BIABrewer.info

GuingesRock, I have edited your post above with my replies.

Unless something is unclear above, there is no need to reply here. Instead, we will look forward to your questions in the thread mentioned above. Whilst we always ensure forum questions are given first priority, anything we post here does take time away from development which is something we and the members here need to be mindful of.

All the best,
Pat

Pat, I know I was told not to reply here, but thanks for the detailed reply.

Because of my situation, as explained, I'm going to have to wait for the help links and avoid any further wasting of your time.

My intention was to give feedback from someone with intellectual and time constraints, who wanted to get started.

"When you have the time" and "just do this or that" are key words and phrases that get me every time.

It sounds like you have a lot on GR. Even once the help threads are written you will still need to find that 20 minutes of focussed time. Wait until things quieten down for you and then have a look.

This thread is an official one so let's treat your question as completed and use this post as a bump.


Please read the first postof this thread carefully.

Additional notes on PR 1.3 can be found in this post.

I use Openoffice and to make Biabacus look much much better in it turn off the grid lines under options

I'm not sure why you rate these programs as you have Pat?

Have you considered adding the gravity/alcohol addition to the BIABacus that occurs during priming?
I still use the method from my coopers kits days of adding 0.5% regardless of priming rate

I know this is likely to be one of those requests that needs more effort than reward, but thought i would add it anyhow.

I think the rating that he put was based on the following...

Excel matches the same colours as the BIABrewer.info site whereas Libre and Open substitute different colours. Libre was then put ahead of Open because of the gridline problem which johnaberry has solved above. (Thanks johnaberry ) I don't think any software does this although they should mally. It's another one of these areas that are given no attention but that can be dramatically important. I don't think it is important so much on the ABV thing (I'd be going 0.25% btw as a generic adjustment for that) but more on recipe integrity.

When I used the word, "dramatically," above I meant it. You can actually prime exactly the same wort with say carbonation caps and plain sugar and get two beers that would be, for want of better wording, 20% different. I was astounded when I tasted this. One beer was nice and the other one was excellent! I'll never forget that.

[EDIT: Just writing here got me thinking more and more and maybe there is a solution so ignore my initial thinking below.]

Anyway, we have thought on it briefly for the BIABacus some time ago but, whilst in spreadsheet form (without macros), it's impossible to do properly. I thought on it more today after seeing your post this morning and thought of even more problems than we had originally seen. For example, now that we are a bit more clever on this whole recipe integrity thing, we look at the Recipe Report first and work backwards from there.

In the Recipe Report, you'd have to have something that says how the beer was carbonated. But what would be the default? No one reports how they carbonate their recipe let alone what they do it with. They should. In fact, coincidentally, I think the first recipe report I have ever seen that included this info was today. (And that recipe still has lots of other critical info missing.)

So, just because no other software (I think) allows for it doesn't give us an excuse for not addressing this problem. On the numbers side of things, we'd have to go generic in spreadsheet form to some extent. It's more the Recipe Report and re-design of the first sheet that would be the problem.

I'm not confident that we can come up with a solution but the whole point of the BIABacus and the site, in general, is to get brewers focused on important questions. How and what you carbonate your beer with is definitely an area we are missing.

It's something that could be done very easily in a proper program where we could shrink and expand relevant areas but, because this is an area that would require a left and right hand side creates a lot of design and space problems. You'll see we don't have a left and right on many areas. Section G is a most critical one that has no 'right' hand side.

Just thinking it through some more and maybe the best way around this would be trying to squeeze the following two questions in somewhere...

1. Was the original recipe primed? Y/N (Would new users know what this meant?)
2. If so what with?

These are probably the two important questions when it comes to recipe integrity and we probably could build the numbers from there to an acceptable degree of accuracy.

Very nice question mally .

Even adding the above means adding one line to The BIABacus but as you will see that adding one line in one column means adding another line to the other five columns and everything lines up so nicely now .

On reflection, I think your suggestion is quite silly and that we shouldn't worry about it. Just joking of course . I will have a look at this. Wish we could write a real program so as we could make The BIABacus even more user-friendly.

C'est la vie, a spreadsheet, for now,
PP

Wow. I'm only just begining to play around with this but my first impression is this: "holy crap this must have taken a lot of work" and so my first comment is: THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

Secondly, and this is just an idea: if you ever want to make an application and draw some kind of income I'd suggest Kickstarter or in Australia, Pozible. I recently raised 6k to get one of the bands I manage some vinyl printed. It was really easy and I'm willing to bet with the number of BIABers in the world and the lack of a really solid piece of suitable software, you could raise a whole lot more than that. I'd certainly contribute.

For now though, thank you. I'll have a red hot crack and let you know if I have any feedback.

Oh and PS: I flippantly converted it to google docs in the hops that I can make my whole process cloud based. I'll let you know how it goes!

