BIABrewer.info

[This thread should be read in conjunction with the BIABrewer.info Update Thread.]

Note: For new users, the BIABacus refers to an improved version of The Calculator.

We've been promising an update on the BIABacus for many weeks now. It is very difficult to write an update for several reasons. An update implies an explanation of the past, a description of the present and a vision of the future. Most importantly, an update should be brief. It is actually impossible for us to do an adequate update. The following is a poor attempt full of compromises...

Early History of the BIABacus Project - The Calculator

The "BIABacus Project" originally started with a simple calculator. This is pretty much what you see on the site currently. Whilst very simple, lacking in many features and requiring some explanation, it actually has several very, "efficient," features. New users are still advised to use The Calculator for now as they will always receive help in this thread.

Several thousand hours have since been spent on looking at ways to make complex brewing numbers simple and transparent. In other words, we wanted to provide software that was intuitive to use, flexible, powerful and 'intelligent.' This innocent goal to improve the existing calculator on the website has turned into a rather revolutionary vision that would benefit the whole brewing community. It has involved many transitions and individuals.

Recent History of the BIABacus Project (BIABacus V121A - Unpublished)

Some of the original individuals involved in this project are still working as hard as they did on day one. A few have spent probably over 500 hours on the project and not been given any public recognition. Some of these people have given massive bursts of time but can't afford to give any more. At least one has spent several thousand hours on the project.

After a massive amount of thinking, drudgery, emails, skypes, posts in hidden forums etc, the BIABacus development team were able to come up with a spreadsheet that solved a lot of the very complex stuff however...

1. The user interface was not up to scratch. A spreadsheet simply couldn't provide a perfectly intuitive interface no matter how hard we tried.

2. Worse still, because of the complex macros involved, the spreadsheet would work for only a few betas running a particular version of Windows and Excel.

The BIABacus development team which includes many people from the original author of The Calculator through to beta testers all expected the BIABacus to be released. Approximately, six weeks ago the team concluded that releasing the BIABacus in spreadsheet form would only service a few brewers and result in many questions/complaints such as, "I can't open this spreadsheet on my platform." More obvious and totally fair questions would have resulted and any time spent answering these questions would be time stolen from the main development team. Who would answer such questions?

Whilst disappointed that the spreadsheet couldn't be published, the team has always aimed for quality. The past has been about naming problems no one else has seen and then finding a solution. This is boring to the reader but rings a massive bell for anyone who has been involved in this project to date. If you want to make mud just add soil and water. Turning mud into soil and water is incredibly complex. The team has solved many of these complex problems. Thank you. You know who you are and we apologise that your only reward will probably be your name appearing in the BIABacus .

What is Happening Now? BIABacus 3

In light of the above, work has commenced on what we might call for now, "BIABacus3." This will work for all users and it will be the intuitive, flexible, powerful and 'intelligent' software we have worked towards for so long. It will be the culmination of thousands of hours of concentrated activity.

Not only will we have the software, there will be comprehensive help and a new forum structure. So...

It is going to take a lot of work. In fact, even after we put the first interface out there, many more months of full-time development work could be spent incorporating the fancier tools we envision. Well over 300 man-hours have been spent on it already in just the last four weeks, with one brewer, not BIABrewer, doing more than half of these hours.

BIABrewer is happy for those with an income to contribute as many hours or as many dollars as they can. We are not happy though for someone without an income to work so hard for nothing and refuse anything we offer. We currently have the latter situation and solving this is a very high priority for BIABrewer atm.

Please ensure you read the BIABrewer.info Update Thread to discover some of the many things we are working on atm and ways in which you might be able to help.

All the best,
BB

Not sure if this was made obvious enough, but the next version of BIABacus will be web based, yeay.

Wanted to check to see if there are any updates and maybe a tentative opening date?

Hi there rb,

The database has been designed and completed. This has been very well thought through and will allow many features down the track. We wish to use the best programming tools and languages to maximise the versatility of the end result. This means that Kostas has been studying 3 comprehensive books so as to get some ideas on the latest, most efficient methods of programming the interface etc.

