Promash Queries

[lobo]

hi all, if you dont alreday know, i am new to allgrain brewing, having brewed partials for 18months.

for my 2nd ag i would like to make a copy of the 'coopers pale clone' recipe, for the old man, as he says every time he tastes one of my brews, 'yeah, its nice, but it dosnt taste as good as this, why cant you brew this?'

anyway, its only calling for about 3kgs of pilsner malt etc, and i cant get promash to make any sense to me, i have vista, and cant use the help option, and none of the patches i download work.

what is the usual rate that you sparge with? you mash with around 3l/kg, and lose 1l to the grain, so thats roughly 6l from the mash, then say you sparge with 3l/kg, that only gives you 15l boil vol. then you lose to evaporation, kettle deadspace, (mine is 5l ATM, which i must change) and it dosnt give me much beer, so what do i do? double the batch? dilute, then what type of sg wil i get. i would like to get the fg as low as possible, so i dont want too high og.

any advice from the experience out there?

cheers, Lobo

 

[mika]

For an existing recipe that you're trying to enter, set the batch size to what you want at the end of the boil (including kettle trub losses). Enter the various malts and the amounts that you want. It should give you an Estimated OG, if the recipe was for a much smaller batch size or much higher efficiency, it'll read something silly like 1020. Crank the efficiency up till the OG is where you want it ~1045 for 5ish%ABV. Then click the little '% Efficiency Lock' box. Wind the efficiency back down to your usual system efficiency. As you do this, all the malt quantities will 'scale' up to maintain the desired OG. What this means is at the end of this you may end up with a Pils malt amount of 4.68kg, along with all the other malts reading silly numbers. You can try and measure and crush to that, but I generally round off to the nearest 100g (4.7kg) and away you go.
At least, that's how I work it.

 

[lobo]

that is much clearer mika, thanks very much for that.

Lobo

 

[lobo]

one more thing, if i dont get much left to go in the fermenter, there is a tool in the 'water needed' section of the brewing session which says, 'top up water added to the kettle.' atm i have plugged in 12.5l, which will give me my correct final amount into the fermenter.
is this normal? or will it dilute it too much/ lower hop bitterness etc?

Lobo

 

[mika]

Umm...if you set your batch size right, you shouldn't need to add any top up water ? Or are you only boiling some of the amount ?
If you're only doing a partial boil you'll have to use a much higher starting gravity to allow for dilution when you water it down. Note that a high gravity boil will affect your hop utilisation and you'll have to make a bit of a call on how much extra hops you require.

If it's still unclear, ping me your recipe and details with an e-mail address and I'll take screen shots as I add it into Promash and send you a word document showing pretty much step-by-step instructions...if you like. I guess I could also add it to the wiki for future reference if there was enough interest ?

 

[lobo]

thats the thing mika, my batch size is set right, but it wants me to sparge 23l of only 3.5kg of grain. even i know u dont do that.

stupid bloody vista, gives me the sh. i am not too great with computers, and i dont even have microsoft word, i guess i had to pay extra for that, which is really weak.

thanks for your help anyway mate, i will have to play some more.

lobo

 

[mika]

Gives us your recipe specifics. I'll have a play on this end, I can post screen dumps on the forum easy enough.

 

[lobo]

3kg jw pils
.2kg wheat
.03kg jwm dark malt
.75kg dextrose
por at 60mins to 27ibu 21g at 9%

og 1045

75%effic 23l batch size
3l/kg mash, sparge with 12l

after losses, evap (5l loss in kettle), cooling, i get 8.5l into fermenter!

thanks for your help mika.

Lobo

 

[mika]

Ok, so I've plugged that into Promash. I've removed a few things that I usually have setup, like I have a 2L lauter/mash tun loss. Your batch size needs to be the 'after boil' size. so you simply adjust the amount of your sparge water to achieve the batch size you were looking for. And yep, you end up mashing in with 9L, and sparging with 21.5L. Trust the maths

If you come back with how you were plugging in your evap and losses, might be able to sort out these silly numbers for you.

View attachment Session1.bmp

 

[mika]

I'm heading south for the long weekend over here, so probably be unable to help you much further. Jump on the chat and chat to the dude(ette)s on there, they'll set you straight. PoL's usually hanging around and I think she's a Promash user.
As one final parting gift, I've attached a complete print from one of my promash brewing settings. This gives you pretty mcuh everything that Promash has in it, all the sparge amounts and all the rest and even my shameful notes on how I ballsed the mash temp...think I would have got it dialled in by now :lol:
Some of it I haven't filled in, like the whole fermentation thingo, once the boils over note taking generally goes out the window. But it should give you a good idea on how everything is setup.

Good Luck

View attachment 04_13_2008_Batz_Altbier.txt

 

[sav]

3kg jw pils
.2kg wheat
.03kg jwm dark malt
.75kg dextrose
por at 60mins to 27ibu 21g at 9%

og 1045

75%effic 23l batch size
3l/kg mash, sparge with 12l

after losses, evap (5l loss in kettle), cooling, i get 8.5l into fermenter!

thanks for your help mika.

