schedule, starting temp and mash thickness

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rrosa
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schedule, starting temp and mash thickness

Post by rrosa »

Hi,

I have been using BeerTools Pro for a while but only last week I started to use the Schedule feature and I got puzzled by two things.

The first one is just a minor concern:

1) In the Mash-In, is there a way to change the starting temperature? This time of the year (down here in Rio) the ambient temperature can get quite high and the water may be near 31C (88F), like in my last two batches, but the program seems to be fixed to start the Mash-In at around 22C (71F).

I am more worried about the second one:

2) In my next batch (tomorrow) I am planning to use 4.5Kg of grains and start with a Mash-In with about 7L or water, which should give me about 1.55L/Kg. But the Mash thickness appears as 1.09L/Kg. What am I missing? Does the program take into account how much water is to be absorbed by the grains? Is this the correct way to compute thickness? So when books mention mashing with something between 2L/Kg and 4L/Kg (about 1qt/lb to 2qt/lb) do they refer to the amount of water per dry or wet weight of grain? I am totally lost now since I have always assumed it was with respect to the dry weight but BeerTools Pro seems to consider wet weight, or not?!
Ricardo - http://cervejarte.org/blog
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slothrob
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Post by slothrob »

1) I'm not clear on where the temperature of the tap water comes in.
Is this for mashing in cold then heating to Mash temperature in a direct fired tun?
Anyway, the programmers mentioned that there are plans to make the environmental temperatures adjustable, but for now they are set to some default settings.

2) I believe the difference between Infusion Rate (this will be 1.55 L/kg when you open the mash-in Edit window) and Thickness is the amount of Deadspace you've set for your Mash Tun in the Equipment Display. When I set my Deadspace to "0", I get the same Thickness as Infusion Rate.

The program is assuming that the deadspace is below a false bottom and not avialable to grain. In my system that isn't true, only a fraction of my deadspace (undrainable fraction of liquid available in tun) is unavailable to grain. In my system this only makes the Thickness off by about 5%, though.
BTP v2.0.* Windows XP
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rrosa
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Post by rrosa »

1) Basically, yes. The Mash-In assumes the water in the vessel is near 71F and is heated for a few minutes to some calculated temperature at which point you add the grains, and the mixture settles at your target temperature (say 125F for a protein rest). But the water could be at a different starting temp. Anyway, this is not a big issue.

2) Dead on! I set "dead space" to zero and got the right thickness as you mentioned. I though "dead space" meant just the volume of liquid below the tap, which I guess is more important when leaving the trub behind after boiling. Now that you clarified this issue, since I use a mash/lauter-tun with a bazooka screen the "dead space" would then be just the volume inside the bazooka screen, which is negligible.

Many thanks!
Ricardo - http://cervejarte.org/blog
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jeff
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Mash Schedule Improvements

Post by jeff »

rrosa wrote:1) Basically, yes. The Mash-In assumes the water in the vessel is near 71F and is heated for a few minutes to some calculated temperature at which point you add the grains, and the mixture settles at your target temperature (say 125F for a protein rest). But the water could be at a different starting temp. Anyway, this is not a big issue.

2) Dead on! I set "dead space" to zero and got the right thickness as you mentioned. I though "dead space" meant just the volume of liquid below the tap, which I guess is more important when leaving the trub behind after boiling. Now that you clarified this issue, since I use a mash/lauter-tun with a bazooka screen the "dead space" would then be just the volume inside the bazooka screen, which is negligible.

Many thanks!
I am currently working extensively on both of these topics. The next version includes user editable settings for Ambient Air Temp, Source Water Temp, and Elevation. The new version will have improved handling of vessel dead space, which is currently in progress.
Jeff
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slothrob
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Post by slothrob »

BTP treats deadspace as BOTH the undrainable volume (like the volume below the tap) and as the volume not in contact with the grain.

The proper way for those of us who have 2 different values for undrainable volume and volume not exposed to grain, would be to set to the Deadspace to the volume not exposed to grain and set Residual volume to the undrainable volume. Then BTP would give the correct volume left in the tun and the correct volume in contact with the grain.

The problem with that solution is that you have to set the Residual Volume every time you set up a mash or change the mash values in a recipe, since you can't lock Residual Volume. I got tired of resetting this value, so I just set Deadspace to my undrainable volume. The actual space in my screen is so small it doesn't affect the thickness enough to worry about.

Edit: Looks like Jeff and I posted at the same time. Well, there's my work around, but it looks like it will be unneccesary soon enough. Thanks, Jeff!
BTP v2.0.* Windows XP
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