During the last few moths, many problems have been thought through and solved. We now have a fairly clear picture of what we want to see which will make things easier later.

I don't think I can give a time estimate at the moment. We suspect that once we get the basic interface up, things will accelerate nicely. At a guess, I'd say existing betas might see something very primitive in two months. A limited public release, say for BIABbrewer members only, might take another 3 months after that. A public release, perhaps another 4 months after that. This last stage will involve 'prettying' up the interface, writing all the help and re-writing major sections of the website.

The above is a guess, assumes Kostas can keep working on it full-time and that myself and other key people can also work on the project daily. Help from existing BIABrewer members is also important. For example...

We'll probably do a few simple online tests soon where members here can contribute brew figures etc. We'll also be asking soon, in this thread, for some help in gathering comprehensive information on grains, hops etc. This will help immensely.

Thanks for your continued interest rb ,
Pat

Thanks Pat for the update. I am willing to do what I can to help. I don't have an extensive brewing background, only been brewing for about a year now but if you need any help testing user friendliness I can help with that. I am willing to do what I can to help get this going.

Thanks for your offer to help. We'll definitely take that up. Different experience levels are really valuable. Sometimes the "older" brewers forget how complicated some things are. For example, PistolPatch designed most of the existing Calculator quite a few years ago. He had a look at it recently and wrote,"I can't believe how non-intuitive the calculator is . I'm going to have a crack at writing a new one as a temporary measure until the BIABacus become available..."

The betas have been working on a terminology chart and PP will use that terminology in the temporary calculator. Once these are done, I'll do some re-writing of BIABrewer Essentials. Hopefully these three things will relieve a bit of the frustration of waiting for the BIABacus.

Thanks again rb,
Pat

Pat,
What would be the chance of you guys publishing a list of features we can expect to see when the new software is released?
It would be nice to know what is coming

Please accept my apologies for the delayed reply rockbottom however I knew this post would take a long time to write and also wanted a few extra days to check the abilities of the new calculator.

I will try and write both the features and limitations below. The good news is that nearly all the features we had in the previous BIABAcus betas have been able to be written into the version PP is writing despite having the limitation of not being able to use any macros. Several new features have been added as well.

Because the following features have been able to be included, it is worthwhile spending the time to re-write the site and therefore we will be able to release this spreadsheet as BIABacus 1.0 .

We are trusting that the members here will over-look any limitations imposed by a spreadsheet format. They are not critical limitations and we firmly believe that the following more than makes up for them.

Site Changes.

1. BIABrewer Essentails Re-Write - The new BIABrewer.info Essentials will be completely re-written so as all terminology and numbers will be the same as in the BIABAcus. A Terminology Chart and Definitions thread will be a feature of this.

2. We will allow files, such as the BIABacus, to be downloaded from the site by newly registered members. Posting on the forum though will still require a, "My First Post," to be written.

BIABAcus Features

Here are some features, in no order of importance, that come to mind quickly...

1. Quality Calculations - Much research has been spent by the BIABacus team on ensuring that the formulas used in the BIABacus are of the highest quality.

2. Clickable Help - Each section of the BIABacus has a "?". Clicking on this will hyperlink the user to a thread containing basic, intermediate and advanced help on that section. So, we will have the equivalent of an online BIAB book.

3. Warnings - Red warnings pop up to advise the user of things such as a high or overflowing mash volume.

4. Auto-Efficiency - Efficiencies are automatically estimated depending on several factors. This is a feature that is so incredibly useful, it is impossible to detail here. However, like any default feature, it can be over-ridden.

5. Other Auto Estimates - Like the existing calculator, things like evaporation and trub losses have default estimates to guide brewers. Some of these defaults will be different from the existing calculator but all can be over-ridden. When any defaults is over-ridden a warning is displayed.

6. Optional Colour Input - The user can choose to input the colour of fermentables.

7. Optional Fermentable Extract Potential Input - The user can choose to input the extract potentials of the fermentables. If no input is made, the same defaults as in the existing "The Calculator" will be used.

