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Author Topic: Reiterative mashing (polygyle mashing) and BeerSmith  (Read 1908 times)

Offline SmallBatchBruer

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Reiterative mashing (polygyle mashing) and BeerSmith
« on: August 24, 2018, 08:33:06 am »
Hi All!

I've just started to dive into the world of reiterative mashing since I want to start brewing some higher OG beers with my Robobrew system. I pretty much understand the concept of mashing in a second grain bill with the runnings of the first grain bill as the strike water.

But my question is if any of you have found a way to plug these types of recipes into BeerSmith in order to get an idea about the final wort gravity / grain absorptions. I'm thinking about building it as two recipes and building the "strike wort" as a fermentable in BeerSmith. Has anyone tried it that way? Does my question make sense? haha

Offline Pricelessbrewing

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Re: Reiterative mashing (polygyle mashing) and BeerSmith
« Reply #1 on: August 24, 2018, 10:01:37 am »
Using beersmith you have two variables

1) You need to determine the total amount of water needed.

2) You need to determine the strike temperature for mash 1 using the total amount of water.

3) Efficiency should be roughly equivalent to using all the grain at once, which can be estimated using something like braukaisers lauter efficiency formulas, or my calculator (google my username).


Given the limitations of existing brewing software, no way to add the grains at specific mash steps, I would do the following.

Create recipe 1 with 100% of the grains to determine the total amount of water needed (or use my calculator).

Now remove the amount of grains you plan on using in the second mash, adjust the mash tun losses until you the total amount of water correct as above. You now have the strike temperature, write this down somewhere else, or put it in the note section or something.

Set the efficiency according to what the estimator says (not what beersmith says, because it doesn't care about the efficiency curve that dictates efficiency drops non linearly as OG increases).

Now add the grains back in, you should get a rough idea of the OG.

Offline klickitat jim

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Re: Reiterative mashing (polygyle mashing) and BeerSmith
« Reply #2 on: August 24, 2018, 03:19:43 pm »
Measuring your wort after removing the 1st mash is the easy way for calculating strike temp.

As far as gravity, I use 58% as my calculation brew house efficiency for the sake of recipe building.. But I'm not trying to precisely hit an ABV because I dont have a warehouse full of preprinted printed cans... I really only care about ensuring post mash brix is right (based on lbs/qt) so I know I've finished mashing, and knowing what preboil gravity is will help ensure you use the right amount of bittering hops.

Offline SmallBatchBruer

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Re: Reiterative mashing (polygyle mashing) and BeerSmith
« Reply #3 on: August 29, 2018, 06:45:35 am »
Thanks!