I'm getting pretty frustrated with BeerSmith. Here are several things I don't understand about BeerSmith.
(1) On the "Design" tab it says "Tot Efficiency 72%" and to the right of it "Est Efficiency 86.4%"; on the "Mash" tab it says on the bottom right under "Mash Efficiency" that "Est Mash Eff 86.4%" and "Measured Mash Eff 78.5%" and then on "Fermentation" tab under "Brewhouse efficiency" it says "Tot Efficiency 72%" and "Measured Efficiency 76%". I see five different percentages dealing with efficiency. What the freakin' hell is my actual efficiency?
(2) Going along with #1 above, all the numbers above come from a batch I brewed with a 1.072 Est OG and an actual 1.069 into the fermenter. Pretty damn close. Another batch I brewed today is giving me the same anomalous numbers but for "Measured Efficiency" on the "Fermentation" it's giving me 66.5% and my Est OG was 1.067 and I got 1.062 actually going into the fermenter. Is the gravity so finicky that missing your target OG by .003 = 76% efficiency and missing it by .005 is 66.5% efficiency?
What am I not understanding?
Total Efficiency takes into account the efficiency for the total brewing process. The trouble is that most people deal with Mash Efficiency, which can't be set.
see this thread for deets and Total efficiency to mash efficiency conversion
http://www.beersmith.com/forum/index.php/topic,5140.0.html
Gotcha. Yeah, if you don't mind explaining a bit, I'd appreciate it. I'm getting to the point where I'm thinking Beersmith is more trouble than it's worth. It seems to me that most things can be calculated pretty exactly with pencil and paper (save maybe utilization).
I can explain it, but it is a lot easier in person. The basics is there are two efficiencies, one is based on ammount of sugar extracted in the mash, the second is based on boil off.