(DONE) Water calculator and extract brewing

[bilhelm96]

How does the water calculator work for extract brewing? I recently switched to full wort boils and overshot my target batch size. It seems that for every 3lb of DME and 6lb of LME the volume went up a half gallon.

 

[LarryBrewer]

Re: Water calculator and extract brewing

It is correct that adding DME/LME to the kettle will increase the total volume, and this is not being factored into the water requirements section. The system needs to account for this, full boil or not. Will flag as high priority.

Thanks for reporting it! Apologies if this caused any angst.

 

[LarryBrewer]

Re: Water calculator and extract brewing

It seems that for every 3lb of DME and 6lb of LME the volume went up a half gallon.

In doing some quick research these figures are looking good:
1 pound of LME adds about 10.6oz of volume
1 pound of DME adds about 9.4oz of volume

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/how-muc ... up-156061/
http://community.mrbeer.com/forum/11-ba ... roximation

Based on what you measured, we'd expect closer to a 0.75 gallon increase.

We'll make sure this works into all brew types, including partial mash, or other types that happen to have sugars.

 

[bilhelm96]

Re: Water calculator and extract brewing

My 1/2 gallon estimate was based on looking at the sight glass on my boil kettle, which was heating at the time. Thanks for looking into this.

 

[LarryBrewer]

Re: (NEXT RELEASE) Water calculator and extract brewing

The additional logic to calculate the offset from the sugar volume increase will go out in the next release! This will be pretty neat to show the volume increase from the sugars. It will work for all brew methods, including extract, all grain, partial mash, and biab.

 

[LarryBrewer]

Re: (NEXT RELEASE) Water calculator and extract brewing

In building this out, it made the most sense to break up the volume contribution from the early additions vs the late additions. This is especially helpful for computing initial boil volume. Our backend logic will handle any kind of sugar, and based on ppg, estimate the volume contribution - this goes for DME, LME, Dextrose, Honey, etc.

The screen shot below is for a recipe that has:

Batch Size: 5.25 gallons (fermentor volume)
Boil Size: 6.25 gallons

FERMENTABLES:
3.95 lb - Dry Malt Extract - Extra Light (56.8%)
2 lb - Liquid Malt Extract - Extra Light - (late addition) (28.8%)

 

[bilhelm96]

Re: (NEXT RELEASE) Water calculator and extract brewing

Perhaps a button next to the est boil size for calculating the initial volume so there is no top off required.

 

[LarryBrewer]

Re: (NEXT RELEASE) Water calculator and extract brewing

This would be for doing a full wort boil with extract or partial mash. We might be able to tuck a button into the More... dialog. Since that is an additional feature to what is described here, I went ahead and started a new thread: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=506

 

[LarryBrewer]

This is now live. The water requirements section now fully accounts for the volume increase from early and late addition sugars and extracts! Take a look and let us know if the boil volumes are lining up better on your recipes.

We appreciate your lifetime membership and jumped on this one!

 

[bilhelm96]

Timing was excellent on the release since my planned brew day was Saturday, the day after release. I mixed 9lb DME in with the water before I turned on the burner. I saw about the 3/4 gal increase in volume predicted by the system. Still trying to dial in my equipment settings with the new brew kettle. I had more dead space than in my profile and had to top off more than predicted, and still exceeded my predicted OG.

 

[LarryBrewer]

Good to hear the feature is being put to use already!