Mash schedule calculator- start with cereal mash

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Homer
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Joined: Sat Dec 21, 2019 6:13 pm

Mash schedule calculator- start with cereal mash

Post by Homer »

Hello.
I'm entering a recipe and having a hard time figuring out how to start my mash schedule with a cereal mash, in the program.
Beer Tools Pro seems to want to assume that all of the grain is going in with all of the water in the dough-in step and all of the calculations default to that, but that's not what I'm doing.

I'm starting out with a cereal mash to cook a pound of raw cracked wheat berries (or oatmeal, or corn meal, or whatever, some unmalted cereal that needs to be cooked prior to being added to the main mash). In a small pot, I'm combining 1 lb of cracked wheat berries with a quart of water and some malt, holding it at 120, then direct heat to 145, then direct heat up to a simmer to gelatinize the starches. That hot mash then gets stirred into the main mash to raise it's temp and progress along the regular mash steps. The first 3 steps of my mash schedule should be:
- Dough in 1.25 lbs cracked wheat with 1.5 qts water at 120, 20 min hold
- Direct heat to 145, 20 min hold
- Direct heat to 212, 20 min hold
Then, on with the main dough-in for the main mash using the remaining grains.

Beer Tools Pro is not allowing me to start out with a small amount of grain and water as a dough-in, or direct heat, or infusion or decoction- nothing. It assumes that I want to dough in with my full 12 lbs of grain and 12 qts of water in the first step, it doesn't understand that I'm doing a separate mini mash first. When I try to change the temperature or water quantity, the numbers get all screwy and they're locked.

How do people do a separate cereal mash with the mash schedule calculator? Is it possible to unlock the calculators so I can manually adjust one number without another changing?

Thanks in advance.
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jeff
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Re: Mash schedule calculator- start with cereal mash

Post by jeff »

I can see the problem you are having. I don't think there is a direct way to handle this procedure in the BeerTools Pro scheduling tool. So I guess the only thing that I can recommend for facilitating some of the temperature predictions is to create a separate recipe file for the cereal mash. I know this isn't exactly what you are looking for but it may help take some guesswork out of the cereal procedure.
Jeff
BeerTools.com Staff
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