Thread Update

BIABrewer.info's community relies on careful readers and writers. Please read, digest and then pass on the following when appropriate...

Libre/OpenOffice Users - How to Open and Save the BIABacus as an Excel File

If you use Libre or Open Office and have experienced difficulty opening the BIABAcus, the reason will most likely be that the .xls file extension is not associated with your Libre or OpenOffice program.

The method of associating a file extension with a program varies depenfding on your operating system and its age. If you google for things such as, "default programs," or "file extension manager," you should find the answer. If you cannot, post here.

Acknowledgements: Lylo and PistolPatch

Why do I have to post The BIABacus as an .xls file?

There are several reasons for this...

If you post your file as an .ods, more often than not, an Excel user will not be able to read it or open it. In other words, they will not be able to help you or even have an idea of the information you are trying to convey.

The password-protection can also be destroyed when the BIABacus is saved as an .ods. Whilst we don't have a problem with anyone examining the complexity of the spreadsheet and its formulas, if the file is not protected, one slip of a key stroke can remove a critical cell.

In reality, when the BIABacus is officially released, there could be many compromised copies replicated across the net either accidentally or even by a hacker. The only safe place to obtain The BIABacus will be from this site and even then only in certain threads and then, always as an .xls.

If you see The BIABacus posted as an .ods on this site, and it will happen innocently many, many times, please direct the member to a post such as this.

OpenOffice Users - Removing Gridlines

Thanks to johnaberry for his post on how OpenOffice users can make The BIABacus look better by using the remove gridlines option. We googled this and it worked however once we closed the file and re-opened it, the gridlines returned and we had to repeat the process.

If someone can find and write a complete solution to this, that would be great.

popmedium

Thanks so much for your comments above. Anyone who works on the BIABAcus is always impressed when a user can recognise some of the work that has gone into it as it has been an Olympian effort and will continue to be so for quite some time. The BIABacus is really just one aspect of many other things we have waiting that require nothing more than time.

Your income suggestions are excellent. Thank you again. We could spend thousands and thousands of dollars on the many things we have planned however we need to ensure first that we always have the right culture and community here. If we don't have the right community and culture, any income will be poorly spent.

BIABrewer.info has been quoted as being the most helpful and friendly brewing site on the net as well as the best source of BIAB information. It should always be that as that has always been and always will be our primary aim. The BIABacus Pre-Release is a big test of the existing community. The BIABacus is working very well, education-wise, however we are concerned that, when questions are being asked, the answers being given are sometimes not of the right quality.

Because of this, our behind the scenes work over the next few weeks will look soley on how we can best help the best contributors here deliver quality information as fast as possible to the newer members.

In the meantime, we trust that new members will ask questions with the usual enthusiasm and then do a little study on the answers given. We also trust that the older members will show the usual goodwill, humour and, at the moment especially, concentration and attention to detail that we have all benefited from here.

Many thanks,
Pat

Pat, regarding gridliine in open office,this worked for me and all OpenOffice sheets open the same way.
To permanently hide column and line headers in a table:
Under the menu item Tools - Options - OpenOffice.org Calc, click the View tab page. Unmark Column/row headers. Confirm with OK.
To hide grid lines:
Under the menu item Tools - Options - OpenOffice.org Calc , go to the View tab page. Unmark Grid lines. Confirm with OK.

Good Day, Depending on the time of day, I'll try to do the best I can.

Learning the BIABacus, is taking some time, Since My numbers over 70 batches, are not agreeing with BIABacus, I am looking into the Numbers, since Numbers is just numbers!

Post a BIABacus file of what you have been able to do so far to this thread. The design of the BIABacus makes it very fast for other users to see errors or explain a function. Whilst it is important not to waste the people resources in that thread, it is also important not to struggle unnecessarily with the BIABacus. Spending some time writing a careful question to that thread should definitely be your next step.

Note that Hints does not reply to questions.

I believe this link is pointed to the wrong thread. [MODNOTE: Thank you. Link corrected now.]


My first impression:
I brewed my very first 10 gallon batch (a double) AND my first MAXI on 2/16/2013! I scaled a recipe I brewed before and found my kettle was too small. I posted a question regarding a percentage of water to hold back from the mash and got a very nice response back from PistolPatch. I appreciate the fine work done on the BIABacus and find it very user friendly.
~richard z mad scientist

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=286&start=950#p27982
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=286&start=950#p28030

Hi Everyone,

This looks like a big advancement from the Maxi-BIAB Calulator. I'm very impressed by all the details here, but not sure exactly what I need to do to get the Maxi calculations. I have a 19L Pot and want to get 21L in the fermenter. I tried adding the calculations (didn't touch the maxi section), but the Kettle headspaces are all in the negatives. Can someone please post some simple instructions to calculate for a maxi batch (or to convert the APA recipe to my settings)?

Much appreciated!

