Post #126 made 11 years ago
Maybe I am just having trouble keeping up but there seems to be multiple topics about BIABacus in varying locations on the site. It makes it very difficult to keep up with what has changed and what is the most current version that has been released.

Why can't all that information be moved under "Measurement & Records"?

Important topics could be made stickies.

I have spent the last 30 minutes trying to see if there have been updates to BIABacus that I am not aware of. Sometimes I may not be able to get on the site for maybe a week and there can be a lot of posts in that time.

Just wanted to make a suggestion that may make the site a little more user friendly. :thumbs:
Thanks
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Post #128 made 11 years ago
Pat,
I know things have been busy.
I still believe the forum would be better served if BIABbacus was discussed in the Measurement & Records (incl. Brewing Software)section of the forum.
Maybe you can tell me the logic for the locations that the spreadsheet is discussed in now.
I still think the current locations make it difficult for new users to find the latest versions of the spreadsheet as is evident in the this post. http://www.biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2243 where PP has to direct a new member to the latest version.
Last edited by rockbotton on 11 Sep 2013, 10:54, edited 2 times in total.
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Post #129 made 11 years ago
rockbotton, sorry for not getting back here sooner :dunno:,

We have been hoping to get a good run at the BIABacus and site for several months but this has not happened. Because of this, PistolPatch has taken today off work and the rest of the week so as he can spend 5 straight days working on the project so let's see how things stand on Sunday. We really didn't want to do that as it is, once again, lost income for him.

Two of the main purposes of doing a pre-release was to get feedback and see if there were any major problems with the BIABacus. The thread was therefore placed here in the "Your Feedback" forum. This thread is directly linked in the main "The Calculator" thread and also in the thread called "What software should I use?" in the "Measurement and Records" forum. A few other threads were recommended for people to ask questions so as those working on the project could keep an eye on things easier.

Anyone wanting to keep a close eye on small pre-release updates however would have to follow those other threads closely. This thread was only intended to post major changes. We have made some but really wish to do a couple more before we put out another release.

I've mentioned the Catch 22 we are in here earlier in this thread. We need to write and structure the help and forum so information and answers to common questions are easy to find. At the same time it is important to answer people's questions on forum so we can see what is working and what help we need to give priority to. Since this thread started, a few questions have lead to some subtle but important changes to not only the BIABacus but also to some better ways for writing the help we have planned.

So, our main priority up until now has been on servicing those actively giving feedback, making suggestions or asking questions. Let's hope that we can make a dent in this issue over the next four days so that the right information and help can be accessed faster for everyone.

In the meantime, please take time when you can to give quality answers on forum. This is what helps the most at the moment. It will be especially important over the next four days as this project is one where major moves forward require long, unbroken periods of concentration.

All the best,
Pat
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Post #130 made 11 years ago
Second the consolidation of the BIABacus threads--even its own forum would be great.

Unrelated, as a feature request I'm wondering if there is a way to have an "add sugar to fermenter" option. I usually do this for Belgians and it totally messes up my ability to hit my OG when the sugar isn't included in the kettle. Pretty much have to create two recipes for one brew in order to make sure I'm on target.

Post #131 made 11 years ago
CheeseMoney wrote:Second the consolidation of the BIABacus threads--even its own forum would be great.

Unrelated, as a feature request I'm wondering if there is a way to have an "add sugar to fermenter" option. I usually do this for Belgians and it totally messes up my ability to hit my OG when the sugar isn't included in the kettle. Pretty much have to create two recipes for one brew in order to make sure I'm on target.
Unless I'm missing something, that's been discussed. You would add 'sugar' in the grain bill and your weight, then in Section Y you enter 100% and 1% respectively. Giving at least a 5 mins. boil.
Last edited by Mad_Scientist on 13 Sep 2013, 05:53, edited 2 times in total.
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Post #132 made 11 years ago
Thanks Pat,
I understand about being cautious. It is devastating when anything buggy is released.

BIABacus is a great tool and I for one love that it is a spreadsheet even though that leads to a lot of problems with some of things that have been discussed on the forum.
You guys have accomplished a lot and I want to thank everyone involved. Anyone who has ever created a spreadsheet understands what it took to create BIABacus.