8. Maxi-BIAB Adjustments - The BIABAcus allows the user to 'hold back' water from the mash and add it back in in four different ways and therefore supports Maxi-BIAB. This feature also means a traditional three-vessel brewer can also use the BIABacus.

8. Fill Heights and Headspace for Various Shaped Kettles - The BIABAcus will give fill heights and headspace for pots and kegs. This feature, the auto-efficiency feature and several other features have never been seen before and were all developed by BIABrewer.info members.

9. Unit Conversion Tools - These are included in the BIABacus.

10. Simultaneous Metric and US Measurements - All units are displayed in metric and US units. A simultaneous view is actually surprisingly handy in many situations for all brewers regardless of their measurement system.

11. Numbers "Grow" as Inputs Are Made - The BIABacus starts blank. In other words there are no zeros. As inputs are made the sheet fills. This might seem unimportant but it makes the sheet far more engaging as the eye is drawn to the sudden filling of a blank space. A blank space also clearly tells the user they are missing an input.

12. Everything on the One Sheet - Besides reports, everything is on the one page of the BIABacus. Experienced software users will see this as a tremendous advantage. BIABAcus 1.0 has been laid out so as the result of a change can be instantly seen or, on smaller screens, quickly seen. The penalty to this is that a new user might find a first look at BIABacus 1.0 too 'vast'. Point 11 above, the associated help links and quality help from BIABrewer members will hopefully diminish this.

13. Recipe Report - Two Recipe Reports are planned. One for the user to print out and another to post to forums. We may choose to make this feature available in BIABacus 1.1 as there are over 1100 fields and labels to be considered.

PP has written these 1100 fields in three weeks whilst still working on his full-time job. All fields and labels have had to be placed in a logical order and an appealing layout. Many of the fields contain extremely long formulas to display the most simple thing in the best way possible under very limiting constraints.

PP is only one of the brewers who have actively worked on this "BIABAcus Project." Sigurdur and Kostass have also put a huge amount of effort in resulting in some excellent features we already have in BIABacus 1.0 or that will be enabled in later versions. Other people like stux and ianh have written calculators whose features we have stolen with their encouragement and tremendous assistance. Several beta testers have ploughed through the many versions we have thrown at them. Our first beta tester, smyrnaquince, would have had around 150 versions thrown at him and all of these had significant changes. There are many others that deserve a mention.

Hopefully the above will help enlist your understanding with...

Limitations and Envisioned Solutions

The main cause of the following limitations is that they require macros or advanced programming to properly resolve. If macros are used, only users who own Excel would be able to use the spreadsheet so this option has been removed in BIABacus 1.0. Advanced programming has been worked on extensively by Kostass with similiar hours being put in by PP and BIABrewer. Lambert is also actively involved with this side offering new ideas and constant support which is extremely important.

Until we can find more people to help with advanced programming, we will have the following limitations...

1. Unit Input - Our "macro" version was able to instantly change the display and input from metric to US or vice versa thanks to work that stux instigated and sigurdur brought to fruition. Whilst BIABacus 1.0 displays both metric and US units, the input has to be metric. Conversion tools are easily accessible on the sheet though. We will write a reverse spreadsheet that allows US input if advanced programming looks too far off.

2. Saving Recipe as A File - In the macro version Sigurdur had written in some clever spreadsheet programming that would allow users to import and export recipes as a file. This had several more clever sub-features. Unfortunately we cannot do any of this in BIABacus 1.0. Users will have to post the whole file. The main limitation of this however is on websites rather than the user.

3. Report - Once again, in the macro version, Sigurdur had a button where you could copy the recipe and paste it straight into any forum. It is possible we can come up with something to replace it though it hasn't been thought through as yet.

4. What You See - In future BIABAcus versions (advanced programming), we envisage the user only seeing what they are interested in. For example, if you keg, then you would not see anything related to bottling. In BIABacus 1.0, you see everything.

