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Biabacus Gone loopy

Post #1 made 11 years ago
by alanem
Hi,
I put down a brew of APA the other week and when I went back into checking the recipe out today I noticed a huge difference between the original ingredients and the "What you will need" ingredients in both the hop bill and the grain bill ( Sec.C) and (sec. D) which in turn has made my water measurements in section K all loopy.

I dont know a lot about spreadsheets (lets be honest, I know stuff all about spreadsheets!) but can I remove the contents of a recipe in Biabacus and then replace it with new contents for a different brew...... Like can I "Gut" the ingredients from an existing Biabacus recipe by deleting all the text etc and then enter a new recipe in its place?
I am at the moment setting up a new BIABACUS for a little creatures Bright Ale and it also has gone a bit crazy.
Anyway I have attached the offending Biabacus file if some one would be kind enough to look and can explain why or help in anyway.
Cheers & Thanks
Al
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I used to spill more than I drink these days!

Post #2 made 11 years ago
by majorphill
alanem

Welcome to the BIABacus world.

To answer the most pressing question first, BIABacus is telling you exactly what you have asked of it. The reason it looks "loopy" is that in section x you have adjusted your kettle efficiency by one percent and set the efficiency to 3 percent. That would make your setup woefully inefficient hence the huge amount of grain needed.

Unless you have a fair amount of experience with your equipment and know the adjustments you want to put in leave all the cells blank in section x and allow BIABacus to use its defaults.

On a lessor note. In section D you have entered both the VAW from the original recipe and the IBU's you want to obtain. Enter one or the other. The VAW will tell you the IBU's you wil get using the hop bill you have entered or by asking for a certain IBU it will scale the hop bill to suit

Hopefully that helps with your "loopy" BIABacus

Majorphill

Post #3 made 11 years ago
by alanem
Thank you Majorphill,
I have done a few brews now with Biabacus and taken notes along the way to get an idea of my brews volumes, measurements etc. What I was trying to do as with the attachment was to tweak Biabacus to suit my Kettle, as you may have seen with the attachment I had all my figures pretty well spot on right down to the KFL stage where the expected KFL loss was to be 1 ltr but was in actual fact 3 ltrs. ( I must point out as I No Chill in a cube my KFL is -: kettle - cube - FV) so what I was trying to achieve was to raise the default KFL from 1 ltr to 3 ltrs. ( I had previously raised the default Evaporation to 6 l/h which has the Evap pretty well spot on) but my problem occurred when I put the 3 into Adjust Auto Kettle Efficiency instead of Adjust KFL.
Thanks again for your help, it's a great program and worth the time I have spent on getting it right for me.

Cheers and thanks
Al
Last edited by alanem on 01 Aug 2014, 08:35, edited 1 time in total.
I used to spill more than I drink these days!

Post #4 made 11 years ago
by PistolPatch
Great answer form the Major :salute:,

Just careful how much you change Al. The default KFL is not 1, it's actually 2.5 L for that brew which is as good an estimate as you will get.
Alanem.jpg
I'm worrying that you might be making it harder than it should be :think:.

I'm also a bit worried about, "I must point out as I No Chill in a cube my KFL is -: kettle - cube - FV." That needs to be clearer as any way I read that, it actually equals FPL, not KFL.

As a cube no-chiller, your KFL is, the crap left in your kettle after you transfer to cube plus the crap left in your cube after you transfer to fermentor.

...

The Major also mentioned about the two numbers on the first two lines of Section D. If you put two numbers in, the second number over-rides the first. If you are copying a recipe, the second line should only be used as a last resort.

If I want to copy Dr Smurto's recipe, want I want to know is the hops he put in, when he put them in, how strong they were and how much liquid he had in his "teapot" just before he poured. To make VAW simple, forget about the hops, when they were added and how strong they were and just think about tea leaves and a teapot. If I went to your place and you made me a great cup of tea, I would need to know the weight of tea leaves you used and the volume of boiling water you added to your teapot. (We don't have to worry about evaporation in tea :party:) but...

