How to incorporate "Post Boil" water Top-up addition - All Grain

Bierbrur

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All,

After many extract brews, going to be starting my first all grain brew shortly, and have a question on how to set up my recipe in Brewer's friend. I am starting with 2.5 gallon batch size for a couple reasons, but one primary reason is that I am limited on boil size due to my Gigawort electric brew kettle (4.4 gal capacity). For my recipe, the adjusted boil size is 3.9 gallon for a 60 minute boil.

I'm worried about boil overs being so close to my brew kettle capacity, and I'm considering holding back a half gallon of water and topping up with this when I move the wort to the fermenter. This would give me about a gallon of head space in my boil kettle and some relief against boil over. The question is - how do I incorporate the top-up in Brewer's friend? Unlike Brewsmith, I can't find a place to add top-up water. It would be nice to be able to do that, so my water volumes are correct and my IBU calcs are more accurate, but I don't know how to do this. Should be a way to do this because this is a common practice in extract brewing.

Thanks, Gary
 
Reduce your boil size. Same thing, just think about it backward. If you reduce your boil size, the software will adjust for the boil gravity and hop utilization but keep the same batch size so it makes all the adjustments.
 
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Reduce your boil size. Same thing, just think about it backward. If you reduce your boil size, the software will adjust for the boil gravity and hop utilization but keep the same batch size so it makes all the adjustments.

So... Below is my recipe. Based on my equipment, I need to move 2.37 gal into fermenter to get desired final bottling quantity. Based on other losses, including boil off, etc., and not worrying about top up, my boil size would be 3.87 gal. Doing this, the OG and IBU line up with my expectations and that of Brewsmith. However, when I reduce my boil size to 3.375 gal, it throws everything out of whack. (These values change when I click the "Calc" button - maybe I shouldn't do that?

Thanks, Gary

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I don't even know what that "Post" box is. It just showed up on the editor. I've never used it. You'll have to talk to the Mods to figure out what that even does.
Before that showed up, I'd have said what Nosy suggests - adjust boil size and don't worry about it and just top up into the fermenter. I have no idea how the Post boil calcuation will change that. Maybe @Yooper can explain how it might affect your calculations.
 
Thanks guys! Yeah, I don't remember seeing that "Post Boil" calc before either. When I add the .5 gal back into the post boil number (that I removed from "Pre" the numbers return to what I expect; however it seems weird to have to do that. Regardless, the water requirements don't reflect the right boil volume anyway. I actually like the user interface and the reporting of brew steps works with this software as opposed to Brewsmith, but doesn't matter if I cant get the numbers to work. Thanks!
 
I've never seen it... Haven't done extract in forever. Yooper, what the heck is that? I don't even understand what numbers are being requested....
 
I just asked about it over in the "Recipe Builder" section.
 
We had requests for several of those items. You can choose the post boil volume, or the volume going into the fermenter. I don't use the 'calc' part of it- I just fill in what I want for my volume going into the fermenter.

These questions came about because people wanted to personalize their brewing more precisely with volumes and targets.

I hope I answered that well. If not please feel free to ask more questions!
 

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