Thanks Again to everyone.
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Post #133 made 11 years ago
Mad_Scientist wrote:
CheeseMoney wrote:Second the consolidation of the BIABacus threads--even its own forum would be great.
Unless I'm missing something, that's been discussed. You would add 'sugar' in the grain bill and your weight, then in Section Y you enter 100% and 1% respectively. Giving at least a 5 mins. boil.
I'm discussing adding sugar to the fermenter after fermentation has begun (and thus one would have to target a lower OG and then make up the gravity addition later). This is commonly used to get maximum attenuation out of Belgian styles such as Strong Golden, Tripel, Quad, etc.

Example: I recently made a Strong Golden Ale with a target of 1.085 and the recipe called for almost 2 lbs of sugar. Turns out my BIAB efficiency is a lot higher than I suspected and I'm hitting about 83%. The recipe called for 70%, so even without sugar additions in the boil I hit 1.080. Adding 1.75 lbs of sugar to the fermenter will push me way up above 1.090. It would be nice to be able to somehow adjust the target OG by checking a box that would do the sugar additions later and give a revised (lower) OG that didn't include the sugar.

In other words, it would be nice to check a box and then have the recipe adjust my target OG downward so that I could make up the difference later in the fermenter with a sugar addition. Obviously removing the sugar completely from the recipe causes the other grains to be adjusted upwards. The way around this is to manually compute a lower OG (without sugar) and then use it as the target but that ends up me doing a lot of spreadsheet napkin math.
Last edited by CheeseMoney on 14 Sep 2013, 03:19, edited 2 times in total.

Post #134 made 11 years ago
CheeseMoney wrote:Second the consolidation of the BIABacus threads--even its own forum would be great.
I think Pat gave some of the reasons for this in his last post here. One thing he didn't mention is that we already have a whole BIABacus and Recipe forum set up behind the scenes but the structure of it still needs more work. It's not anywhere near as easy to get right as you might think and this is one of the things we are trying to get at least to a usable level by the end of the weekend.
CheeseMoney wrote:Unrelated, as a feature request I'm wondering if there is a way to have an "add sugar to fermenter" option. I usually do this for Belgians and it totally messes up my ability to hit my OG when the sugar isn't included in the kettle. Pretty much have to create two recipes for one brew in order to make sure I'm on target.
Two things here. The BIABacus in spreadhseet form can't use any tick boxes, macros or drop-dons as they won't work cross-platform.

To solve your problem, is doable but I don't have time to explain it now. Next time you brew this recipe, post it and I'll show you what to do. A recipe like that takes a tiny bit of "twenty questions" playing using some of sections of the BIABacus such as N. [Note: Pat has a better way around this in the post below.]

Also, make sure you always use the auto-efficiency on the BIABacus (higher if your water, pH, mash time, temps, mash-out etc are all good). Don't use the same efficiency as copied from another recipe. Your BIAB kettle efficiency of 83% should not be the same on every brew. Low gravity beers will give higher efficiency and high gravity beers lower kettle efficiency. More on all this can be read here.

Explaining auto-efficiency is just one of many, many things we need to make accessible and easy to find in the new BIABacus and Recipe section.

:argh:
PP
Last edited by PistolPatch on 14 Sep 2013, 11:55, edited 2 times in total.
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Post #135 made 11 years ago
We've had another quick look at the whole sugar issue thinking that there might be a way we can squeeze some more room into this BIABacus to deal with sugars and extracts in and out of the boil. Firstly, there really isn't enough room to deal with this neatly. It really needs two checkboxes for every ingredient in Section C or Y. Secondly, it also requires a major re-writing of some of the formulas which none of us are prepared to put time into especially atm.

The only limitations of this are, firstly, if your recipe contains sugars, you are actually going to get a slightly higher efficiency than predicted as sugars and extract are 100% kettle efficient. In our case, sugars or extract usually make up less than 20% of a recipe. This means on a 1.050 OG wort we would get 1.052. (Note this is half the discrepancy of OG errors in some major programs that occur on every recipe.)

So the first problem is very unimportant.

Secondly, it means that your Gravity into Boil (GIB) and Gravity of Ambient Wort (GAW) will be incorrect. (Note GIB and GAW are updated terms for the older GIK and EOBG).

Here's an easy fix to the second problem...

Getting your Sugar Fix

If your sugar is added during the boil then only your GIB needs to be corrected. To fix, in Section C, on the right hand side, look at the percentage of the sugar/s. Let's say they are 10%. Multiply your estimated GIB "gravity points" by 10%. For example, if your GIB is estimated at 1.040, then 10% x 40 is 4.0.

