This week I take a look at the practice of using multiple equipment profiles for your brewing equipment in BeerSmith.<\/p>\n While BeerSmith brewing software comes with many preloaded equipment profiles and you can access profiles for most commercial systems using the add-on feature, there are actually a bunch of situations where you might want to create multiple equipment profiles to cover your personal equipment setups or even multiple profiles for the same setup. <\/p>\n To access add-on equipment profiles, go to Profiles->Equipment<\/strong> view and click on the Equip Add-on button<\/strong> (Manage Preloaded button for the web version) and select the equipment add-on you want downloaded. Most of the major homebrew and some professional equipment profiles are available here.<\/p>\n First, lets cover a common case where you might want to have multiple profiles: professional brewing. Many pro and even home brewers maintain a smaller pilot system to test out new recipes on a small scale and then scale them up to brew on their larger full scale system. They download or create a profile for their pilot system and create a second profile for their larger system and then simply use the scale recipe command<\/a> to scale up to the larger system. There are some additional considerations which come into play for commercial size systems that you can read about here<\/a>, but those can be included in your profile.<\/p>\n Next lets consider another common case where you brew different size batches on the same equipment. For example I might have a 10 gallon (38 liter) brewing system that I also can brew smaller 5 gallon (19 liter) batches on. Since the volumes, losses, boil off and efficiency would be quite different in these two cases, I would want to create one equipment profile with the parameters for a 5 gallon batch and another profile with parameters for the 10 gallon batch. That way I could scale between them as needed depending on the size of batch I\u2019m working with.<\/p>\n Another, often overlooked case where a second equipment profile might be useful is for high gravity beer brewing. Since the physics of mashing and sparging drive lower efficiency as the gravity of the beer goes up<\/a>, I use a different equipment profile for very high gravity beers. Very high gravity beers might also involve extract additions, extended boils and other methods to concentrate the wort<\/a> which again drive different volumes, boil times and losses that warrant a new equipment profile. So if you enjoy high gravity beers you might want one or more equipment profiles tailored to brewing those beers.<\/p>\n Obviously if you brew different types of beverages with similar equipment you would want separate profiles. A good example might be a system where you sometimes brew all grain, but also make extract batches with the same kettle. Switching from one to the other is going to change your volumes, losses and other parameters. Other examples include switching over to mead, wine or cider using your existing boilers or fermenters.<\/p>\n A final example where you might want an additional equipment profile is if you are using specialized brewing techniques for a particular beer. If these techniques drive a significant change in volumes, losses, efficiency or water additions then you should reflect that in your equipment profile. So, for example, if I\u2019m doing an extremely long boil for a barrel aged stout, or adding massive quantities of whirlpool or dry hops to an IPA those are going to change the post-boil or final volumes of the beer as well as losses incurred. Another example might be concentrating beer by freezing it to create an Eisbock. In these cases I might create a new equipment profile, or if it is just a one-off I might just modify the copy of the equipment profile in the recipe to reflect those changes.<\/p>\n I should note that in BeerSmith each recipe has a complete copy of its profiles and ingredients \u201cas brewed\u201d so it is not automatically updated. To modify your permanent equipment profile you should modify the copy in the Profiles->Equipment table. Also since the profile in a given recipe is a copy made when you created that recipe, you should reselect the equipment profile if you\u2019ve made any changes since you last brewed an older recipe. Finally if you modify a profile in a recipe, that is a separate copy so it won\u2019t be automatically saved back to the Profiles->Equipment table. So if you make meaningful modifications within a recipe you should give the profile a new name in that recipe and then use the small save button next to the equipment name in the recipe to save the profile back to your Profiles->Equipment table.<\/p>\n Finally if you want to learn more about the specifics of how to create, customize or edit a profile to match a particular set of equipment I refer you back to my Equipment Super Post<\/a> which has links to every type of equipment as well as tips on dialing in your profile.<\/p>\n I hope you enjoyed this week\u2019s article on using multiple equipment profiles in BeerSmith. Thanks for joining me on the BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog<\/a>. If you want to take the guesswork out of brewing, please try my BeerSmith recipe software from BeerSmith.com<\/a>. Be sure to sign up for my newsletter<\/a> or my podcast <\/a>(also on itune<\/a> and youtube<\/a>) for more great tips on homebrewing.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/d3pddo38v7j30h.cloudfront.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/anvil.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\nWhy you might want multiple profiles?<\/h3>\n
Common Cases Where Muiltiple Equipment Profiles are Needed<\/h3>\n