Advanced BIABacus Pre-Release Questions

There are a few BIABacus Pre-Release Questions being asked on the forum that don't quite fit into the current pre-release structure - they are not feedback questions or scaling questions.

I'll reserve a few posts here on the off-chance it might make life easier on the mods. In the meantime, I would like to get at least one advanced answer done here.

(Please bear in mind that I am also quite short on time atm and so any answers I can give here will be more, "Discuss between yourselves ones," )

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[Note: Very Advanced - Unless you had the same question as mally, reading this will waste your time.]

mally, re your question here.

Your question there was the main reason for this thread I think . I read it and focused on this one bit... "whereas I was hoping it was a percentage of FGAI."

I said later in that thread, "Great questions/thoughts mally/GuingesRock and HbgBill."

What I have been thinking and still am thinking on are the following...

1. Funnily enough, The BIABacus is actually the only program that you would be able to find out the actual percentage of FGAI of every fermentable if you wanted/needed to.

2. It does this quickly and easily but I don't think we should spend time on that.

Why I say that is that I think that you, like I often do, might be going through one of those double-check everything moments. That's a good thing for sure.

I think the best thing I can do here is actually ask you to show me how the BIABAcus can be used to show the percentage of FGAI. It is the only program you could actually do the exercise in. That's pretty cool but...

The only relevant weight to a brewer is the 'real weight'. And, unless you know the moisture content of the fermentable, you have to guess at the real weight. There is no other way around this besides working on an average.

To put it simply, if I like my teas sweet, would 100 grams of sugar bought from a merchant living in outback Australia be better value than 100 grams of sugar bought from a merchant in the Amazon? After all, both sold me a 100 grams of sugar didn't they?

Gotta go,
PP

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Thanks PP, a thread of my own!

**Alert** - anybody with "ADD" (attention deficit dis........) , just skip to the last paragraph.

The only slight problem I face with the BIABacus is that it is geared absolutley perfectly (amongst other things) for people that want to clone, scale, and check previous recipes. However, on the odd occasion where i want to "design" a recipe from scratch, you have to do some (albeit slight) juggling.
Please don't take it as a criticism, I think it is fine the way it is, it is just a learning curve for me to understand the process.

My thought process
I want to design a recipe with adjuncts, & if i were to do this recipe with 100% malt I would use 5Kg in 35L.
I want to use the lowest percentage of malt possible (lets say 65% malt/35% adjunct).
However, i want that perentage to be a reflection of fermentable product not weight. (for anybody that doesn't follow it here is why).

lets say the adjunct is rice (this has a similar PPG as malt, as well as moisture content) - see table of PPG values here).
There are no problems here because of that. I would use 3.25Kg Malt & 1.75Kg Rice (65/35).

But lets say you want to swap that for potatoes, not dry "flaked potato" but raw. Here you have a different PPG & moisture content, so in order to get the same amount of adjunct in that recipe you would need 3.25Kg Malt & 6.7Kg potato, as a weight value this is now 32.5%/67.5%.
To get this value i had to let the BIABacus think the original recipe had malt (or rice) & then change the extract potentials in my "actual" grain bill.
Again, this is fine, but originally as a recipe design i would have put these same values in the extract potentials of the "original" grain bill.
If you do, you will now end up with 4.385Kg Malt & 2.36Kg potato (65%/35%).

It is still slightly confusing to me,as i don't like the look of either one (but that is probably more to do with it being a crap recipe)!

So to summarise, there isn't a problem with the tool. It is just a problem with the tool using it!

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Love your first and last sentences above mally ,

Only have time for one post today and this is it . What you are really saying is that you want to base your recipe on 65% malt/35% adjunct based on their dry weight.

Practically, you would rarely have to worry about doing this but here is how you would do it....

Let's say your first ingredient was a malt that had an FGDB of 78% and a MC of 5%. Go to Section Y and type that in and you'll see the FGAI value is 74.1%. Now over-write the 78 and 4 with 74.1 and 0.

Do that for each of the ingredients. This locks in them in as purely dry values.

