Calculating Mash+Sparge Water for Brewie+ System

[sharpbeer]

I just brewed my first beer using the Brewie+ machine this past weekend, and was surprised that the Brewie doesn't calculate the mashing/sparging water that is needed for your created recipe. I normally use BeerSmith 2 to calculate the needed water for my 'manual' brewing setup and its pretty accurate +/- 0.2 gallons. Before brewing, I tried to use these instructions to add in new equipment into BeerSmith so that it would calculate the appropriate water needs for my system, but after inputting everything, it seemed to want me to use more water than I would actually need.

So I did some more searching and found this (also uploaded image of recommended water usage) on the official Brewie website. It doesn't give exact numbers and for my 11.265 lbs of grain I used 7.1 gallons of water, 4.5 gal for mash and 2.6 gal for sparge. In the end for the 5 gal recipe, I ended up with at least 5.5 gallons and had to dump some so that I could fit it into my 5 gallon glass carboy.

Long story short, do any of you Brewie users have a better and more accurate way to calculate mash/sparge water for the system? Next weekend I am planning on brewing a smaller batch, 2.5 gallons, with low ABV ,~3.0%, and that chart that the Brewie people give won't be too helpful.

 

[Tim H]

Are you doing a full drain, or standard (leaving the 3L of trub in the bottom)? I am playing around with leaving my lid open during boil in case I have too much liquid because of my beersmith calculations. I've only done a few brews in Brewie, so this is still a learning curve.

Also, if you look at Brewie's recipies, it looks like they use around 4.5 gal mash for every single one.

 

[kh54s10]

Can't help with the amounts of water for a Brewie, but:

Number one problem is trying to fit a 5 gallon batch in a 5 gallon carboy. You need headspace. Get a 6.5 carboy or fermenting bucket. I use 6.0 gallon Better Bottles with a blow off tube. I recommend avoiding glass carboys due to the danger of breaking one and seriously injuring yourself.

 

[Tim H]

After I posted this, I ran a 15lb grain bill that caused some overflow. I don't know if Brewie can reasonably support that volume for a 5-gallon high gravity beer. I've heard some people do two grain bags back to back, but I don't know how realistic that is. I'm interested to hear if anyone else can weigh in.





**Edit** My Brewie isn't calculating the water correctly. I calibrated it twice, and it's still drawing in too much water. It thinks 6 gallons is only 4.5 (causing the overflow). I dropped a ticket to Brewie to get it cleared up. They seem like they are very responsive.

 

[Tim H]

Brewie’s response.

It's great to hear that there are improvements. The "too much water" is a new software bug that we'll fix in the next release. The "no water inlet" issue has been fixed in our beta software, if you want i can send it to your machine

Best regards

 

[kh54s10]

Brewie’s response.

It's great to hear that there are improvements. The "too much water" is a new software bug that we'll fix in the next release. The "no water inlet" issue has been fixed in our beta software, if you want i can send it to your machine

Best regards

Wonderful, they make a software upgrade and it has a bug that basically disables the machine and "we'll fix in the next release." That fix should be made the same day. Reverting to the last release would be better. Then they want to send beta software and make you a guinea pig......

So glad this machine was never on my radar.....