Beersmith

[Tipsy]

Just noticed Beersmith has an upgrade.
If anyone's interested.

[Rysa]

Cheers Tips.

[Kevnlis]

Beauty! Heres hoping it was written in the 21st century!

[warra48]

Just noticed Beersmith has an upgrade.
If anyone's interested.

If anyone is interested in downloading BeerSmith, they have a $5 discount for a short period on the purchase price.

[mobydick]

and it will run under Linux

[rwh]

Under WINE, I assume. Is it just me, or is there something ironic about that?

[mobydick]

Yes under WINE, and yes there is something ironic about that.

[Heals]

LoL!

Just a question about brewsmith guys, is it possible to input kit information into it?

For instance, I did what I think would be classified as a partial extract brew the other week by steeping a few grains, and then boiling the liquid, some hops and light malt and then adding it to a standard tin of Coopers Australian Pale Ale. From what I can see brewsmith doesn't have any of the kit cans or brands in it's database.

Am I missing something?

[mobydick]

Haven't worked it out yet either. What I do is add the IBU of the kit to the estimated IBU to see if it's in range for the style. I'm moving away from kits though as the beer I've made thats All Extract is much better. So it's not going to be a problem for long.

[Heals]

Could you possibly outline the differences between say a partial extract brew, or even just a kit and kilo brew and an "all extract" one?

I'm still confused as to what exactly "all extract" entails.

[rwh]

An all-extract brew simply omits the kit and replaces it with an equivalent amount of unhopped extract plus hops. Nothing particularly scary about it.

[Heals]

Thanks, but how does that improve the quality of the brew exactly? I was under the impression that kit cans were just malt extract anyway...

[rwh]

Kit cans are malt+hops+specialty grain. The improvement you get from converting to all-extract plus grains is the freshness of the hops and grains.

[Heals]

I thank you for you infinite wisdom! Seriously though, that's cleared it up for me - I think I'll definitely be getting into that. The whole kit and kilo process just gives me that "cooking dinner in the microwave" feeling. To be honest, I enjoy making the beer more than I enjoy drinking it, so the more stuff to do the happier I am.

That being said, I can't really afford the extra equipment and time to dive straight into all grain stuff just yet, but I sense that progression won't be too far away.

[warra48]

I'm with RWH. My experience is the same. Using the unhopped cans of liquid malt, with specialty grains, and good quality hops (from Ross, in my case) has definitely inproved the quality of the beers. They no longer have the kit twang, taste fresher, and have real hop flavour and aroma.
Best of all, you don't really need any extra equipment to brew that way.

[earle]

I've been compiling a list of kit characteristics and have entered some into Beersmith. At the moment I still use the kits as a base and add more extract and hops. Now moving towards specialty grains.

I'm pretty sure the figure refer to when the kit is made up to 23L in most cases so I add the kit to my ingredients then see how it comes up in a 23L recipe, from there you can double click on the kit to play with the specs. Once I have it right I go back to the ingredients list and change the figures properly. For each ingredient there a check box for 'add after boil'. You need to change this depending on what you're doing otherwise it will affect the calculated IBU of your brew.

The list has coopers, morgans and some muntons I think but is incomplete. Other might be able to add to it. I'm not sure how to attach the excel file with the specs. Perhaps I could email it to someone who can do this.

Earle

[mobydick]

By the way Heals, did you realise that you can download recipe archives from the Beersmith website and incorporate them into the sample recipes. There are probably other sites you can download Beersmith format recipes too.

[James L]

I'm trying to use Beersmith, to work out the ammount of hops i need to add to specific brews to get the right IBUs, but because i'm only using a 2 gallon brew pot to boil everything, i feel as though its making me add more hops in the recipe that what i feel i should be?

How do i change it so the hops additions are more realistic?

For example, in order to get the required bitterness in a bohemian pils, i'll need to add about 100g of hallertau through out the boil... Is that right? seems a little extreme

[Kevnlis]

I'm trying to use Beersmith, to work out the ammount of hops i need to add to specific brews to get the right IBUs, but because i'm only using a 2 gallon brew pot to boil everything, i feel as though its making me add more hops in the recipe that what i feel i should be?

How do i change it so the hops additions are more realistic?

For example, in order to get the required bitterness in a bohemian pils, i'll need to add about 100g of hallertau through out the boil... Is that right? seems a little extreme

Depends on the amount of malt in the pot with the 2 gallons of water. Less malt in the boil means a higher IBU, try to keep the ratio of malt:water the same in the boil as it will be in the final product. That should help if possible.

As a side note I am bottling tomorrow a beer in which I put 50g Fugles and 50g Goldings for a full 60 minute boil, I also dry hopped this brew with 20g hallertau for the last 3 days of secondary.

I tasted the brew yesterday and it is quite nice already, but I did have alot of malt to balance it out!

[James L]

cheers Kev,

I did a little playing around with the malt concentrations and noticed the effect on the IBUs of the hops....

So if i had a 6L boil volume, and i eventually want 3kg of malt in my brew, i should start hte boil with 1kg of malt to 6L (roughly the same ratio as my final brew; 3.5kg in 20L), and add the hops in the order i want, and then add the rest of the malt at the end after flameout?

It sounds about right i think....

Beersmith does seem to make things alot easier