Lobo

I dont think lobo is sparging with the 21lts just the 9lts thats what i am guessing

 

[lobo]

thanks mika, will have a look at the info in a sec, have a great wknd.

sav, i wrote i would sparge with 12l, which is 4l/kg, and i thought you wouldnt go much more than that, because if you sparge too much, and get down to lower than 1010, you start getting astringency, not that i know what astringency is, i just know that is is an undesirable.

lobo

ps. mika is pretty confident about the maths, so its making me feel a little better,


Lobo

 

[lobo]

thanks again for that mika, there are a couple of things i have different, my evaporation rate is 13% not 5l. and i have it set (this was all set before i had done a brew) my kettle loss is 5l(measured) lauter tun loss .5l(measured) left in chillers/hopback(guessed) 1l.

i guess my biggest issue is the sparging, 3.5kgs of grains is what i used to use for a big partial, and i would only sparge with 11-12l, (and have no losses to speak of), then only boil 15l, then put in 1kg of dme(at flameout), which i guess would be equivalent to .75kg dextrose, and top up the fermenter to 22l.
i guess i was just wanting to do a full boil instead of diluting the fermenter at the end.

so i should look at this recipe as a partial mash in my new ag rig. boring. might have to put this on the backburner.


what is the usual sparge water to grain ratio ppl use? i used 23.5l to 6.5kg grain in my 1st. but couldnt check the runnungs as i broke my bloody hydro!

lobo

 

[mika]

So lets say you want 23L into the fermentor, then your Kettle Loss (5L) and Chiller loss (1L) are added to your batch size.
Therefore, total batch size = 29L. So you set 29L as your batch size in the recipe page, work the malts to suit. Go to your brewing session and adjust your sparge water volume so that the 'End of boil size' = Batch Size. The other numbers are just there to make you feel better and show you what to expect into the fermentor but to make it work, they need to be included in your batch size.

Evap rate as a percentage is not such a great idea, there was a post on here not long about that. Your percentage evap will vary with batch size, probably not a big issue if you're doing consistent batch sizes I guess.
For the purpose of the exercise I'm going to say you lose 6L/hr and you're boiling for an hour, (simple maths).

So we already know that you want 29L post boil (fermentor volume plus losses after kettle). Now batch size add your evap losses = 34L which is the volume you have into the kettle. Again for simple maths we'll say you have 3kgs of grain, and you're infusing at 3L/kg. So pretty obvious you need to add 9L of mash water. Out of that, due to your 1L/kg grain absorption, you're only going to get 6L. So to get to 34L into the kettle you're going to need to add 28L of sparge water. How do you kn ow this is the right amount of sparge water ? You can sit down and work out the maths, or you can let Promash do the work. As long as your batch size = end of boil volume, you'll be laughing. Very hard to over sparge with Batch sparging, apparently easy to do when Fly sparging (though I still haven't tested this myself) which is why brewers generally use a refrac and ideally you don't want your runnings to go below 1020 as you'll starting extracting Tannins which is the cause of the astringency you're talking about.

Astringency is described as a 'Puckering bitterness'. For the best exampl, drink a cup of black tea. Not real nice in beer

Hopefully it's all starting to make sense.

 

[wessmith]

Lobo, I just downloaded the Microsoft updater to allow the old help files to be read and it works fine. I just followed the prompts to the Microsoft website, allowed validation and voila - all is revealed. Make sure you use Internet Explorer as this will avoid another update to Firefox/Netscape to allow validation.

Cheers, Wes

 

[wessmith]

Damn, meant to add I also use Vista.

Wes

 

[lobo]

thanks mika. that is very helpful, except i dont batch sparge, i have always fly sparged my partials, cos i stuffed up my 1st ever sparge, it was a batch sparge.

but im definatley understanding how allgrain works more.

there would be no difference in fly sparging all the grain to 1010, and then topping up the kettle to what i needed, as i have already sparged all the sugars i can out of the grain. am i on the right track?

wessmith, i will get onto it shortly, thanks mate.

Lobo

 

[mika]

I'm a batch sparger, so my knowledge of fly sparging is limited. But you're looking for the pre-boil volume into the kettle, so basically you'd sparge enough to end up with the pre-boil volume in the kettle. The danger with fly sparging in that respect I guess is that you are diluting the sugars as you go. At the end of a batch sparge you've got no water left in the tun, with fly sparging you're going to have a few litres left in there and that will dilute the sugars and you might drop below the magically 1010 (thort it was 1020 ?). Which I guess is why you've got to have the refrac and check your runnings as they happen. I guess if you get to 1010 and you're short of the pre-boil volume, you can either not boil as hard (as long as you still get better than 12% evap to get rid of DMS pre-cursors) or add water if you're above the preboil gravity. If after adding the water, you end up below pre-boil gravity, you can work you're efficiency at that point and adjust for future batches. Note that if you're pre-boil gravity is a lot higher/lower than entered in your recipe, this can affect the IBU values and if you want ture IBU values it's better to adjust the recipe to achieve the measured preboil gravity.
Personally I don't bother, I'm doing something wrong within Promash and I always end up with a 5% difference between pre-boil and fermenter efficiency. As such I work my efficiency on 'Into fermenter' as that's the one that counts.