5. Drop-Down Lists - Nearly all brewing software has drop-down lists. BIABacus 1.0 cannot include this feature as drop-down lists involve macro-type additions to the sheet. On a practical level, this just means a bit of extra typing by the user. It can be a problem however if a recipe contains a high sugar content. Experienced users should notify new users to use the "Potential Extract Adjustments" section if they see a recipe with a high sugar content.

Drop-down grain and hop lists lists are actually not easy to design to be user-friendly. For example, in most cases, it is actually quicker to type the grain than find it. We have been working, on and off, over the last year on this issue but fear there is a lot more we have to do. If you find a good drop-down list of grains or hops, please let us know.

We Are Ready for More Betas

We will need some new betas in the next few weeks to take a first look at BIABacus 1.0. I had two requests today from members to join betas, silas and novaris. Thank you . I will have to close the existing betas forum and write a new one before you join as the existing one has many sub-forums and threads that contain issues now resolved.

Betas need to be very enthusiastic before choosing to volunteer. A great beta needs to, firstly, say what's on their mind without fear. Secondly, they need to stay apprised of any developments. Thirdly, they must fuel the developers. BIABrewer does the best it can to fuel the developers but it is nowhere near enough .

Basically, a good beta needs to be a very active and good communicator. Brewing experience is totally irrelevant. More often than not, it is new brewers who see the most important things.

Anyone interested in joining betas should PM me direct.

rockbottom, you would make an ideal beta ,
Pat

Wow Pat it sounds fantastic can't wait. I like the bit about showing both Metric and US units (imperial) that will make recipe conversion a whole lot easier.



Yeasty

Great news Pat! I wish that I had time to beta but I think that others have more time than I do. Im off to wrestle a power snake down a basement drain right now

trout

Wow those are some great features Pat.

I am really looking forward to BIABAcus

Thank you Yeasty, 2trout and rockbottom for your exclamations. Whilst I do put a lot of work in, it is the others I mentioned above who deserve the real support . And, many thanks also to those who sent PM's offering to become a beta. This will make a difference.

Here is another update for you.

Where We Are At

Previously we advised that PistolPatch had commenced work on updating the existing calculator. He has been able to write all the exciting features that have been developed by the development team over the last few years into the spreadsheet form plus a few new ones that were only just thought of. These latter features are very complex in their formulation. For example, there are three results on the spreadsheet that have taken three weeks and thousands of characters to write. They will rarely be needed but they do make, what will be the BIABAcus 1.0, incredibly thorough.

Unfortunately, because of its spreadsheet form and the plain subtlety of some features, the real power of the BIABacus will not be noticed by most users. Just like BIAB itself, we suspect the BIABacus will start out as being viewed as a, "poor man's brewing calculator". The long-term reality though, we suspect, will be vastly different.

What's Happening Now

PP only has another day to work on the BIABacus 1.0 before he has to take a week off due to family commitments. Tomorrow the existing betas will be given a beta BIABacus to explore for a week. After that week and any necessary corrections, I'll open up a new Betas forum so as we can get some fresh eyes on the BIABacus. First impressions are very important and this is the reason why those who have offered to be betas have not been combined with the existing betas yet.

What Still Needs to Happen and Time Estimates

The time estimates below are based on our existing resources which are fairly constricted as in many cases only a single person can complete the task.

- Finalising the above (14 days)
- Writing Recipe Reports into the BIABacus (7 days)
- Writing the help which is approximately 100 posts (28 days)
- Re-writing and re-structuring all of BIABrewer.info Essentials (14 days)
- Changing important existing links to suit the above (7 days)
- Working out acknowledgements (7 days)
- Finalising the above and changing forum entry permissions (7 days).
- Contingency (14 days)

So, whilst I was thinking another month, unfortunately the reality looks like it will be another three or four months of solid work before we can give you a new BIABrewer.info. Very frustrating but we certainly are dong the best we can.

If you can't wait that long for the BIABacus, please PM me to join the new betas, no matter what stage of brewing you are at. Just bear in mind that if you do join betas and don't give any feedback, you get kicked out without any notice as we are all pretty busy .

