Equipment Profile Setup Guide
RAPT Portal | Equipment Profile Setup Guide
Guide & Recommendations To Setup A New Equipment Profile
When setting up a new Brewing Equipment Profile that is not already in the database it is super helpful to have a good idea of the basic spes of the system.
If these are not known then setting up the brewery with a known volume of water and running a few tests will quite quickly allow you to measure or dervie the most important specs for an Equipment Profile.
Many figures are dependant on other aspects of the brewing process (such as batch volume etc), so this will cover brewery specific specs. This guide is biased towards single vessel breweries such as the BrewZilla range sa these tend to be favoured by a great many homebrewers who are brewing all grain recipes.
Batch Volume - this is the desired batch volume which is generally a function of your fermenter
Mash Tun Deadspace - this is the volume below the mash pipe. Fill the kettle with water until the bottom of the malt pipe is reached and measure this volume
Mash Volume Max - Continue to fill the kettle until it is close to the top of the vessel. Allow around 100mm from the top of the kettle (to allow for expansion and boil). This is a good estimate for your Max Mash Volume
Boil Off - Bring this known volume to a boil and boil for at least 30 minutes. Measure the volume after the boil. This will allow you to dervie the boil off rate which is measure in litres per hour. So if you boil off 2L in 30 minutes this will be a boil off rate of 4L/h
Mash Tun Loss - drain the kettle using the method you would select to transfer the wort. Whatever remains in the kettle is the Mash Tun Loss
Trub/Chiller Loss - this is best derived from brewing. We recommend a starting figure of 1-2L
Brewhouse/Mash Efficiency - this is best derived from brewing. We recommend a starting figure of 75% Mash Efficiency.
The above will give you a really solid start to building an Equipment Profile specific to your brewing system. We strongly recommend tracking all the numbers over your first few brews. This will enable you to tweak these figures to build a more accurate profile over time.
This will acheive a number of positives.
You will get a more accurate and up to date profile that better represents your brewing style. For example, if you tend to brew stronger than average beers we would expect brewhouse efficiency to drop a bit.
You can identify and track actual losses and potentially uncover ways to improve or streamline your brew day.
You may identify issues that need to be rectified - for example, if you consistently get lower than expected efficiency your grain crush or thermostat may need to be dialled in, or it may drive you to experiment with Water Chemistry (which can have a very positive effect when all grain brewing!)
Last updated