Help with first brew please- using brewcipher

I don't use BrewCipher (I use all my own calculations) but I notice that you didn't enter a value for "Strike Water to Grain ratio". That's an important variable that determines the amount of mash water you need, which in turn affects the temperature of the strike water. You can use whatever you feel is best, but normally this value is about 1.25 or 1.5.

Also, the IBU's seems quite high for a pale ale (should generally be between 20-40). You can also reduce the amount of Munich malt unless you are aiming for a specific style or taste.

 

Well, I cant see the rest of your workbook, but based on the result, I can tell you changed something on the GRAINLOOKUP Tab and/or the YEASTLOOKUP Tab. Since Weyermann Pale Ale is not a pre-loaded grain, I would have to assume you added it. For now, go back into the GRAINLOOKUP and copy all the cells (except the Grain name) from Pale Ale Malt, Briess into your cells for Weyermann Pale Ale.

Well, you are doing BIAB, so all your water is going in at once, reducing the required strike water temp. But based on your result, you must have tweaked some Brewhouse tab parameters, probably including setting the "Mash Tun Initial Heat Absorption Value" to 0, which would be appropriate if you're heating the water in the kettle you're mashing in. (I think you must have also changed the boiloff rate?) Closest I can get to your answers by tweaking the things I think you probably tweaked is a strike temp of 155F. Can't guess what else is different, making you get 154F. But if you want to PM me for my email address, I'd be happy to take at your workbook.

 

Strike Water to Grain Ratio is certainly important, but it's not the OP's problem. He's doing BIAB. Since he set the BIAB parameter on the Brewhouse tab, anything entered in Strike Water to Grain Ratio is ignored. All his water is going into the strike.

 

Yes, from the recipe sheet I didn't realize he was doing a BIAB (although I see it mentioned in his post). Otherwise it would have made a big difference.

 

Too late to edit. Adding here: @ByronDBeer I think you must have set your boil-off to about .6 gallons per hour, or at least something significantly less than the default. If so, I'd say that's probably pretty low compared to the average, since this is your first batch. (This isn't driving the strike water temp lower. Just wanted to mention it.)

If you didn't reduce the default boil-off rate, did you reduce/eliminate the Grain Absorption Loss? If so, I'd put it back to the default.

 

I suspect the recipe you were basing this on assumed different alpha acid percentages for the hops than BrewCipher does. And/or it used a different bittering model. Perhaps back off the 60 minute additions until BC gives 40 IBUs. Just eyeballing the original recipe, the 30-35 specified IBUs looked too low to me for those qtys of those hops. At any rate, you'll want to override with the actual alpha acid percentages for the hops you buy, in the override column, and adjust your qtys up/down accordingly. (Alpha Acids for any hop variety vary from season to season and from grower to grower. Luckily, the package is normally marked with the AA%.)

Excellent.

Ah. Your original Weyermann Pale Ale entry must have been set up as a non-mashed ingredient, so its thermal mass wasn't counted in the strike water temp calculation, or its bulk in the grain water absorption calcs. Yes, 157F seems reasonable, at least for a mush tun with all the water in the strike.

Yeah, for BIAB in a kettle that has already been heated to strike water temp, I would probably set it at 0 the first time and measure the results. This is a parameter that can be tweaked over time so that the predictions will better match what you actually get. Anyway, with your setup, you'll probably wind up with something close to zero. Maybe even a small negative number, which is okay and a discussion for another day.