Welcome Frederick.
Read this first;
http://biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=1863#p25912

Post your PR1.3 BIABacus file over on this thread, if you have any questions;
http://biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=286#p1747

I'm testing this BIABacus in Google Sheets (Drive) and it looks like it's working fine, so BIABacus is everywere

Thank you

Lol Tsar . Hopefully you haven't 'shared' your file publicly though as there are still things that need to be done before it gets officially released.

I can't seem to edit it in Google Docs, Tsar - only read it. Can you edit?

Not shared

I can edit it perfectly, you have to convert it to google docs format.

Thank you Tsar ,

Got it editing and removed the gridlines as well. Looks sort of good enough and certainly all the calcs work but...

Protection doesn't work so it will be easy for a user to delete or accidentally change cells/formulas.

And, of course, once converted to Google Docs, it can't go back to Excel etc.



Definitely don't share publicly .

Yes you can, "File > Download as > Microsoft Excel"

I won't share

Lol!

No luck for me Tsar downloading and opening as excel file . Here are the results...Google sheets actually says, "Download as an .xlsx file."

This is one of the many infuriating things we have found along the way. The best common denominator that works for most people is the .xls file with no macros.

As soon as you stray from that format, all sorts of problems crop up for many users .

The only real way to get the BIABacus working cross-platform is to write a program but there are actually many benefits of the BIABacus staying in spreadsheet form for the moment...

Hidden Benefits of the Spreadsheet Form

Some of the convenience things we can't do in spreadsheet form withut using macros can actually be benefits to both the new and experienced all-grainer.

For example, a lack of a drop-down list for grains and hops, most new all-grainers would see as an obvious flaw. I actually see that as a major advantage.

Firstly, I have never seen a grain drop-down list that works. (We have spent quite some time on this behind the scenes and coming up with a sensible, user-friendly, grain list would be months of work over and above what has already been spent). The advantage of having no list is that the user can simply type in the name of the grain they have. If you are worried that the extract potential of the grain will not be correct, trust me, the default used in the BIABacus (that can be over-ridden) is a lot more accurate than the drop-down lists in some programs.

In the case of hops, the same thing.

Clicking on drop-down lists and looking for something that looks 'about right' instead of spending that same time googling and informing yourself about an ingredient is time well-spent.

A key feature of the BIABacus design is that it makes non-critical decisions for you in some areas and in other areas, it forces you to make a conscious decision at the right level of experience. It's a lot more clever than it appears.

The other benefit of the spreadsheet form, for now, is that we can still relatively easily change and correct things.

The Most Annoying Things about the Spreadsheet Form.

Navigating while inputting is a PITA. TAB/ENTER are no good, you really have to use your mouse but there is nothing we can do about that. The nice thing about the design is that there are not too many input fields required .

What really drives me up the wall is that every time we change a BIABacus version is that I have to re-type the recipe in. I probably have to do that more than anyone else and it might take 5 mins but I think that is the most annoying thing atm.

Maybe some of the clever IT guys might be able to write something that would export and import the fields of the BIABacus? (An older version did this but failed cross-platform. So, such a thing would have to be separate from the BIABacus.)

Be nice to know whether this is possible or not ,
PP

I've just exported to .xlsx and opened in OpenOffice and it works. The only problem is that the cell size is not enough to show the text and it only shows "###" like in your screenshot, try to resize the cells to see if the formulas are working, mine are

Just want to back-track through a few things here before we lose site of them...

Tsar - Re .xlsx

The formulas work but the display is all wrong. When the BIABacus is released officially, it will be very important that only the .xls file extension is used when sharing files. Any variation to it always causes at least one problem and compromises the integrity of the sheet. So, maybe use something like Google sheets to to read from when you brew or play with on your way to work but I think we'll always have to use Excel/Libre/Open and .xls to write, save and publish recipes.

mally - Re Priming and change in AA%

Had a chance to think more on this. I know what I'd like to do but it could take many hours/days. Unfortunately, sections Q to R are extremely complex underneath. I think that's why you won't find a lot of what we have there in any other program .

So, we have every other program including the BIABacus ignoring the effect of priming. Annoying...

The solution I can see requires... [I had quite a lot written here but have copied and pasted it to myself. Bascially it is a lot of work.]

Anyway, just wanted to let you know I am not being lazy or ignoring the problem. It is tricky but not impossible. Important? I think so but it probably needs to take a back seat for the moment though sorry .

joshua - Re numbers not adding up

joshua mentioned in a prior post that his numbers were not agreeing with the BIABacus. We've been corresponding on this and there is nothing to worry about here. Long story but the main issue was on measuring trub and grist wet or dry. (Measure wet!)

...

I thought there was one other thing that hadn't been addressed here but I think we are up to date .

What have we forgotten?
PP

The magic "BIABacus recipe translator", so all prior issues can be upgraded to the current release!