Now you can use the grams on the left hand side of Section C to get your ratios correct. Once you are happy with that, then you can get to work on the right hand side putting in whatever FGDB and Moisture Content is needed. Once you have done that you will have two things in Section C...

1. A left hand side that tells you the actual ratio of dry weights of all the ingredients.

2. A right hand side that tells you what real weights you need to actually weigh out to achieve the above ratios.

Make sense?

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It does make sense PP, it is just a matter of terminology I guess, & that using the BIABacus in this manner (designing from scratch) needs (slightly) more thought than normal.

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What's happening in the BIABacus mally is that it actually allows more options than other software. For example, what you want to do actually cannot be done in BeerSmith. If you change the moisture content of a fermentable from say 5% to 60% in BeerSmith, nothing will change in the quantity it tells you to use. It is an error in the program.

The 'left' and 'right' side of the BIABAcus' grain and hop bill are something you won't find in other software so it is unfamiliar. But, it is also one of the most powerful and time-saving aspects of the BIABacus. Not only can you do advanced stuff like what you want to do above properly/accurately but it also allows the most simple and important of things such as hop substitution to be done in a second. The latter cannot be done in BeerSmith without pen and paper and re-typing in numbers over and over until you get the IBU's matching those you have written down by hand or kept in your head.

So, in your situation, the BIABacus is actually not making things harder, it's actually making it possible.

...

I know you are looking for an 'Ah hah!' moment. The best way of getting that 'Ah hah' moment in this area would be to try doing what you want to do in another program. You'll find that a very complicated exercise. In fact, I can't think of one program that would allow you to do it without pen and paper at lest.

Better still, before you even do that, try the hop substitution thing. In other words, open up a recipe in another program. Let's say the recipe uses a hop with 5% AA. Let's pretend you have 6%. You know how fast this is to deal with in the BIABacus - just type a 6 on the right. Try doing that in other software. I think you'll find it surprisingly difficult.

The left and right side of the BIABacus is very powerful and it is also very simple. The funny thing is that brewers who haven't been exposed to other software will actually see the logic a lot faster than those of us who have been exposed to other software.

Talk about taking one for the team ,
PP

P.S. Let me know if you get the 'ah hah' moment. I better not write anything more here for a while as I'm running behind in off-forum stuff and I also owe several other answers in some other threads here which I know are going to take a long time. Not sure how to handle this time problem unfortunately .

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I agree with everything you have said PP (apart from addendum below).

It is, however, difficult to point out areas of the BIABacus that you find odd (at first) or would be better to suited to your individual needs at a particular moment in time without sounding picky or being critical.

So please don't take my comments as criticism.

One of the best redeeming features of the BIABacus, is that it is not only better than anything else out there at the moment, but it is completely FREE OF CHARGE. Even if it were not quite as good as BeerSmith et al, who could make a valid complaint if it was free? (me, I want my money back)

I would like to think that comments like these made by myself (& others) could make the BIABacus better than it currently is.

Addendum

So, in your situation, the BIABacus is actually not making things harder, it's actually making it possible.

I would agree with this if comparing BeerSmith to the BIABacus, but I meant this to be comparing Scaling in the BIABacus, to designing in the BIABacus.

Code: Select all

I know you are looking for an 'Ah hah!' moment.

I don't actually feel this way, but maybe it is a dialect thing
What I actually had to do was get the pen & paper out to work out what I thought i should be getting, then compare that to what the BIABacus was telling me, just so i knew how to use it. If that's what you mean by "Ah hah" then, yes (& I will promptly remove this from the addendum)

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This is probably one of those things that are very easy to sort out in a phone call but very difficult on paper . Let me see if I am understanding what you are after any better now. The easiest way to do this might be by asking a series of questions.

Q1. Firstly, are we on the same page in understanding that the information you are wanting can't be done in any existing commercial software without a tremendous amount of effort and pen and paper? I'm just asking this to make sure that I am actually looking at the same problem as you.

Q2. Is what you are after, a column beside each ingredient that shows its contribution to the gravity of the beer but based on the presumption that ingredient was totally dry?

