Promash And Beersmith

[Disco_tezz]

Hi all,

I am looking at moving in to AG brewing, but going the BIAB style, as the outlay is a lot less,

Now i am assuming the final out come of BIAB will be very just as good as the other way of AG brewing.

That aside, are Promash or Beersmith able to help with BIAB brewing in regards to Quantity of malt and volume of water needed to make a brew?

or would the quantities and volume just be the same?


I don't have either program yet, but when i move in to AG i will get it, but i just wanted to know which will help with BIAB?

I hope that all makes sense,


Cheers
DT

 

[warra48]

I have BeerSmith, so can't comment on Promash.

In BeerSmith it is very easy to set up your own mash profile for each brew. All you do once your recipe is open, is to click on Details in Mash Profile. A box will open and you can modify the default details to anything which suits. For BIAB I assume you would just alter it to show you adding the full volume of your water at Mash In, and delete the Mash Out and Sparge details.

 

[mika]

You can fudge it in Promash as well. just increase your liquor to grist ratio (water to grain) and adjust the sparge water quantity accordingly. I can't recall wether you do a mini sparge or not with BIAB.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

BiaB or not - just get some brewing software.

I use and like promash, I've seen beersmith and it doesn't do it for me. Pro-mash has the lovely advantage of having a legal free trial version. The trial version does everything the full version does, you just cant save more than 4 recipes. However it still does all the efficiency calcs, works out your strike water temps, tells you how much co2 pressure or priming sugar you need, calculates alcohol and degree of fermetation... etc etc etc. All the stuff you need. For free.

You dont need brewing software... but why anyone would want to be without it has me buggered

TB

 

[MCT]

BiaB or not - just get some brewing software.

I use and like promash, I've seen beersmith and it doesn't do it for me. Pro-mash has the lovely advantage of having a legal free trial version. The trial version does everything the full version does, you just cant save more than 4 recipes. However it still does all the efficiency calcs, works out your strike water temps, tells you how much co2 pressure or priming sugar you need, calculates alcohol and degree of fermetation... etc etc etc. All the stuff you need. For free.

You dont need brewing software... but why anyone would want to be without it has me buggered

TB

Beersmith has a 20 day trial, is the Promash trial unlimited?

 

[hanzie]

Hi

I use BeerSmith for BIAB and its great. On my last batch I hit my target final volume dead on and my FG was realy close too. I wouldnt want to brew without it.

I gues you dont use all the mash functions but everything else is very useful. It even tells you what temp to heat your mash water to so that the temp is perfect after you add your grain.

Hanzie

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Beersmith has a 20 day trial, is the Promash trial unlimited?

I'm pretty sure it is unlimited time - it limits the function instead. You can do everything on it, you just can't save more than 4(?) recipes and/or sessions. And maybe you cant print them off, cant quite remember. No good if you want to keep a library of recipes on it or store all your brewing records, but fine for recipe design and for handling all your brewday / fermentation calculations for you.

Not saying that beersmith or other programs are no good, just that I know that pro-mash IS good and that some sort of brewing software makes the whole brewing thing a lot easier to do.

TB

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

BIAB..

Boy I Am Brave

 

[warra48]

BeerSmith limits the trial version to 3 recipes, but you can't print them.
Also, once you have saved a recipe, I think if you back in to modify it, it counts as another recipe?
Anyway, for about $20 to $25 or so you can buy either. Surely not a great outlay in the scheme of things?

 

[mikelinz]

For what it is worth I have both Promash and beersmith. Found Beersmith easier to use and if you are used to windows programs then beersmith is a little more intuitive. However I havn't used promash for BIAB and have had trouble working out how to set up my equipment profile for BIAB in Beersmith. So my numbers don't seem to match what the program says they should be. Good beer tho. I have changed my setup since I last used Beersmith to create a recipe so need to play more.

rgds mike

 

[Thirsty Boy]

You do have to fudge a little to make either of them work for BiaB. Its not exactly the "normal" way to do things.

In pro-mash, you more or less just increase your strike water volume and decrease your sparge water volumes to zero. No need to feel too special as BiaBers though, pro-mash doesn't play nicely with batch sparging either

 

[mika]

..... pro-mash doesn't play nicely with batch sparging either

Huh ? :huh:

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Huh ? :huh:

Pro-mash doesn't have any inbuilt functionality to cater for batch spargers, you have to work it out for yourself. Its my understanding that Beersmith does have this feature.

 

[mika]

I batch sparge with Promash. I simply set up the amount of sparge water to achieve end of boil volume and pump it all into the Tun. What kind of functionality do you need ? Am I missing something ?

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Yes you are missing something, most people who batch sparge dont just add all the sparge water to the tun in one go. You do, and so do I, but most people dont. To be technical about it, I dont think that you and I actually batch sparge at all, I think that we "no-sparge" there isn't really anything "batch" about it, its not even really sparging, its just a very late mash infusion.

To put yourself in the shoes of a more standard batch sparger....

I have a 20L mash tun and I am doing a beer with 6kg of grain @ an L:G ratio of 2.3:1. I want to batch sparge.

Which bit of pro-mash do I plug my info in to tell me what size my sparge additions should be for each batch, whether I will be able to get away with 1, 2 or 3 "drainings" of the tun without it going on the floor?

I merely point out that pro-mash has no specific feature to help you with the details of batch spraging, and it is my understanding that beersmith does.

Not that it matters really, the OP was asking about their use for BiaB and neither of them do that without some mental re-adjustment and a little tweaking of the settings.

 

[mika]

Yeah fair enough I guess. I pump it in there generally till I can't fit anymore so that turns it into a 'batch sparge' I guess, but yeah, beyond the question asked by the original poster.