Pat

We are now ready for the new intake of BIABacus Betas. All brewers, from those with no all-grain experience through to old hands are welcome to become a BIABAcus beta as long as they are happy to provide detailed feedback.

If you would like to join this intake, please PM me within the next 24-48 hours and supply me with an email address as all initial beta participation is via email. (Those who have already volunteered for this intake prior to this notice will receive a PM advising this shortly.)

I'll provide another BIABacus update here once we have some first impressions from the new intake.

Pat

Thank you for your PM's. Note that this intake is now full. If you would like to be part of the next and final intake, please let me know via PM.

Cheers,
Pat

[Please excuse the lack of recent updates. Since the last update, about five weeks work was forced to be spent on a scenario we could have never predicted.]



The BIABacus has been completed.

The BIABacus has been completed. The aim here was that, no matter what level or type of brewer you are or what equipment you have, the BIABacus should cover you. We think it does this very well. It also contains now, just in the last month, even more features and calculations unavailable elsewhere for any type of all-grain brewer. So, that's excellent.

Why Not Release It Now?

Before you read further, we do intend to release a part of the BIABcus within the next few weeks (see, "Baby BIABacus," below).

There are many reasons we can't release the BIABacus now however the main one is that the BIABacus contains a lot of hyperlinks which have not been written yet. Whilst most of these might be unimportant to you as an individual brewer, they will be to another brewer in different circumstances. If released now, our time will be spent on answering questions for individual situations rather than time being spent on writing the hyperlinks.

There's many other things to consider. The BIABacus is quick to learn and understand from the feedback we have had. Hundreds of inter-related formulas are hidden inside the BIABacus to achieve this under the most limiting of programming conditions - a cross-platform spreadsheet. This means, the very hard work and thinking on the BIABacus can be utilised by anyone from the basic spreadsheet user through to a software developer. Ensuring how we can assist this process but prevent the end user from receiving a 'broken' or distorted version of the BIABacus work is important.

These are some of the obvious things at our end but there are many more 'little' things, each of them very important.

What the BIABacus Does

Too much to say here as there are many features that will not be important to you as an individual brewer but will be extremely important to another brewer. For example, whether you brew in a stock pot or a keg, the BIABacus can tell you how many inches/cms you should fill your kettle to or how much headspace you should have. Obviously, if you brew in a keg, the stock pot measurements are irrelevant to you.

It also handles things like Maxi-BIAB, extract or sugar potential adjustments, hop form and type, instant scaling of everything, pop-up warnings to tell you if you are going wrong, etc etc.

The most important thing though is that the BIABacus grows with you. It estimates things like efficiencies, evaporation and trub losses automatically but as you learn from your brewing you may choose to over-ride these estimates with a few simple inputs.

There's a lot more and the 'guts' is all on one sheet.

The Baby BIABacus?

If you have read the above, you'll have gathered that the BIBacus makes a lot of complex stuff very simple and that this has required a lot of thinking. Not all this thinking will apply to your situation though.

Now that the BIABacus has been completed, it has the capability, with just a few simple spreadsheet skills, to be totally personalised to your requirements. (Working backwards is a lot easier than working forwards ).

Two weeks ago, I stripped the BIABacus to make a, "Baby BIABacus". It took initially about an hour to do and I am talking about a major re-face. Another four or five hours (no other user would have to worry about the things I was focussing on) and I had something I could send to the betas.

Initial Feedback on Baby BIABacus

All the feedback from the new betas is positive but they have been following my train of thought. To negate this, I also sent it to a few of the very old betas who hadn't seen the main BIABcus in it's latest form and they have given some feedback that will require some thought.

The Next Step

Basically, the next step is to Try and work out a way where we can release the Baby BIABacus so as everyone can start accessing some of the essential BIABacus benefits without costing any development time.

Pat

* Didn't do too well on the brief bit.

Apologies that this thread was temporarily locked since the last update. That was an error made during a tidy up of "Important Notices."

