Pre-Boil calculation with hops ruined brewday.

[Schlemmhammer]

Doing a recipe kit from Nothern Brewer - Mosaic IPA, BIAB method. Was using recipe builder to get an idea of how much water to use, and from there to calculate salt additions.

Recipe calls for 1oz 60min, 1oz 30min, 2oz at flame out. Inputting these numbers gave me a water target of 12.39 gallons. For a 5.5 gallon collection. Absurd! I went with it, and at the end of the boil was left with 10 gallons of wort. 10 GALLONS. Thanks to this crap I have to boil off that excess, and just hope to God that the salts don't ruin the taste profile completely.

I use the calculator because I'm not a frequent brewer, I'm not a chemist, and it helps to have something like this to plug and play. My equipment profile is standard and set. Can anyone tell me if this is a just an error in Brewers friend that I can expect to be fixed, or is there something actually legitimate about each ounce of hops adding a gallon to the calculated pre-boil size?

 

[jschein]

Could you post your recipe?

 

[J A]

There's nothing in the calculator that adds water based on hop additions. Water volumes are based on your equipment profile. If you used the water chemistry calculator, you can adjust amounts of total volume and sparge volume according to your system and your grain bill.

Make the recipe sharable and post it and post a screen shot of the equipment profile that's associated with the recipe and the water calculator you used.

 

[Craigerrr]

Most likely something in your equipment profile will be the culprit

 

[jschein]

I’m thinking the hop absorption rate is set to a gallon per ounce

 

[jschein]

And unless you boil real crazy a starting water volume for a 5.5 gallon batch shouldn’t be more than 7.5 to 8 gallons

 

[Dave Y]

Sorry this happened. I wasn’t aware of hops impact on water volume, I agree with @J A ; it should be based on equipment profile and is adjustable in the recipe editor.

For BIAB, using an all in one, numbers are a bit ... different than with traditional vessels. Recipes usually call for much lower volumes of water. Like @jschein said, I’ll go as low as 6.5 gallons for a 110 kettle to 7.5-8 gallons for a 220v kettle.

Hopefully boiling off the excess will get you close to the actual recipe values.
For next time, throw out a post asking for editor help on what you’re doing; you’ve got a kit and want to use the editor to help solidify your numbers. I’m pretty sure you’ll get a lot of responses back.

 

[Schlemmhammer]

Could you post your recipe?

Here’s the recipe. I attached the water requirements. The math does not add up to me, which tells me either there’s a problem with the calculation (my hop absorption is at .15 quarts/ounce boil off is about a gallon/hour), or I’m just missing something in my ignorance - which is totally fine, I just want to know where I went wrong if I went wrong so I can fix it for other recipes that are showing a similar water hike per hop ounce.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/1548859/mosaic-ipa-nb-for-water-calc-

 

[Schlemmhammer]

I’m thinking the hop absorption rate is set to a gallon per ounce

Nah, it’s set to .15 per ounce which is baffling to me. It’s the standard BIAB equipment base with some adjustment

 

[Zambi]

Can you post your equipment settings?
Your recipe does indeed give funny amounts for pre boil and post boil.

I cant see the attachmment.
After attaching, please "insert" to make it visible in the post

 

[jschein]

Your profile shows its for 16 gallon batches

 

[Ward Chillington]

Your profile shows its for 16 gallon batches

View attachment 31566

Yeah...that makes a difference alright. 4 oz of hops is going to absorb maybe an ounce of water. Is hop absorption even a thing in the builder? That seems way too down in the weeds for a home brewer to concern themselves with

 

[J A]

If your equipment profile is set for 16 gallons and you don't have your pre-boil volume toggled to automatic, it won't change when you alter your batch size - fermenter volume in your case which also generates a post-boil and needs to be toggled to automatic as well.

The hop absorption defaults to a pretty standard amount in the equipment profiles so unless you've messed with it, it's fine. The water calculator doesn't show anything out of the ordinary with the hop absorption.

The calculator doesn't need to be fixed, you just need to get your equipment profile figured out and make sure that you're using the right settings.

P.S...sorry to say that, yes, your water additions will probably be noticeable but I don't think it will be undrinkable. And make sure that while you're boiling off the excess wort volume, definitely don't leave your hops in while you do it. - you'll be boiling for quite a while and you'll isomerize more alpha acids and end up much more bitter than you'd like.

 

[Schlemmhammer]

Your profile shows its for 16 gallon batches

View attachment 31566

No, I have a 16 gallon pot and that is part of the equipment. The recipe is for 5.5 gal. My equipment is simply "BF BIAB", with the pot size adjusted to 48 ounces to account for the pot size. I don't see how the auto calculator bumps it up to 1 gallon per hop ounce.

 

[Zambi]

There gotta be a logical explanation.
I'm sure we'll find it

 

[BarbarianBrewer]

@J A is correct. I downloaded your recipe and without checking the pre & post volume calculations to automatic, the pre-boil volume was 11.3 gallons and generating quick water calc shows it wants 13 gallons of strike water.

Clicking the pre & post to automatic dropped the pre-boil to 7 gallons and the strike water to 8.7 gallons.

 

[J A]

That^^^
Just click your "automatic" boxes so the calculator matches your volumes to your batch size in accordance with the losses in your profile.

 

[Schlemmhammer]

Here's my equipment profile... Still showing the 13 gallons of strike. I did set the efficiency to 56% because that has been what BIAB has been giving me. This time after the complete boil off down to 5 gallons the efficiency hit more around 65%.

Only thing I can think of is that my water profile is a basic RO profile? But that wouldn't make any sense.

 

[Schlemmhammer]

If your equipment profile is set for 16 gallons and you don't have your pre-boil volume toggled to automatic, it won't change when you alter your batch size - fermenter volume in your case which also generates a post-boil and needs to be toggled to automatic as well.

The hop absorption defaults to a pretty standard amount in the equipment profiles so unless you've messed with it, it's fine. The water calculator doesn't show anything out of the ordinary with the hop absorption.

The calculator doesn't need to be fixed, you just need to get your equipment profile figured out and make sure that you're using the right settings.

P.S...sorry to say that, yes, your water additions will probably be noticeable but I don't think it will be undrinkable. And make sure that while you're boiling off the excess wort volume, definitely don't leave your hops in while you do it. - you'll be boiling for quite a while and you'll isomerize more alpha acids and end up much more bitter than you'd like.

My equipment profile only has down that my kettle/mash tun is 16 gallons. If I change it to the standard (which is 48 quarts), it does nothing to alter the auto-calc at all.

If the problem is that a profile is "set to 16 gallons", I would really like to know how to change that! I don't see an option anywhere for it. The recipe, as I have recorded it, asks for 5.5 gallons into the fermenter. As soon as I toggle "auto", it immediately resorts to the 11.31 pre and 5.5 post. The math on the water requirements makes no sense to me.

 

[Schlemmhammer]

Okay, I am not sure what I did. Something got odd in my equipment profile, I think I was able to reset the values? I am not sure. But it is now showing 8.23 for strike, which is more along the lines of what seems accurate. Thank you guys! I genuinely don't know how it had gotten messed up. I do not know how to set an equipment profile for a specific gallon size, but maybe in some of the resets that happened.

No idea how it would have gone off base in the first place. But thank you for the help!