How many cups of tea you poured from that pot, is not relevant to me when I want to copy the 'bitterness' or 'strength' of your tea. Knowing VAW is critical when copying a hop bill but mot recipe reports don't realise this. Instead, they use 'opinions' (various formulas)...

If you went to Dr Smurto's and had the tea with three other people and DrSmurto dropped dead the next day so you couldn't ask him what his VAW was and what hops he used, their weights and strength, then you would be asking the other three that had the tea with you, "How strong did you think that tea was?"

Mr Rager ,might say it was a bit bitter. Mr Garetz might say it was bitter. Mr Tinseth might say it was somewhat bitter. Wtf?

In other words, IBU estimate formulas (and even laboratory IBU's) are not that great for replicating IBU's. What is good is knowing what tea leaves and water were added to the teapot.

;)
PP

[TS50>]

VAW rules ;),
PP
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Last edited by PistolPatch on 01 Aug 2014, 18:19, edited 1 time in total.
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Post #5 made 11 years ago
by alanem
Hi PP and thanks for your input, sorry to confuse you regarding the.... "I must point out as I No Chill in a cube my KFL is -: kettle - cube - FV."
Sorry I am just hopeless explaining things via keyboard, I know what I mean but just don't put it to paper properly.
What I was referring to PP regarding Kettle - cube - FV was to alert to the fact that my KFL is a 2 stage operation. stage1 is kettle to cube then stage 2 is cube to FV. which accumulates a lot more crap than just Kettle to FV, but you have explained that such a procedure is classified as KFL and I have now adjusted my KFL default to 2.5 ltrs.
Reading the rest of your reply I gather that the VAW is what counts?
PP I have about an 90% grasp on using Biabacus and have put out some nice brews, but as you say, I may be making the job harder for myself than need be.
As usual PP thanks for your help and also to the good major, thanks.
cheers
Al
Last edited by alanem on 02 Aug 2014, 06:10, edited 1 time in total.
I used to spill more than I drink these days!

Post #6 made 11 years ago
by PistolPatch
No worries at all mate. I'd just ignore adjusting the default because it comes out as 2.5 litres anyway. KFL when no-chilling in a cube is fiddlier than normal brewing as you basically have to add kettle and cube trub together and they are,of course, both measured at different periods of time.

Cheers!
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Biabacus Gone loopy

Post #7 made 11 years ago
by gmhowell
One question you asked that I didn't see an answer to was regarding reusing the file. Yes. You can. No you shouldn't.

If you only remove the things you put in, you are safe. But the file is a little fragile and opening a clean sheet is best.

Disk space is cheap. Create anew. Now if there are things you don't want to re-enter such as kettle size and section x (?) stuff, make those entries from a clean sheet. Save it. This becomes your new clean sheet. Notice no backtracking or deleting.
-George
"I ride for the same reason dogs stick their heads out of car windows."

Re: Re: Biabacus Gone loopy

Post #8 made 11 years ago
by johnaberry
gmhowell wrote:One question you asked that I didn't see an answer to was regarding reusing the file. Yes. You can. No you shouldn't.

If you only remove the things you put in, you are safe. But the file is a little fragile and opening a clean sheet is best.

Disk space is cheap. Create anew. Now if there are things you don't want to re-enter such as kettle size and section x (?) stuff, make those entries from a clean sheet. Save it. This becomes your new clean sheet. Notice no backtracking or deleting.
That's what I do, save a 'blank' with setup filled in only
Last edited by johnaberry on 03 Aug 2014, 17:02, edited 1 time in total.

Post #9 made 11 years ago
by alanem
Yes GM and John I was still wondering on that question and I thank you for that information, it sounds good and in future that is what I will do. (Next wet and cold winters day I will find a blank biabacus form and sit down and fill out a few with the standard entries for future recipes.)

Cheers and Thanks :salute:
Al
Last edited by alanem on 04 Aug 2014, 06:43, edited 1 time in total.
I used to spill more than I drink these days!
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