Where I would look first, is make sure you have your Beersmith "batch size" defined ... and properly accounted for in the BIABacus. You need the correct VAW on the BIABacus to stand a chance of recreating a recipe.

Also, the BIABacus auto calculates efficiencies. After brewing a recipe many times, you may know these efficiencies. There is a section where you can override the auto-calculation. It should be in Section. X, although I'm not sure which version you are using ... and if that has ever changed.

Feel free to post the details if that isn't enough to get you sorted, and somebody can look at it.

Post up your BIABacus filled in here, include on the side lines the amount of grain you have used before and the OG you got from previous brew.

I saw this thread sladey and ran straight to the bottle shop for a carton of light beer . Comparing two programs side by side with the BIABacus is very difficult not because of the BIABacus, but because of the following...

Poor terminology, ambiguous or no definitions, critical information missing, confusing design and formula errors.

In this post, I'll jot down some of these things but also at the end I'll find some old threads here where where many hours have been spent getting programs to match.

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The below is just to show you how to get your numbers to match etc. The ingredient amounts in the BIABacus file in the post above are the ones you should be using. You have done a great job on the BIABacus . (Get rid of the 1.040 on the right hand side of Section B though as it is not necessary. Do that now.)

The following is not easy for anyone to learn so take your time and ask questions. In fact, only the smallest percentage of brewers are even aware of the below.

Ensure that Volumes of Ambient Wort (VAW) Match

Your first problem with a BeerSmith recipe is that unless you get the actual .bsm file or a certain recipe report*, there is no way to determine the VAW that Rick mentioned above. 'Batch' size in a BeerSmith recipe will usually mean either Volume into Fermentor (VIF) or Volume of Ambient Wort (VAW) but we can't tell from the above, what that 13 litres is. Study the Clear Brewing Terminology thread for the difference between VAW and VIF.

So, the first thing you have to do is make sure that your BIABacus VAW (15.17 L in Section K) equals the 'Post Boil Vol' minus 'Cooling Shrinkage' on the Vols tab of BeerSmith2. This way both VAW's will be equal and you will be comparing apples with apples. VAW is the 'god' of volume figures when replicating a recipe. Most programs worship though VIF which actually has no value when copying a recipe because everyone's kettle to fermentor loss's (KFL) can vary wildly. If you lose more than I do, you are going to need more of all ingredients than I will.

* Note that Tot efficiency and Est Mash Efficiency in your pic above are 69.00% and 69.5%. They are as good as equal so we can assume that the VAW of the BeerSmith recipe is 13.0 L. Your BIABacus however is 15.17 L so there is the first problem.

Ensure that Efficiency into Boil (EIB) Matches

Once again, in Beersmith, we have a similiar problem when it comes to efficiency. The BIABacus uses very clearly defined terminology to determine the difference between a kettle efficiency and a fermentor efficiency. The gods in this case are kettle efficiencies for the same reasons as mentioned above. Look in Section P of the BIABacus and you will see the two kettle efficiencies (EIB and EAW) and the fermentor efficiency (EIF). In BeerSmith2 there is no clarity of names. Suffice to say that in your pic above, 'Tot Efficiency' means EIF and 'Est. Mash Efficiency' means EIB or EAW (in other words, kettle efficiency).

In your pic above, because your 'Tot efficiency' and 'Est Mash Eff' are matching, I can tell that you have not set up BeerSmith the same as your BIAbacus file. In Beersmith, in your Equipment Profile, you must have 'Loss to Trub and Chiller' set as zero. That's fine but we need to make sure that the BIABacus file says the same so what you need to do is go to Section X and fix your KFL to 0 litres.

Re-check VAW's Match

If you have made the changes above, your BIABacus file will now tell you tht you have a VAW of 13.0 L so now our VAW's match. Cool!

Why is there still a little discrepancy in the Grain Weights?

You'll now see that the total weight of grains required is 2420 grams versus 2208 grams in the BIABacus. This is about a 4% difference. The BIABacus, for simplicity's sake, auto-estimates the gravity contribution of grains and treats them all the same as in real life, this is a very good way to go. You can however, over-ride this default in Section Y. However, BeerSmith's gravity contributions, have a field for moisture content but altering this does not change the grain amount needed and it should do. I think however, from memory, there is a formula error here and that BeerSmith bases the gravity contribution on Volume at Flame-Out, instead of Volume of Ambient Wort.

What About the Hops?

Your thinking on using Tinseth was correct. For anyone new to this, study "IBU's do not Match" in this post.

We have everything set right now but there is still a difference in IBU's. This is due to a formula error in BeerSmith2 for IBU's. BeerSmith 2 uses the pre-boil gravity instead of the gravity of ambient wort for their calculation. This is not correct. (A search for Glen Tinseth on this site will eventually give you the answer to this.) The BIABacus makes it easy to investigate formula errors like this. For example, you can set your desired OG to 1.028 (to match the 'Est Pre-Boil Gravity' in your BeerSmith2 opic above) and the change in Section X of the BIABacus, your evaporation rate to zero. Do that and your hop weights will match.

[center]Summary[/center]
I mentioned before that I would add some links. Posts written by me that contain the word, 'BeerSmith2' should eventually lead to some detailed examples of questions like the above. Also read any stickied thread in teh beginners section of the forum that contain the word 'integrity'.

The most important thing to gather from the above though is that

The BIABacus was written because of the shortfalls of other programs, not to match them.

PP

Great. Yep, definitely take the time to digest it. The design of so much brewing software really is confusing and not great when it comes to actually understanding what is really going on.

As for your 13L VIF, we can talk on that later once you get the above digested somewhat. Post your .bsm file, preferably with actuals (especially how much kettle trub you had and your actual original gravity) )so as it will some things easy to explain.

As for the error in the BeerSmith2 IBU formula, there were actually two in BeerSmith 1. VIF was being used instead of VAW (also for colour) as well as the pre-boil gravity versus gravity of the ambient wort. The first problem was well known but took a lot of correspondence to get fixed and was only fixed late in the beta process of BS2. It was not until later that I found the pre-boil gravity error and I can't remember if I passed that onto Brad. If your question is, "Is it actually an error?", then the answer is, "Yes". If you go to Glenn Tinseth's Hop Utilization page, you'll find the following table....Firstly, the phrase original gravity is used twice. Secondly, the utilisation number that you see in that table matches that of the BIABacus. In other words, the BIABacus returns the same result (in a hidden field) as the utilisation numbers on that page.

The terminology used on the page is, like so much brewing terminology, very ambiguous. In fact, it is not clear until you get to that table that original gravity (or more accurately, gravity of ambient wort) is the gravity figure required for the formula. This is another example of why this site has put so much work into terminology. Terms are the building blocks of learning really.


PP