Tomas,

I'll give some ideas regarding your questions - but they might not be the best answers.
1) Based on what they say is a 5.5 gal. batch, how do they achieve the 1.070 OG based on the original grain bill?
They said it was a 5.5 gal. batch - does that mean into packaging (VIP), or into fermenter (VIF) or end of boil (EOB) or volume of ambient wort (VAW)? We cannot tell and you have correctly pointed out that it is the integrity issue. Note that your amounts are higher for each ingredient than the original. That is due to 1.070 getting to be a big beer and it takes more to get ther. Your BIABacus file shows that you will get 1.070 for OG. I would also suggest that you change your mash time to 90 minutes instead of 60 in order to be assured to get to 1.070.

2) BIABacus doesn't have a provision for hop additions in the whirlpool. How should they be noted, as the 1.5 oz Cascade & Centennial additions are both added during whirlpool?
If (for those two hops mentioned) you enter zeroes for minutes on the left side of Part D it will fill in the amounts you will use on the right side without increasing the IBUs at all. Entering negative numbers (as in post Flame-Out, or whirlpool start time) doesn't work. I interpret the purpose of the right side of Part D is to get the IBUs right. I've posted before how my opinion is that time above ~75 ºC does make for some conversion to bitterness and you should keep records of the time/temperature ramp while late addition hops are in the kettle and things are starting to cool down. Too many brewers in too many different situations for one BIABacus to work for everyone. If you chill immediately it will give you something different than if you start chilling after 20 minutes on a hot day with no wind and different again if it is a cold windy day. That's assuming you brew outdoors, of course. Keep good records and you will figure out what it means to you.

3) Is there a default moisture content for corn sugar that should be entered in Section Y?
I think the default is for anhydrous, but I could be wrong. If it is for monohydrate, someone else should let us both know.

It will be a learning experience for both of us.

Firstly, thanks to [mention]ShorePoints[/mention] , who with one or two others has been keeping things afloat while the rest of us are slacking off .

And, SP's answers are always top quality. Unless my memory is failing, his answers are also, always correct. For example...

1. Zymurgy and many other magazines have very poorly defined terminology. Their "batch size" will mean Volume at Flame-Out and they will have a set efficiency figure for all recipes submitted to the mag. (Somewhere on this site there is some correspondence about that.)

2. Every hop addition you make to a brew adds bitterness, flavour and aroma. NO SOFTWARE measures flavour or aroma and, bitterness formulas are actually quite primitive.

Forums and some commercial software focus on trying to "guess" how much bitterness a certain method (e.g. no-chill, whirlpooling,) will add to the brew. For example, you'll often hear, if you are no-chilling, reduce your hop additions by 20 mins. That's wrong. Read this.*

3. I think your estimate of 4% moisture on corn sugar is a reasonable one. It's nothing to be concerned about though. If you lived in a very humid environment, that percentage could go up to possibly 15% (I don't know) but, you'll see it doesn't have much affect on your overall brew.

* Now you've read that, you'll see that the BIABacus, in flame-out or after flame-out hop additions allows you to add, sorry, I'm wrong there... it allows you to type DH for dry hopping but it doesn't allow you to write WH for whirlpool hopping. (How on earth can we fit that explanation in there?) If we could fit that in there, the BIABacus would treat it the same as dry hops though.

Why?

Well, firstly, the focus of late hop additions or post-boil additions by the brewer should be on flavour and aroma, not bitterness. So, for these types of additions, the BIABacus looks at the amount of hops used and scales them accordingly.

Secondly, even if we forget flavour and aroma, I've never seen any science on the bitterness effect of late hop additions. (For example, I've done some side by sides here and published the results here between no-chill and normal chill beers. No difference was detected on bitterness (and flavour and aroma if I remember correctly.)

Personally, I'd love it if bitterness, flavour and aroma of hops could be quantified really well. But, the best knowledge I ever gained on hops was from Alex Troncoso (search here on him - I might have written him up as Tronsky as well, oops!). One of the best talks I've ever heard as he started with stating the obvious... Why do first wort hops behave differently from first addition hops?

He had lots more to say, but, before you get to that stage, you must understand the numbers and, to do this, you need proper terminology which, unfortunately, you won't currently find on websites or in magazines or commercial software.

Thanks again SP