Grainfather grain absorption

[chefgage]

Brewed my first beer on my new grainfather and it went great.

I am using the grainfather online recipe creator and then using the grainfather connect.

My only small problem was that the recipe creator told me i needed 17 litres of mash water and 15 litres of sparge water for a grain bill of 5kg. AFTER Sparging i was left with a pre boil volume of 26.5litres. According to the app i should have had 28 litres. So i assume my grain aborbed more water than the default 0.8 litres per kg of grain.

Is there a way to change the grain absorption figure. I know you can change it when you have clicked brew recipe but that is after you have created the recipe. This means the grain bill weight will stay the same but the total water will increase thus the OG will be lower.

There does not seem to be a way to change it before creating the recipe ( or during) i.e. create a equipment profile like you would in beersmith.

I suppose i can live with it as it just means 1.5 litres less in the fermenter. All the other figures match up i.e. OG etc..

[DaveGillespie]

It's in Tools - Advanced on desktop beersmith. GF online calculator uses a default fixed vale of 2 litres for "trub loss" is. Absorption plus hop losses. I use 0.444 in BS.

[chefgage]

It's in Tools - Advanced on desktop beersmith. GF online calculator uses a default fixed vale of 2 litres for "trub loss" is. Absorption plus hop losses. I use 0.444 in BS.

Maybe I was not clear . I have used beersmith in the past but I am now using the grainfather online recipe creator in conjunction with the grainfather connect app so I am trying to alter the grain absoption in the recipe creator not in beersmith.

[Tomp]

Not sure you can adjust the GF recipe details. Not found out how, but it may be possible.

I've gone back to Beersmith as there is far more adjustment, and i can send it to the GF as a beer.xml file.

[chefgage]

Not sure you can adjust the GF recipe details. Not found out how, but it may be possible.

I've gone back to Beersmith as there is far more adjustment, and i can send it to the GF as a beer.xml file.

There is a way to change the absorption rate but its after the recipe has been calculated which seems a bit daft. I too use beersmith (i did before when using my three vessel system.) I just like the simplisity of the grainfather recipe calculator/app combination.

I might go back to beersmith and like you say export the .xml file. Looking at my numbers everytbing was ok bar the pre-boil volume. Taking into account my fermenter losses i should end up with 20 litres bottled. This gives me 40 500ml bottles so thats a nice round number

So at this stage i probably will not worry about the missing 1.5 litres. I could always just up the batch volume to account for this.

[Dave S]

Not sure you can adjust the GF recipe details. Not found out how, but it may be possible.

I've gone back to Beersmith as there is far more adjustment, and i can send it to the GF as a beer.xml file.

There is a way to change the absorption rate but its after the recipe has been calculated which seems a bit daft. I too use beersmith (i did before when using my three vessel system.) I just like the simplisity of the grainfather recipe calculator/app combination.

I might go back to beersmith and like you say export the .xml file. Looking at my numbers everytbing was ok bar the pre-boil volume. Taking into account my fermenter losses i should end up with 20 litres bottled. This gives me 40 500ml bottles so thats a nice round number

So at this stage i probably will not worry about the missing 1.5 litres. I could always just up the batch volume to account for this.

There is no way to change the absorption figure of 0.8 in the GF calculator and it is WRONG!. I've had this out with them until I am blue in the face and as yet there has been no meaningful acknowledgement from them. If you use the the Sparge volume figure that its calculator gives you will be down on your final volume. In my experience around 2.5L, but I do 27L batches in mine. The OP has found a 1.5L shortfall. Also the volume retained by trub and hops is also wrong. They say 2L, I have found 2.5 as they don't account for that which may be lost in the CFC. Of course the actual figure will vary depending on how much grain and hops are used. I've advised them that all they need to do is make both values user definable and all will be good. So if people insist on using incorrect values they can. Most of the rest of us accept that 1.1 is the correct grain retention factor, not 0.8. The developer has assured me that the issue will be raised at development meetings. I'm not holding my breath but live in hope.

EDIT: They've had this figure of 0.8 in their heads since the introduction of the GF several years ago. However, before the advent of the Connect Controller it wasn't such an issue as you had to do the calculation by hand anyway and could ignore the 0.8 bit.