Q3. Can you see that such a column is created by doing the 78/5 74.1/0 thing I mentioned in the last post?

If we have three Yes's

If you answered yes to the above, here's what I think might be relevant.

Firstly, the addition of such a column in real life would not be of much value. The only time it is going to be of real value in recipe design is if you do have that one very high moisture content ingredient such as fruit.

In all other recipes, the moisture contents of the ingredients are so close to each other, there is no real benefit in 'equalising' their moisture content. For example, when a maltster says, melanoidin malt can be used at up to 20% of the grain bill, they are assuming an all-grain recipe. They are not saying, "double-check your MC as 20.1% melanoidin will ruin your brew."

Any time you want to vary from all-grain into say fruit or something else with a high moisture content, then that recipe design will require a bit of extra thought. Maybe in such a case then it would be helpful to put your fruit in on the left hand side as say 90% FGDB and 0% MC and on the right hand side have it as 10%FGDB and 90% MC.

What I'm Thinking

So, what I'm thinking is that the permanent addition of such a column (assuming that is what you wanted) would be more annoying and misleading than useful. For a start it would take up space. Secondly, a user might think it is important on every brew and therefore start asking questions about it. If they asked the question, the answer would be, "Only use that column if you are using fruit." And, if one is designing a recipe with fruit, many factors need to be considered in the design.

Q4. Does that make sense?


PP

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Yes PP, I think you are correct. It can take much longer to write/email when it could only take seconds via telephone.

Q1, Q2, & Q3 - yes. (Q3 is what i did originally) see pic

potato BIABacus.jpg

.

BTW I think the "ah hah" moment was probably the few seconds after my original post see here.

I think what I (rather poorly) tried to explain was the way you have to get this when designing.
You would not naturally think that your original grain bill was dry, because you are using raw potatoes. But, as i said previously, now I know why i have to do it, it is not a problem, it is just understanding how to use the software.

I also agree that trying to alter the BIABacus to suit this would detract from it. Although at some point it may be worth considering including some of this discussion in a help file/instruction maybe???? (just in case anybody else wants to brew moonshine)

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mally wrote:...I also agree that trying to alter the BIABacus to suit this would detract from it. Although at some point it may be worth considering including some of this discussion in a help file/instruction maybe???? (just in case anybody else wants to brew moonshine)

It's a bit of a catch 22 atm mally regarding written help. On one hand, there currently seem to be more questions being asked on the forum than answers being given. On the other hand, many of the questions being asked would be unnecessary if the formal help had been written . Not sure what the answer is on this but the one thing I do know is that the more questions that get answered on-forum well, the faster the formal help can be written. In other words, the more people that can spend time giving detailed answers or good links now, the faster the help will get written and the less need there will be for people to spend time giving detailed answers .

I'm going to have a crack at Bill's question from this post. He's been waiting two weeks!

HbgBill wrote:I believe I'm having a terminology issue here that I'm trying to wrap my head around. In "L" VIF I have 2.8 G/ 10.6L. That number was very close. After my major fermentation was complete and I racked into a secondary to add a sock with my Dry Hop pellets, I ended up with 1.5 liters of trub. So I added 1.5 Liters to "N" as Wort Lost from fermenter as everything in the fermenter was transferred to the secondary and now it shows I have in "O" VAP as 9.1 Liters or 2.4G

Is not VAP the same thing as VIF..?

Sorry Bill for the very long wait. The short answer to your question is that Volume at Pitching (VAP) is not the same as Volume into Fermentor (VIF). They usually are the same but not always.

Section N is called "Pre-Pitching Corrections" and is something you won't find in any other brewing software. What this section is for is to make any volume or gravity corrections you might want before you pitch the yeast. It should be used in combination with Section O. Section O shows the effects of what you do in Section N. Play with it and you'll get what I mean .

You see how you wrote above, "After my major fermentation was complete...I ended up with 1.5 liters of trub... so I added 1.5 Liters to Wort Lost from fermenter." They key word here is 'after'. This was not a pre-pitching activity.