In other words, your sugar is contributing 4.0 gravity points so you should really be only expecting a GIB of about 1.036.

The same logic applies to GAW for sugars that are added after the boil. For example, if the sugars above were not added until after the boil and our GAW was expected to be 1.052, then we should, at the end of the boil, only expect about 1.047 GAW. When we add our sugar, we will end up with an OG of 1.052.

Note that the above fixes are not perfectly accurate but very close to it.
Last edited by Pat on 14 Sep 2013, 16:48, edited 2 times in total.
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Post #136 made 11 years ago
PistolPatch wrote:... we already have a whole BIABacus and Recipe forum set up behind the scenes but the structure of it still needs more work. It's not anywhere near as easy to get right as you might think and this is one of the things we are trying to get at least to a usable level by the end of the weekend.
Just an update for you...

We never got to spend any time on the currently hidden BIABacus/Recipe forum as we came across some totally unexpected limitations on how to present the main forum. For example, all our thinking just assumed that if you had sub-forums (such as you see in Region Specific Topics, the sub-forums would appear below Announcements and Stickies. They don't :angry:.

I'm not sure how I can convey how much that throws a spanner in the works
...

BIABrewer.info knew that a forum re-structure would be very hard. I'm astounded at how much harder it is than even I thought and that problem above just throws things into incredibly difficult/maybe impossible territory. Since then, many hundreds of posts have been moved here and there (one by one, excruciatingly time-consuming), trialling different lay-outs. Every time we thought we had it cracked, another logic loophole would jump through.

I suspect that most of you appreciate this hard work and might even understand the complexity. Many of you do kindly appreciate the work but I am sure that inside your head must be asking why does it all take so long?

One thing I might be able to do while I sip on a beer desperately praying for inspiration :roll: :) is try and explain one part of the problem...

1. We want the new structure to enable an answer to a question incredibly quickly. If you are searching for an answer, you don't want to look for ages for it. If you are writing an answer, why would you want to spend hours writing the same answer you have written a hundred times before but that you can't even find on a search?

2. The structure has to deal with layers upon layers upon layers of information. For example, let's say you are interested in fermentation. Should we be structuring things around the type of fermentor you can have, ways to clean/manage/use it, fermentation times and temps for ales and lagers, yeasts that can be used etc etc etc.

It's a friggin' nightmare. There are fast, quick answers for any single scenario but no great ones so far to get the whole into place.

I'm not even sure we can but give us a few more weeks eh?

:peace:
PP
Last edited by PistolPatch on 17 Sep 2013, 19:18, edited 2 times in total.
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Post #137 made 11 years ago
I'm digging the BACUS, and will plan on doing the full questionaire soon. There is a lot to love about the BACUS but one thing I would love to see is more inputs for additional hop steps. I realize the BACUS has a nice grid design and everything neatly has its own place and the flow is very nice. I don't know excel, but would it be possible to have a separate tab where you could enter additional hops steps if a recipe had more than 8 steps?

I have a DIPA recipe with 16 hop steps, and I'm sure there could be more!
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Post #138 made 11 years ago
Excuse the slow reply LG. Meant to reply here yesterdays but ran out of time before I ran out of beer. Today though I have no time or beer!!!

I haven't been able to find a block of uninterrupted days to work on the BIABacus for quite a while and may not be able to do so until Xmas. Adding more hop lines would be a low priority while BIABacus is in spreadsheet from (where it may remain :)) but...

On our next brew that has this problem, post it up in Use this thread to convert recipes to suit your equipment... and I'll see if I can show you an easy/acceptable way to get around the problem.

Glad everything else is working out fairly okay for you ;).
PP
Last edited by PistolPatch on 19 Nov 2013, 19:29, edited 2 times in total.
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Post #140 made 10 years ago
Thanks Lylo and sorry for the slow answer mate. Removed that a while ago as it was causing more confusion than giving answers. Also ended up using the gained space for something more valuable. Finally, it's also a number of which the accuracy will vary considerably, mainly if you used a sparge. In a coded version we could put it back in as an option but I'd like to see a lot of brewer's figures collected first because some parts of that area have not been researched at all.