[chefgage]

Not sure you can adjust the GF recipe details. Not found out how, but it may be possible.

I've gone back to Beersmith as there is far more adjustment, and i can send it to the GF as a beer.xml file.

There is a way to change the absorption rate but its after the recipe has been calculated which seems a bit daft. I too use beersmith (i did before when using my three vessel system.) I just like the simplisity of the grainfather recipe calculator/app combination.

I might go back to beersmith and like you say export the .xml file. Looking at my numbers everytbing was ok bar the pre-boil volume. Taking into account my fermenter losses i should end up with 20 litres bottled. This gives me 40 500ml bottles so thats a nice round number

So at this stage i probably will not worry about the missing 1.5 litres. I could always just up the batch volume to account for this.

There is no way to change the absorption figure of 0.8 in the GF calculator and it is WRONG!. I've had this out with them until I am blue in the face and as yet there has been no meaningful acknowledgement from them. If you use the the Sparge volume figure that its calculator gives you will be down on your final volume. In my experience around 2.5L, but I do 27L batches in mine. The OP has found a 1.5L shortfall. Also the volume retained by trub and hops is also wrong. They say 2L, I have found 2.5 as they don't account for that which may be lost in the CFC. Of course the actual figure will vary depending on how much grain and hops are used. I've advised them that all they need to do is make both values user definable and all will be good. So if people insist on using incorrect values they can. Most of the rest of us accept that 1.1 is the correct grain retention factor, not 0.8. The developer has assured me that the issue will be raised at development meetings. I'm not holding my breath but live in hope.

EDIT: They've had this figure of 0.8 in their heads since the introduction of the GF several years ago. However, before the advent of the Connect Controller it wasn't such an issue as you had to do the calculation by hand anyway and could ignore the 0.8 bit.

So its not just me then Hopefully at some point like you say they will make the figure user defineable. Just bottled my first brew with the grainfather and with further losses from the fermenter I ended up with 30 500ml bottles. So thats not too bad. Next time i will just have to up the batch volume before i start.

[Dave S]

There is a way to change the absorption rate but its after the recipe has been calculated which seems a bit daft. I too use beersmith (i did before when using my three vessel system.) I just like the simplisity of the grainfather recipe calculator/app combination.

I might go back to beersmith and like you say export the .xml file. Looking at my numbers everytbing was ok bar the pre-boil volume. Taking into account my fermenter losses i should end up with 20 litres bottled. This gives me 40 500ml bottles so thats a nice round number

So at this stage i probably will not worry about the missing 1.5 litres. I could always just up the batch volume to account for this.

There is no way to change the absorption figure of 0.8 in the GF calculator and it is WRONG!. I've had this out with them until I am blue in the face and as yet there has been no meaningful acknowledgement from them. If you use the the Sparge volume figure that its calculator gives you will be down on your final volume. In my experience around 2.5L, but I do 27L batches in mine. The OP has found a 1.5L shortfall. Also the volume retained by trub and hops is also wrong. They say 2L, I have found 2.5 as they don't account for that which may be lost in the CFC. Of course the actual figure will vary depending on how much grain and hops are used. I've advised them that all they need to do is make both values user definable and all will be good. So if people insist on using incorrect values they can. Most of the rest of us accept that 1.1 is the correct grain retention factor, not 0.8. The developer has assured me that the issue will be raised at development meetings. I'm not holding my breath but live in hope.

EDIT: They've had this figure of 0.8 in their heads since the introduction of the GF several years ago. However, before the advent of the Connect Controller it wasn't such an issue as you had to do the calculation by hand anyway and could ignore the 0.8 bit.

So its not just me then Hopefully at some point like you say they will make the figure user defineable. Just bottled my first brew with the grainfather and with further losses from the fermenter I ended up with 30 500ml bottles. So thats not too bad. Next time i will just have to up the batch volume before i start.

Yeah, just disregard their sparge water calculation and do it manually - Spage Vol = pre-boil - Mash Vol + (Grain Weight x 1.1). Like I said, I use 2.5L as loss to trub and hops.

[chefgage]

I will try calculating the sparge manually next time.