The reason I know I am always missing this number is because I rarely end up with 5 gallons of beer in the fermenter! It’s something I’ve been working on, but I’m just not good about measuring liquid volumes. I find that I am always missing this number, which means my mashing and sparging volumes are not correct. As far as calculations, you might be interested in the “Estimated Pre-Boil Volume”. Most of this is about recording measurements that you may or may not take, depending on how interested you are in record keeping. The “Fermentation” screen is similar to the “Mash Details”. So you can safely ignore this entire screen if you’d like. You’ll start finding discussions (and equations) about the true science and engineering of fermentation, which is quite interesting, but again from a homebrewer’s perspective, it’s not really necessary. And if you really want to know more about it, do some Googling. That being said, starters are a great idea for the advanced brewer. I suggest you simply ignore this number for now – everyone has used just 1 White Labs vial and been fine. Creating a 1 liter starter will yield me 30 billion cells, but that’s still nowhere close to 182 billion. Right off the bat, I notice some strange information – it says I need 182.8 billion cells, yet I am only getting 5 billion in a typical White Labs vial. This is not an area I’ve used much myself, but it’s good to know it’s there. I know a lot of brewers who use to calculate the same information. This screen is designed to help you figure out the proper amount of yeast cells you need in an ideal scenario. You’ll find it to the right of the “Recipe Design” button – refer to the red highlighted area in the first graphic if you’re lost. The next part we are going to look at is the “Yeast Starter” screen. You can ignore that for now, because we’ll be getting to the “full” screen in just a few. And finally, at the bottom, you have a “quick” view of your mash. You can click on the little “?” icon to get more details on any of the fields. To the right, you’ll see some quick summary statistics for your recipe – how much grains and hops are in it, the bitterness ratio, gravity, batch size, efficiency, and cost. Styles aren’t everything, but they serve a purpose – you know exactly what you are going to get, and so can either test your brewing prowess by attempting to “brew to style”, or attempt to specifically create a beer that you already know the taste of. If you haven’t looked at the BJCP style guide yet, it’s definitely worth spending a few hours perusing. You simply select your style, and it reviews your ingredients to tell you how close you are to the style. ![]() ![]() ![]() Simply put, it has all of the BJCP categories ( already entered. The “Style Guide Comparison” is probably one of the best features of BeerSmith! I use it all the time when I am designing recipes from scratch.
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