I have a bias FOR the BIABacus. Everyone on this site better feel the same way!! , JK.

Just download the BIABacus, fill out what you can and post it. One of us will come along afterwards with pointers, if needed.
MS

Welcome to the forum!

[EDIT: I'm actually going to write a second post straight after this one called "Why You Should Use the BIABacus"]

Good question vex

Wish I had a bit more time up my sleeve to answer it as there are so many problems with common brewing software. These problems are not obvious or, at this point in time, widely known.

The main problems are ambiguous terminolgy, incorrect formulae and the fact that all the brewing software (besides the BIABacus) is built on simple but very faulty logic.

I'll try and race through some of these...

[center]Ambiguos Terminolgy versus Clear Brewing Terminolgy[/center]


BIABacus: Uses Clear Brewing Terminolgy that cannot be misinterpreted.

Other Software: The terminology is not defined. Two quick culprits are "batch size" and "efficiency." This post talks on "efficiency and "batch size" has similiar problems. Undefined terminology causes so many problems for all of us.


[center]Incorrect Formulae versus Correct Formulae[/center]


I won't go into detail on this bit vex as its advanced stuff that shouldn't worry you. The main thing to note is that there are incorrect calculations out there.

[center]Faulty Logic versus Intelligent Logic[/center]


This is a hard one to put simply so I am going to use an analogy but it's a powerful and accurate one I think. Let's say you own a truck and want to know what your fuel consumption will be on a journey...

Existing Brewing Software: Cannot give you that answer. In fact, you have to tell it what your fuel consumption (miles per gallon or kms/L), and, once you have told it that, it will assume that you will always use that amount of fuel per mile or km regardless of the load you are carrying and whether the journey is uphill, downhill or level.

That is the faulty logic.

The BIABacus: Obviously, as the truck driver, the above is a bit silly. If we are fully-laden and going uphill, we are going to need a lot more fuel than un-laden going downhill.

The BIABacus does the critical and complex calculation for you.

And, it does so with the same amount of data you have to input into other software. On top of that, you can put in the data faster!

...

Way over time now so I better rattle off the next post "Why You Should Use the BIABacus"

[center]Why You Should Use the BIABacus[/center]


The Cons

- It doesn't look fancy
- It looks scary
- It's a spreadsheet (with no macros because that stuffs up cross-platform support)
- Every recipe has to be saved as another spreadsheet
- Other things like seeing only US or metric measurements (you always have both)
- Probably other stuff I can't think of right now

The Pros

- Despite looking scary, it is very fast to learn
- It is also faster to use than any other program
- Everything is on one page (that's why it looks scary) which has many advantages
- It is in a logical order
- You only need to learn a few sections (not all A-Z) to be under way with confidence
- It allows you to grow as your knowledge grows
- It educated you into correct terminology
- It educates you into best practice
- It has an advanced warning system that tells you if you are out of control
- It makes the hard decisions for you (but you can over-ride those)
- Advanced: Many advanced things that are impossible to do with any other software
- Other stuff I can't think of atm

And, last but not least, you always get great help here on this forum so you never get "stuck."

Okay, that's it for now. I better get out of here....