Where should you put your 1.5 L of Fermentor and/or Secondary Trub?

I think this is the question you are asking Bill. The answer is, just like all other software, there is nowhere to record this in the BIABacus. All you can do is record the volume you pitched at (VAP) and the volume you scored in your kegs or bottles - "Volume into Packaging (VIP)". The difference between these two will be the trub you scored in primary and secondary and/or spilt during packaging.

I understand that the user of brewing software would think it is very strange that you can't record your actual primary and secondary fermentor trub losses. As mentioned above, no brewing software I know of allows it. We have certainly considered it but the space required in spreadsheet form versus the benefit gained is not worth it. Our solution for this is to have warnings pop up if the actuals you record vary too much from the estimates. This isn't as easy as it sounds. The main problem is finding the right spot to put these warnings.

Anyway, hope that above has been of some help Bill. If it doesn't make sense, let me know.


PP

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It does, thanks.. I didn't choose my words carefully enough

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I've been changing the head on the engine in my van over the last few days Richard. Fired her up a few hours ago but still need to put some bits back together and catch up on some lost work. In other words, I am behind on time .

...

The PLG field has no 'dependents' and so it is a formula we wouldn't have checked more than once or twice. The more dependents a field has, the greater the chance we have of finding a problem. For example, here's a pic of how many dependents (how many things are affected by) the, 'GIK' field in Section M.

GIK Complexity.JPG

If I do the same for the PLG field, there is not a single line.

Why I am saying this is that there could well be an error in the field. It's a field that is only useful to a small number of brewers and I would have to spend an hour or more trying to remember why we actually put the field in!

As a matter of interest (and I hope this helps) the formula for that field is as follows...

=IF(ISNUMBER(CQ95),(((CQ95-1)*1000)*(((CQ36)*0.9614)/((CQ36*0.9614)-EA73-EA67))/1000)+1,"")

CQ95 is GIK from Section M
CQ36 is VIK from Section K
EA73 is 'Water Added Before the Boil' in Section W
EA67 is 'Water Used in a Sparge' in Section W

This is one of the most simple formulas in the BIABacus but I think you can see why we all need to check and ask questions like you are doing Richard.

There are quite a few hundred formulas on just the first sheet of the BIABacus. Most are extremely complex but they make things very easy for a very broad range of users.

Anyway, the long and short of all this is that I have a gut feel that there could be an error in that formula but that I won't have the time to check it fully for a while. It should be a very simple formula though as it's just a dilution one.

Has anyone got time to check the logic of the formula out?

Hope so
PP

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Richard, can you leave this one with me for a while? I have spent an hour or more on it tonight but am trying to rush an answer that could also be wrong. The maths are not complex but the 'angles' can be with this maxi_BIAB stuff. I need to be able to concentrate on it fully without any interruptions and I can't guarantee when I will next have the opportunity to do so.

When I do get the chance to think on it, I will also think if it can be moved to a different spot as it is a number that is only relevant to a very small number of brewers and even then, it is just a preliminary gravity check field like GIK is.

Later
PP

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stm wrote:Could I just point out a typo in BIABacus if it hasn't been found before: section M, Specific Gracity, should be Specific Gravity.

I've just started a new thread for this stm and reported your error here .

PistolPatch wrote:Richard, can you leave this one with me for a while? I have spent an hour or more on it tonight but am trying to rush an answer that could also be wrong. The maths are not complex but the 'angles' can be with this maxi_BIAB stuff.

I've had another look at this tonight for a bit but I don't think I will get anywhere. The problem for me, which I hope you can imagine and understand, is that it would take me a few hours just to back-track where the original question came from. I often do this (how crazy am I!) but I've been a bit crook and so have lost the flow as it were on more than one question and, I have been told that I have to stop doing this .

I do know one thing for sure though and that is that we need to re-wind on your question as grain absorption has nothing to do with pre-lauter gravity.

So...

