Hi all,
1st post to forums, I've been home brewing for about 4 years and have recently moved to all-grain brewing and have found the Jamil Show and other podcasts on the BN and have been listening to those a great deal lately. Beersmith gets mentioned often on the shows, but I've also found Brewtarget, which is free and works on my OS (Linux). I made a batch of witbier yesterday using Jamil's recipe out of his book, and just now put Jami'ls American Rye Ale recipe into the software, as that's my next planned batch to make. Looking at these recipes in the software, it looks like several paramaters are 'out of style' even though I'm entering the exact ingredients in the recipe. I understand that there are numerous parameters regarding equiment, mash steps, etc, that I may be missing, so I figured I'd ask.
For my witbier, my OG, FG, and Color are too high, and the taste of the beer is described as 'extra malty.' When I made this recipe yesterday, my mash temps were off (protien rest was 123.2 degrees-- target was 122, and conversion rest was 149.5 degrees-- target was 154, and sparge temp was 156.7 degrees-- target was 165), and my final wort was nearly 1 gallon less than my target. I did do a 90 minute boil and had only programmed 60 minutes into the recipe (fixed that after the fact), so that should be about .375 gallons lost in that extra boil, but still that means I'm almost 2/3 gallon short. I like this software so far, but hope I can 'dial it in' a little to be able to get closer on my mash temps and final wort amounts.
When I put in the American Rye ale recipe, it too shows several parameters out of style (OG, FG, and ABV) and IBU's are at 16 with a range of 15-30, so it's almost out of style also. The recipe is described as 'cloying'.
Does anyone have any insight on what I can do with this software to get my temps closer to 'real life', get my final wort amounts closer to ideal, and should I worry about the software's 'out of style' warnings and less than ideal descriptions ('extra malty' for a witbier and 'cloying' for an American Rye Ale)? I'd like to brew these recipes true to Jamil's instructions at least the 1st time before I go and try to modify them, and am really surprised that they are coming up 'out of style' considering how good Jamil is at this stuff! I'd suspect the software to be in error long before I'd suspect his recipes! Does anyone else use Brewtarget software, and are there any tips to get a better grip on using it properly? Thanks very much for any help.
that I took to work by hand, never using a food processor. My boss always said the analogue always tasted better than the digital version. Anyways, just sayin, I may end up using brewing sotware someday soon.
