BUG: Water calc sparge water being zeroed out

Wayne Schroeder

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I have a recipe that is a 2.5 gallon BIAB with 2 gallons of water I batch sparge with. In other words, I do a 2.5 gal mash, then run up to (but usually less than) 2 gallons of water through the bag in a colander to reach my pre-boil volume. I treat 4.5 gallons of water at once. I do the same thing for 5 gallon batches, and the linked water calculator works perfectly, but for some reason, with the 2.5 + 2 = 4.5 gallon setup in the water calc, the mash ph is screwed up and the sparge water is zeroed out, treating it as if my salts are all added to the smaller mash volume alone.

The water calc is fine until I EDIT the recipe. I don't even have to save the recipe, I just load it in the recipe editor, and then the water calc (can be on a totally different page) is updated to 0 sparge volume if I refresh the water calc, even without saving the recipe or water calc. I've tried creating recipes from scratch, everything, it just seems to refuse to work with my 2.5 + 2 = 4.5 gallon water setup. When I do 5 + 2 = 7 for larger batches, it works and the sparge water stays and the mash ph agrees between the water calc and recipe editor.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/1330773/322-ipa
 
I have a recipe that is a 2.5 gallon BIAB with 2 gallons of water I batch sparge with. In other words, I do a 2.5 gal mash, then run up to (but usually less than) 2 gallons of water through the bag in a colander to reach my pre-boil volume. I treat 4.5 gallons of water at once. I do the same thing for 5 gallon batches, and the linked water calculator works perfectly, but for some reason, with the 2.5 + 2 = 4.5 gallon setup in the water calc, the mash ph is screwed up and the sparge water is zeroed out, treating it as if my salts are all added to the smaller mash volume alone.

The water calc is fine until I EDIT the recipe. I don't even have to save the recipe, I just load it in the recipe editor, and then the water calc (can be on a totally different page) is updated to 0 sparge volume if I refresh the water calc, even without saving the recipe or water calc. I've tried creating recipes from scratch, everything, it just seems to refuse to work with my 2.5 + 2 = 4.5 gallon water setup. When I do 5 + 2 = 7 for larger batches, it works and the sparge water stays and the mash ph agrees between the water calc and recipe editor.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/1330773/322-ipa



I see a couple of things going on here. One is your equipment profile says that your kettle is 10 quarts:


upload_2022-11-22_14-59-28.png


If your total volume is less than 10 quarts, you can’t use a 3.2 gallon boil. 13 quarts won’t fit in a 10 quart pot.


The second thing I noticed is that in your mash guidelines, you don’t have a sparge:

upload_2022-11-22_15-0-12.png



You’ll want to change it to have a ‘strike’ amount of 2.5 gallons and then click ‘add’ to add your sparge volume.
upload_2022-11-22_15-0-51.png




That should solve the water issue with the water calc, getting the volumes correct.

Here's one of mine:
upload_2022-11-22_15-2-24.png


That's a very old one, I actually do mostly no-sparge BIAB smaller batches now, and it looks like this;
upload_2022-11-22_15-3-38.png


I hope that helps! Once you get your volumes/equipment profile correct, you can use the hamburger menu in the left corner to pull in the quick water requirements and that really helps with volumes and mash guidelines.
upload_2022-11-22_15-6-2.png


I hope that helps! Please let me know if you have any further questions.
 
Sorry for the long wait on response, haven't been brewing and just came back. I'll give it a go and see.
 
Just ran into this issue again and followed your advice. Adding the batch sparge of 2 gal along with 5 gal temperature resolved the issue.
 

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