Since the above update, we have been working on, "The Next Step," mentioned in the last post. Every idea so far has had some major downside. However, concentrated time has been very limited since the last update so I'm sure we'll come up with an answer soon. It's certainly not the biggest problem we have had to solve, more just a time one.

At the moment, it's quite frustrating as we think there are great things in this BIABacus 'box' for everyone. Packaging the box so that every brewer, no matter what their level, finds the right stuff at the top of the box is proving to be harder than we thought.

Give us a few more weeks and, if we can't find the right 'packaging' solution, we'll just go with a compromise and trust that the members here will be able to fill the gaps.

Thanks for your continued patience,
Pat

Please see the end of this post starting from, "Before We Release," for the latest BIABacus Update.

In this update, I thought we might include a few screenshots of what is happening behind the scenes. PP completed the BIABacus a few months ago. Since then, it has been my job to get it on the board and doing so is not easy. Like PP, I'm also self-employed and so the times when we can get a run at the BIABacus are limited.

Here's a screenshot of some of the BIABacus. Unfortunately, the screenshot does not copy well and omits some parts.

As one of the primary goals of the BIABacus has been to act as an educational tool, to us, the above pic is too intimidating so we created the "Baby" BIABacus. There's only a few things in the "Baby" that will need explaining despite how it may appear. Here's a pic...

Now, there are four jobs left to do.

1. Re-format the forum. Here's a pic of what you can't currently see If you examine that pic, you'll see 6 new forums and about 75 threads that have had to be planned in a precise order. Unfortunately, you can't just post/write a thread and then move it to where you want in phpBB - everything is time-stamped. What you see is the latest attempt but a lot of what you see has been or will have to be re-posted when we find something we have forgotten .

2. Link the appropriate threads to the help question marks in the 'Baby" and the main BIABacus. This shouldn't take long as it is one of the few jobs that requires no thinking.

3. Several of the help threads can be left to be written later but many can't. We have a plan to get around this. In reality though, the help that needs to be written and that we intend to do is the equivalent of writing a comprehensive book.

4. The whole of BIABrewer.info Essentials need to be re-thought, re-structured and re-written. Several other parts of the forum also have to be juggled and moved about so as the whole forum makes sense.

Doing the above is mainly up to me. If I had five days straight to work on the above, maybe we would see the BIABAcus released in a week? Maybe it would take ten days? It's a very complex project where, even a day away from it means you lose your train of thought. Hard to explain.

In the meantime, if you have any recipe problems, we have this thread where everyone gets looked after well.

Cheers,
Pat

It looks like this thread has been locked for quite some time. I thought we fixed this a few posts ago but apparently not. Hopefully you can post here now. Please PM me if you find you cannot.

Apologies,
Pat

Looking good Pat, the screen shots don't do it justice but the general layout and structure can be seen. PP has done a great job putting it together, I hope the getting up and running work you have to do goes ok. This will be a great leap forward for Biabrewer Can't wait for the full release,



Yeasty

+1 There was sooo much work put into this that I doubt the general populous will ever fully appreciate it. Thanks to the whole crew. Can't wait for its release.

I dunno Pat maybe a conference call to PP is in order!

I cant imagine the time that has gone into this project. Good on all of you!

trout

Nice work other Pat. I can't wait till you let us loose on your creation to see if we can break it.

I never use IE to post but unfortunately I did tonight. I spent about an hour or more replying to your post 2trout and just lost the whole lot .

I can tell you that the first line of the post was, "What a nice post!"

In the rest of that post, I also wrote how great the betas etc here have been. (All, bar one of many, have contributed positively in some amazing ways.)

I think I finished up the post by saying that BIAB started by one person asking a simple but obvious question. The BIABacus is just an extension of the same thinking...

Tonight someone asked about strike temps. I wrote an answer there of how the BIABacus deals with that issue but who provided the original info? BrickBrewHaus.

There are many examples of this.

Being able to ask questions of any sort (assuming they are genuine), getting polite answers or saying, "I don't know the answer," are pretty nice trademarks of this site.

I am drunk now I think and am going to bed!
PP