What I reckon we should do Richard is rewind and ask the question again because I can't even remember what the original question was . I do remember (I think ) that it was a bit hazy so maybe time etc will have allowed your original question to be worded in a different way now?

What do you reckon?


PP

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Copied over from "BIABacus Pre-Release - Your First Impressions" forum.

smyrnaquince wrote:I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this question. Please let me know if there is a better forum.

Starting with the posted NRB's All Amarillo APA recipe fom BIABacus PR1.3, I played with the efficiency in Section X until I got the Target grain bill to match the one that comes up with the BIABacus default efficiency. I had to set the efficiency to 83.14% to get the grain bills to match.

I understand that BIABacus lets the user adjust pretty much any parameter to match their own setup, but is such a high default efficiency really a good idea? I would have expected new BIABers to be getting in the 70's. Won't this higher default efficiency hurt, rather than help, first-timers? (If you are an experienced BIABer, then you probably know your efficiency and can adjust the spreadsheet accordingly.)

I also noticed that the default efficiency changes with the boil time, with the grain bill going up as boil time goes down. I assume that this is because BIABacus assumes that the extraction efficiency goes down as the mash water volume goes down.

If this last assumption is true, then the accompanying write-up will have to explain how to adjust the parameters in Section X. Let's say that I average a 78% efficiency when mashing for a 90-minute boil. I can set a fixed efficiency of 78%, but then that efficiency will be used for the lower volumes associated with a 60-minute boil, as well. How can I instead set the "Adjust Auto-Efficiency by" value so that I get a 78% efficiency for the 90-minute boil volumes and have this same adjustment be used for a 60-minute boil? The only thing I can come up with is to play with the fixed efficiency until I get the grain bill to match the auto-efficiency grain bill, then subtract that efficiency from my average (78% in this case) to come up with the adjustment to use.

PistolPatch wrote:Dave, a bette thread for this might be Advanced BIABacus Pre-Release Questions. Who knows?

I'm not sure what the right place is. You are sort of asking the right questions and the wrong questions. What I think is best is if I ask you to be more specific. In other words, what is it that the BIABacus isn't giving you? You said you had to set the efficiency to 83.14 to get the grain bill to match. Well, I'm not sure where to begin with that. Is your kettle exactly the same as that in the original recipe? Is your EOBV-A exactly the same as the original recipe? Lots more questions.

...

You mention, is such a high default efficiency really a good idea?. Well, there are lots of things to consider here Dave and some of them are new things that you won't be aware of.

But!!! I know you were or should have been aware at one stage of the difference between EIK and EIF. That might need some revision by you because until you let us know if you are talking about 'Efficiency into the Kettle' of 'Efficiency into the Fermentor' we can be up to 40% out of agreement .

So, that's the first thing to study - EIK versus EIF.

EIK is the intelligent efficiency figure to focus on and the default used by the BIABacus is actually a bit low, not high.

Finally, your last paragraph ignores one of the best and biggest breakthroughs of the BIABacus. All other programs force the brewer to literally, 'make up,' an imaginary efficiency figure. The brewer puts in an efficiency figure (which they don't even know is EIK or EIF) and then, the program tells that brwer that they will get exactly that efficiency no matter whether they are brewing a light beer or a an imperial stout!

So Dave, that is the biggest myth we have been busting while you have been away. Efficiency into kettle is a variable, it is not a constant.

In other words, if you are educated right, you will only ever 'set' the BIABacus, auto-efficiency figure to a fixed figure if you have the advanced skills to investigate a recipe.

And, that is another thing that may have happened here since you were here last. We now have the confidence to say that almost any brewing recipe you see published on the internet will lack integrity and probably can't be copied. If you doubt that claim, post a recipe up here and we'll prove why.

So, good questions but also lots of stuff to think on.


PP

"what is it that the BIABacus isn't giving you?" If forced to answer that question, then I would have to say that BIABacus is not giving me enough information to understand how I can intelligently use the "Adjust Auto-Efficiency by ___%" feature in Section X.

The rest of this discussion really pertains to me trying to figure out what auto-efficiency BIABacus used for this recipe.

