). How so? In what way was the result better?

Also, FYI the BIABacus always defaults to getting higher OG than planned. It's easy to fix this before fermentation, and if you accidentally get too low on a brew, going higher OG gives some margin for error. If you don't want to have this there are some adjustments you can make to the software to lower the OG and have it be more accurate (in one of those cells over on the right hand side, I believe)… I don't do this as I prefer having some margin for error.


Thanks,
Scott

Good stuff posting some numbers Ade . This helps give a clearer picture and I'll come to those in a minute.

Before that though, a clarification on your clarification . In BeerSmith, "brewhouse efficiency" actually refers to Efficiency into Fermenter." I just downloaded BeerSmith 3 to check that nothing has changed here and it hasn't. (Nice to see my name is still under the Major Contributors ).

So in Beersmith 2 (and now 3) you'll see the following terms, "Efficiency," "Mash Efficiency," and "Brewhouse Efficiency," depending on which screen you are looking at. Where it says "Efficiency" or "Brewhouse Efficiency," it means Efficiency into Fermenter. When it says "Mash Efficiency," it means Efficiency into Kettle.

[The above paragraph may give you an idea as to why I spent a lot of time over a few years developing Clear Brewing Terminology.]

So, in Beersmith you have to type in (guess) your Brewhouse Efficiency (Efficiency into Fermenter) in your Equipment Profile - there is no option to type in (guess) your "Mash Efficiency" (Efficiency into Kettle). What this means is that if a BeerSmith brewer (or any other mainstream software user) sets an "efficiency" figure in "their profile," they are going to experience the following problems...

1. They brew a high gravity brew with a heap of hops and find themselves with far less volume into fermenter and at a lower gravity than was estimated.
2. They brew a low gravity brew with few hops and find themselves with too much volume into fermenter at a higher gravity.
3. Any combination of the above.

To avoid the above problems, they really would need to set up countless "Equipment Profiles" that matched what they were brewing. The BIABacus avoids all that; it calculates the "real" maths for you.

It's really important to understand the above.

The following are facts...
It is impossible for a high gravity brew to have the same Efficiency into Kettle as a low gravity brew.
It is possible for a high gravity brew with very few hops have the same Efficiency into Fermenter as a low gravity brew with a heap of hops.

What I think I should do is write a proper official thread on all this. (Just noticed a few "first posts" that mention being worried about "efficiency".) It will take a day or two, without distraction, to write well but it is way overdue. Until then, let's have a look at...

Your Numbers Ade

If I write the following well, you might go . But, you shouldn't. This is hard stuff for the brain to take on when you've been unwittingly mislead into thinking "efficiency" is a constant. (It took me several years of questioning, along with others, and then experimenting before I was able even see what is now obvious.)

You have three brews and have listed their EIB, EAW and EIF. The first thing to realise is that EIB and EAW are both measures of Efficiency into Kettle, they are just taken at different times. In other words, EIB and EAW should match. Why?

If I put one teaspoon of sugar in a cup of coffee and then boil half of it off, the coffee will just taste like I added two teaspoons. Sugar doesn't evaporate.

The second thing to realise is that Efficiency into Fermenter must always be lower than your kettle efficiencies (EIB or EAW). Sugar does not drop from the atmosphere into the hose you use to transfer from your kettle to fermenter

But, on your numbers we are seeing that your EIB and EAW are totally different from each other whereas they should be, in theory, identical. In practice, they'll rarely be identical du to measurement error but they should be pretty close.

Then we have your fermenter efficiency being higher than your kettle efficiency (or close to it) on all three brews. In other words, on your three brews, you miraculously ended up with more sugar in your fermenter than was in your kettle!

...

You wrote, "I suppose I need to apologise for knowing the "clear brewing terminology" (I read all the intro posts multiple times when I first joined here, really helped to take my brewing from an EIF of 60% to where I am now!!), but not using it in my posts. "

That's no problem. But, the phrase, "really helped to take my brewing from an EIF of 60% to where I am now!." is a problem . Well, it's a problem for me.... it indicates that I'm failing to properly educate in this area and that I really must write a comprehensive thread on this whole subject.

Until then Ade, I want to see evidence you have searched and studied my posts that have the word "cousin" in them. I wrote that in my last post here but you missed that one didn't you?

I'll try and block out a few days in the next week and write on this whole subject so as we can knock it on the head once and for all.

Yikes!
PP

AdeDunn wrote: ↑

6 years ago

PP, regarding needing multiple equipment profiles, not if you know how to use Beersmith 2 (and now 3) properly. In the desktop version you can adjust the "BH Efficiency" on the design few tab, you would however need to understand that you'd have to be doing this in the first place. Luckily for me it's not an issue as I don't brew "big" beers, I consider my equipment too small, and my experience level too low. The Beersmith Software relies quite heavily on the brewer been able to "dial it in" for a particular brew, which unless you've brewed similar before would be rather difficult I should imagine. Hence I've previously always built in BIABacus to begin with. Originally I was using only the Beersmith 2 phone app as a brew timer to be honest. Now I use the desktop version more as I've reached the point where I've brewed the styles I create enough to know at least roughly what I'm going to get.

That "feature" has been there in all versions Ade. As mentioned above, I'm listed as one of the few major contributors to the program so I do know the program back to front. What I'm worried about is that your numbers are not making sense. You need to check those. Hopefully there is enough detail in my posts above on what to research and check. I hope there is because they certainly took some time to write!
Also on the BIABacus, you always use the numbers (weights) on the right hand side of Sections C and D. If you worked off the left-hand side when scaling or copying a recipe, you'd run into major problems as the left-hand side simply establishes ratios.