Sorry mate,
PP
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Post #142 made 10 years ago
Hey PP,

Just wondering if there is any thought to adding a no chill option to the biabacus.
Now I know its not a simple matter of just adding a tick box and hey presto its done but might be a nice option for those that do no chill.
I can understand it wouldn't be a priority item as most brewers that no chill make adjustments themselves (some people 15mins - 25mins to the hop additions, have also heard that using hop utilisation at 110% should be pretty accurate) but would be a nice feature imo as the aim of Biabacus being a single program for all biab recipe design.
Also aware that the following will effect the final IBU figures

1) How long the wort sits in the kettle post boil and whirlpool
2) If cube hopped what temp did the wort transfer to cube
3) How long did the cube take to cool to yeast pitch temp.

Post #143 made 10 years ago
Great question Dave and it is actually one that we put a lot of thought into. There was a period of many months where we looked at this whole chilling thing. Chilling Myths - Asking the right questions is only 22 posts long but has some concentrated info in it on the subject.

At around that time, I also did two hoppy IPA simultaneous side by sides, one no-chilled and the other chilled about ten minutes after flame-out from memory. We then triangle-tasted the beers and the results can be found here.

I think the main conclusions are in the first link though. Is no-chilling any different from the brewer who has an immersion chiller but lets the brew sit for 30 minutes before employing it? Anyway, the result of all this is the following...

1. The BIABacus allows in a very small space in Section G, a lot of information to be conveyed on what chilling method was employed and when. This is what is most important.

2. No adjustments are made for no-chill for the following reasons...

- What is no-chill? Is employing an immersion chiller after 30 minutes just the same as cooling in a cube?

- Current IBU estimate formulas are pretty useless for later additions so why try and fine-tune something that is totally dodgy anyway?

- The difference in utlisation between a hop added at 60 mins and one added at 80 minutes is negligible.

- Virtually no study has been done with side by side experiments on what I will call flame-out chilling versus delayed chilling (the further we stray from flame-out, the less relevant it is as to whether a chiller was even used or not.)

- There are other issues as well. If you are no-chilling in a cube and pour the entire contents of your kettle into the cube, it is quite possible that you will get far less utilisation than if you left the trub in your kettle. It's also quite possible you might get vegetative characters in your beer if you bring the trub through into your cube.

The home brew world seems to like making adjustments etc before thinking things through let alone gathering any real life data. I hope the above explains why we think we have asked the right questions and come to the right conclusions at this point in time.

Btw, that pic at the top left of the forum is of a brewer trying to work out if his beer was chilled at flame-out or 15 minutes after.

:lol:
PP
Last edited by PistolPatch on 14 May 2014, 08:01, edited 2 times in total.
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Post #145 made 10 years ago
I downloaded BIABacus today on mac OSX, and when opened it says "there are formulas that aren't supported". I then go to change my kettle diameter in section (B), and cm does not convert over to inches.

Anyone know how to get this working? I can't trust the entire file if one formula doesn't work, and I would really like to use this!

Post #146 made 10 years ago
I heard of someone else having problems using Excel in Mac. They then downloaded LibreOffice and had no problems so try that Lampy. If you do use Libre, just make sure that each and every time you save your file, you do it as an .xls. If you accidentally save it as an .ods, it unprotects the sheet which makes it easy to delete formulas and compromise the file etc.

Let us know if this works for you.
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Post #147 made 10 years ago
I have Open Office.. probably the same as Libre. Here is how to make it work.. It took me some time to figure it out. When you import a BIABacus.. it will come into your computer Downloads as a Numbers file. Open Open Office and it will appear in your DOCK. Click on.. and DRAG the Numbers file into that Open Office Icon in your Dock. It works well for me.

[ADMIN NOTE:LibrteOffice tends to display better than OpenOffice in colouring etc so if you have a choice between the two, go for Libre.]
Last edited by HbgBill on 25 May 2014, 09:38, edited 2 times in total.
Bill
Hop Song Brewing-Santa Rosa, California

Post #149 made 10 years ago
Probably not. I looked at the differences of OO vs LO and it appears minimal. There appears to be quite a contest between the two going on for proper/useful updates. I haven't downloaded LO yet to see how it works. PP suggests LO.. so, if you don't already have OO, I'd use his suggestion. I have no idea of the mechanics of how to pull an .xls file into my MAC and then into LO. Might well be the same process. If/when I go with LO, I'll post something on the Hows of it.
Bill
Hop Song Brewing-Santa Rosa, California

Post #150 made 10 years ago
I just had a chance to finally sit down and have a play with biabacus. Wow what an amazing piece of work. Extremely greatful for the work everyone involved has put in. Excellent work

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