"Is your kettle exactly the same as that in the original recipe? Is your EOBV-A exactly the same as the original recipe?"
Well, the input specified a grain bill and an OG. To derive a specific OG from a specific grain bill, the only thing you can vary is the volume and the efficiency of getting sugars out of the grains and into that volume. Exactly which efficiency depends on which volume you are talking about.

What I did is determine (via trial and error) that I had to set the efficiency made available to me in Section X to 83.14% to get the grain bill to match the original grain bill, while matching the original OG and matching the original EOBV-A that was claimed in Section D. Thus, I determined that for this recipe only, BIABacus seemed to be using an efficiency of 83.14%. Again, I cannot tell which efficiency that is because it is unstated in Section X.

Perhaps that is actually a reasonable efficiency. I do not know because I do not know which efficiency I was setting in Section X.

"EIK is the intelligent efficiency figure to focus on and the default used by the BIABacus is actually a bit low, not high." Is that default something that brewers with years of experience hit or one that we expect a new brewer to hit the first or second time out of the gate?

The BIABacus efficiency taking into account the size of the grain bill is brilliant. Really.

I do not know if I am talking talking about 'Efficiency into the Kettle' of 'Efficiency into the Fermentor'. I am playing around in Section X, which only says
"Adjust Auto-Efficiency by ___% or set it to ___%"
That section is not specific about which efficiency the user is adjusting/setting. I was simply trying to get the same results out of the BIABacus with a fixed efficiency that I got out of the auto-efficiency.

Although I can agree with you about "you will only ever 'set' the BIABacus, auto-efficiency figure to a fixed figure if you have the advanced skills to investigate a recipe", guidance is still needed on how to use the "Adjust Auto-Efficiency" field.

Re "almost any brewing recipe you see published on the internet will lack integrity and probably can't be copied", I was using the recipe as posted at the beginning of the "BIABacus Pre-Release - Your First Impressions" thread. I was not trying to convert a recipe on my own. I thought that would make things simpler. I guess it didn't.

I'll have to chew on your other points. Much food for thought.

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Estimated Pre-Lauter Gravity (PLG) in Section M
PP,
Just some of my thoughts here.

In my post #14 above, I was trying to find a corresponding VOLUME to the PLG, so my PLG reading was taken after my bag pull, 'A POST LAUTER GRAVITY'. After squeezing the grain and hop bags, as dry as possible, I took a head space measurement.

I noticed a bigger difference in this reading than the previous brew, only difference was a 6% auto-adjust offset. This got my attention, plus it's one of the three milestones to record.

With Sections U and V not working for keggles, atm, maybe I didn't calculate the VOLUME correctly and maybe the math formula is correct.

I am taking a sample only to measure and record afterwards for the BIABacus. Others might make a decision to sparge, if their reading is low.

Hope this helps.
~richard

p.s. Afterwards, when I topped up to VIK, my gravity reading was spot-on to the GIK.

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Dave, I'm off to work soon so will just ask answer your latest question here now. Will do MS's and your prior one later. I'm thinking that answering this latest one may actually answer some of your earlier questions anyway.

Yes, the grain amounts will change when you change the boil time from 60 to 90 minutes. When you do a 90 minute boil, you need to start with more water than you would in a 60 minute boil to make up for the increased evaporation. In a pure BIAB (full-volume mashing) this means that the grain is going to get 'washed' in more water. The more water that 'touches' or washes the grain, the higher the 'Efficiency into Kettle'.

The same principle applies to different pots. You and I may brew exactly the same recipe and want the same Volume into Fermentor but this does not mean that we will end up using the same weight of grain. You may have a narrow pot with a low evaporation rate while I may have a wide pot with a high evaporation rate. If so, I will need less grain than you.

When I come back here later, I will be saying, "Do not fiddle with things in Section X unless you have done several brews and have good reason to." All you have to worry about when scaling a recipe if you are a pure BIAB'er is changing the numbers in Section B. The BIBacus does all the other hard thinking for you. So, it really only takes a few second to scale a recipe.


PP

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