I just bought the Beer Smith software.. I really like it so far but i have had one problem. I entered a recipe for an all grain brown ale today.. i followed the mashing instructions to a tee but fell about a gallon short on my boil volume.. I was shooting for 6.7 gallons boil volume and a 5.5 gallon batch. I used 15.50 lbs of grain, the software told me to add 20 quarts of 166.7 degree strike water (for 154 degree mash) and batch sparge 11.7 quarts (i used 3 gallons) of 196.6 degree water (for 166.8 degree mash out ) to get 6.7 gallons for the boil. I was at least a gallon short of that. my temps where as calculated but I had to heat up 2 gallons of 170 degree water to rinse the grain to get to my desired total boil volume. I guess my grain obsorbsion is messed up. Any ideas??

i could be grain absorption or the pick up isn't getting all the liquid in the kettle, i always heat more water than i'll need just in case my volume falls short. with that much grain you shouldn't see that much difference in your gravity.
gary

That seems about right. You should get absorption of about 0.7 quarts per pound. When I look at your numbers, I get a yield of 5.2 gallons with this absorption rate. That's assuming you have no dead space where extra wort can hide in the mashtun.

There should be a place to enter your "real world" experience into the basic calculations. The more you use the program and tweak it to your system, the more accurate it will be.