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Equipment Profiles

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The Equipment profiles are used to store your personal equipment settings for building recipes.  It is very important that you create your own personal equipment profile to match your particular set of brewing equipment and set that as the default for future recipes.

 

New Features: BeerSmith 3 and up support a type for equipment profiles and will only show fields relevant to the type of equipment.  For example mash data is not shown for extract or mead equipment.  BeerSmith now also has a boil altitude setting to account for high altitude hop utlilization.

 

BeerSmith now has an Equipment Wizard mode to make creating custom equipment profiles easier - see "Using the Equipment Wizard" below

 

Important Note!: Please take a few minutes to create your own equipment profile for your brewing setup.  As the equipment profile is used throughout the recipe calculations, an accurate equipment profile is important particularly if you want accurate water calculations when brewing.

 

Also important: If you want to make your new equipment profile the default for all new recipes, use the Brewing tab in the Options dialog after you have created and set your equipment profile.  If you edit your profile in the future you may need to update this option to have it saved for future recipes.

 

See Also: Recipe Design Tab, BeerSmith Support Page - has videos on building your own equipment profile

 

Online Articles: Understanding Brewhouse Efficiency, Improving your Brewhouse Efficiency

 

Using the Equipment Profile View

oSelect the Equipment view from the profiles menu or ribbon.  BeerSmith now has pre-installed equipment profiles in the most popular sizes.
oFrom here you can add, edit or delete new equipment profiles using the large buttons on the ribbon

 

Using the Equipment Wizard

oThe Equipment Profile Wizard is a new tool to create your own equipment profile by answering a series of questions
oSelect the Equipment view from the profiles menu or ribbon
oSelect Equipment Wizard from the Insert menu.  Alternately you can add a new profile using the Add Equip button and then select the Equipment Wizard button at the bottom right of the equipment dialog
oAnswer the questions listed, and use the Next and Previous buttons to navigate between pages.  Click OK when done
oTo make your new profile the default for creating recipes, use the Brewing page in the Options dialog

 

Creating an Equipment Profile of Your Own

oSelect the Equipment view from the profiles menu or ribbon
oClick on the Add Equip button to add a new equipment profile, or you can copy/paste an existing profile and edit the copy to make it your own
oDetails for the equipment profile dialog are shown below
oPress OK to save your equipment profile
oIf you want to make your new equipment profile the default for all new recipes, use the Brewing tab in the Options dialog

 

Details of the Equipment Dialog - Setting up your own profile

oName - Give your personal equipment profile a descriptive name
oType - The type of beverage you are brewing such as all-grain, extract, mead, wine or cider.  Only relevant fields will be shown for your equipment profile.
oShow Boil Settings - For meads, wines and ciders most modern ones are made without boiling.  However you can add boil settings  if you want to boil yours for some reason.
oBrewhouse Efficiency - If you are an all-grain or partial mash brewer, this should be set to the overall gross efficiency for your system from grain to fermenter including losses.  For most brewing systems this is in the range of 68%-76%.
oBatch Volume Into Fermenter - The target batch size as measured into the fermenter - typically a bit over 5 gallons for most home brewers
oFermentation Loss - Losses to trub and transfers during the fermentation process
oBottling Volume - The batch volume minus fermentation losses - represents the volume of beer left to be bottled or kegged
oMash Tun Volume - The volume of your mash tun (for BIAB brewers, you should set this to the volume of your boil vessel).
oMash Tun Weight - Approximate weight (mass) of your mash tun - used to compensate mash temperatures for the thermal mass of your tun
oMash Tun Specific Heat - The specific heat of your mash tun - generally this is a number between 0.10 and 0.50 with lower numbers associated with all metal mash tuns such as stainless steel and higher numbers representing plastic thermal coolers.
oRecoverable Mash Deadspace - This number represents water that is below the mash screen but is recoverable during the lauter process.  When calculating volumes, this water is automatically added in the first mash step so you will get sufficient water in the mash tun.  Many BIAB style systems have large recoverable volumes below the mash tun so it is important that you set this number.
oMash Deadspace Losses - Represents the lost deadspace in the lauter tun - how much wort will likely be lost to the lauter tun screen and piping.  Unlike the mash tun addition, this volume is not recoverable during sparging.
oTop Up Water for Kettle - Enter zero here for most cases unless you add additional water between the mash and the boil
oCalculate Boil Volume Automatically - When checked this will determine the boil volume based on the Batch volume into the fermenter minus losses and evaporation.  Generally it should be checked.
oBoil Volume - The volume of water at the start of the boil
oBoil Time - The time that you usually boil the wort - typically 60-90 minutes for an all grain batch or slightly less for an extract batch
oBoil Off - An estimate of the water boiled off or evaporated during the boil
oEvaporation Rate - Calculated from the boil off - this represents the percentage boiled/evaporated off during the boil
oCooling Shrinkage - Water typically loses about 4% of its volume when cooled from boiling to room temperature
oCooling Loss - Simply the cooling shrinkage expressed as a volume
oLosses to Trub/Chiller - The amount of wort lost in the trub or chiller during the transfer from the boiling vessel to the fermenter
oTop Up Water - Typically zero for a full boil batch, but many extract brewers do add a few gallons of water at the end of the boil
oBoil Elevation - The altitude of the brewing location.  This is used to estimate boil temperatures which drive hop utilization.  Hop utilization
oWhirlpool Time - This represents the average time in the whirlpool or steeping (hot) before you chill your wort.  It is used to calculate hop utilization when the box to carry over hops (below) is checked.  Hops will still generate a small amount of IBUs when steeped at high temperature.
oEstimate Boil Hop Utility in Whirlpool - Recommended if using a steep/whirlpool stage before chilling.  When checked, the program will attempt to estimate the remaining hop bitterness utilization for boil hops and carry those forward into the whirlpool.  This becomes important when long whirlpool times are used or when working with the "no chill" brewing method, as these hops will continue to contribute some bitterness to the beer while the wort is still hot.
oHop Utilization Factor - Should always be set to 100% unless you are working with a very large commercial size system (more than 20 gallons, or over 76 liters) in which case your utilization might be higher.  For example a commercial 30 barrel system might have a utilization of 125% or more.