How do you account for water under false bottom?

Apotekhin

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In my setup, I have +-1.3gl of water under false bottom. I add this amount of water to my strike water for the mash just like I read that many people do online. This works great for me.

I cant find an option to enter the amount of water under the false bottom here though. I made my first beer using Brewers Friend yesterday, and ended up having to make those calculations and adjustments manually.As far as I understand it is a very common issue, how can I solve it? Am I missing something in my equipment profile?
Thanks for the help!
 
Ozarks Mountian Brew said:
put it in "Lauter Dead Space" in equipment profile under your profile settings

I do not think it solves my problem.

The "Kauter Dead Space" field is described there as "Amount of liquid left behind in your lauter/mash tun in quarts or liters. For fly spargers, enter the average amount left behind after rinsing."

This is not water left after rinsing. This is water under my false bottom. After mashing and sparging this water is not left behind. My faucet in the mash tun is under it, so I drain most of that water, all that is left is water under the tap, this is as I understand what "Lauter Dead Space" is.
But what about the water above the tap and below the false bottom?

For example - this is my kettle http://www.morebeer.com/products/8-gallon-stainless-mash-tun-2.html. The falst bottom sits above the tap. The water under the tap is "Lauter dead space", what about the water above the tap and below the false bottom?

Thanks for the help!
 
your losses don't have to be specifically categorized, you can put a loss anywhere or even increase your recipe size like I do. instead of making an exact 5.5 gallon batch, I make more and leave the losses behind and only use what will fit in my fermenter
 
your losses don't have to be specifically categorized, you can put a loss anywhere or even increase your recipe size like I do.

But these are not losses. The only loss is the liquid below the tap, and they have a field for it "Lauter Dead Space".

I just want that during the calculation of the the water amount for mashing it will consider not only the Water/grain ration (mash thickness) but also the water that is under the false bottom.
If I follow just the mash thickness calculation, a large part of the water during the mash ends up under the false bottom with no contact with the grain and results in a thicker mash.
This means I have to "cheat" and add water at that step, and the subtract it from the next step (sparge)

And the whole purpose of a platform such as Brewer's Friend is for me not to "cheat" and increase the amounts to adjust the recipe for my equipment, that is exactly what the equipment profile is for.
 
I understand what your saying as I have quite a bit of dead space under my false bottom. I have just calculated what is needed for the proper mash thickness and gone with it. You have to watch your tun capacity but you can still remain consistent. It would be handy to have this amount added by the profile but really is not a big deal as this measurement always stays consistent. It does seem it would be possible for the software to do it for you though.
 
You could artificially increase the mash thickness in your profile to something a bit higher than you normally use (calculate to find what the increase is based on your batch size). When you make a recipe it will use this thickness giving you an increase in the strike water. That way you'll have the thickness you want with the "dead space" below.
 
The simplest way would be to determine exactly how much water is under there - if it's the domed kind, you're talking about the area under the dome (make life easy on yourself and model the dome as a cone with the diameter of the dome and the height of the dome as its parameters, close enough for jazz). To make the water to grist ratio above the dome come out right, just add the volume under the dome to the total volume. But you make your life harder calculating strike temperatures! I do wish sometimes that the calculator would let you input the amount of water or the water/grist ratio but it doesn't. I'm interested in why you are concerned with this tiny variation in process. At our scale, I doubt it makes that much of a difference. You're talking maybe a quart of water. If your beer is so consistent that the amount of water not in contact with grain makes a difference in its flavor, I want to taste your beers, sir!
 
I have a jaybird false bottom and when it sits in my 10 gallon cooler, there's is a little over a gallon under the false bottom that's not in contact with the grain. I think that's what Apotekhin originally stated his issue is. A gallon is a pretty significant amount. I normally do a thickness of 1.25 qt/gal but since I've gotten this new false bottom, I've changed my thickness to 1.5qt/gal. It seems to work
 
Exactly as jason says, grainfather has the same problem and I fixed it with a simple equation to calculate density
density to input = 2.7+(water under false bottom in liters/grain bill in kg)

this will take into account whatever grainweight you put in because calculation is proportional to the weight.
For Grainfather it works to the last deciliter
 
I'm only new to this but another program I'm playing with allows you to put this space in. What I am looking at doing is adding the 7.5 litre space under my area to the strike water and taking it off the sparge water amount. This seems to come at about right
 
I might be missing something obvious but he's already accounting for it himself and was asking if there was a way to mitigate it.
 

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