PP - You deciphered my cryptic question perfectly. Just didn't answer it succintly! (No, leave me alone would have sufficed)!

My questions arose due to me doing a brew today where I decided to use NO hops, and just wondered what the BIABacus would to in that instance. Not critical to me really, just curious!

Hey mally, You got me thinking today, and that's pretty hard to do, when you posted over on my recipe thread.

I have a question about converting Tinseth to Rager. My Rogue Dead Guy clone DOES use Rager and my last 2 brews with the BIABacus uses Tinseth.

I went to brewheads.com to convert my info off of my BIABacus and it matched Tinseth-to-Tinseth exactly at 40 IBU Tinseth and returned a 57 Rager from that calulator.

Can I plug in 57 in Section D, to get me 'what I should use'?

EDIT ******************************************
I can see that these are different formulas, so this wouldn't work, I'm sure.

I have scaled the BIABacus to a printed recipe I have found on the internet, and when all the numbers closely matched up, I played a 20 question game, and got a 31.8 Tinseth. This 31.8 Tinseth is what the 'internet' recipe shows as 49.4 Rager.

Any suggestions? I'm drinking a 49 Tinseth now, and it's good. Just leave it alone and call it a day?

MS - I initially thought your question had an easy answer, but to be honest I just don't know. PP will know these formulae well so should give a better insight.

However, if you like what you make (I guess you do as I think you are making this once a week) just call it a day.

If it were me though, I would do a side by side with the original and see whether it needed tweaking or not?

We haven't visited this problem for a while - phew! We have addressed it in the past though and I'm trying to think of the best keywords to search...

Okay, an advanced search of my posts that contain the terms, Rager Garetz Tinseth of around 6 months ago should bring up some goods. I think if you add the word 'ridiculous', you will get some better info. Finally, the most informative posts will contain either a pic or a link to to a pic that shows a BeerSmith snapshot showing how the same recipe will give totally different estimated IBU's depending on what formula is used.

IBU estimates are really dodgy. If anyone does manage to find a good post on this, please let us know. Someone posted about bookmarking stuff. I might start doing that!


PP

I don't understand how the estimated PLG is higher than what I'm getting. The two screen shots are from my last two brews with the same recipe. The only major change was the 'Adjust Auto-Effiency by' was 6% and 9%, respectively. My gravity has come down nicely over the last three brews, the first one was set at 0%.

MS - I won't even pretend to know how the BIABacus calculates, but your 2 screen shots do have differences.
I appreciate you are not comparing them side by side, but just as a casual glance you have different shape adjustments & KFL?

It may have no bearing on your question but just thought I would mention my observations.

mally wrote:I won't even pretend to know how the BIABacus calculates...

Currently, that PLG number is just based on simple dilution. This is appropriate when it is only dilutions being made. It is not appropriate though when a sparge is involved and I'm pretty sure that Richard does do a bit of a sparge. The easiest way to picture why this is a problem is to exaggerate things...

Pretend that you are going to hold half your water back and use it in a sparge. The extraction efficiency you get in the mash and the sparge will not be equal. In the mash, you are going to get much lower extraction efficiency as the very sugary grain is getting washed in only half the water. The sparge however gets the same amount of water to rinse/wash what is now much less sugary grain.

To look at it another way, in this situation, the mash would be the equivalent to brewing a full-volume high gravity beer whilst the sparge would be the equivalent of brewing a full-volume low gravity beer. In this thread, we all know that high gravity beers have much lower extraction efficiency than low gravity beers. Let me know if I have explained that okay.

I just tested this out in the BIABacus and the discrepancy is much higher than I had imagined. Re-writing the formulas to get the right PLG in the case of when sparging is involved is something I am not keen to do but I suppose it should be done.

If you can Richard, can you post your files up as we really need to see all the info there is on your volumes and it will be easier for me to test my theory if I have the files. It is massively helpful that you have been recording your numbers.


PP

PP - So you are saying the BIABacus calculates PLG based on purely diluting your total GP, whereas with a sparge involved you are diluting with an (albeit small) addition to your total GP?

I don't understand how the estimated PLG is higher than what I'm getting.

These were both a MAXI with water added before the boil.

I have a follow up question, Isn't the gravity at Pre and Post bag pull the same, whether or not you squeeze the bag real well or not? I feel that the more I can squeeze from the bag, and get the most sweet liquor, then I have less of the MAXI water to top up to the VIK mark (the minimum amount of dilution to the VIK mark).

In both instances I have not used all my MAXI water from my bucket.

[EDIT 2: You can see how long it takes me to write answers here mally and Richard. Sorry Richard, your last post has just come up now so anything I have written below was written prior to your post. I am dead tired, worn-out, etc but I am hoping that some of what I wrote below, if not all, will be of some help to you.]

[Edit: Sorry, mally, my brain might be slipping but I am embarrassed to say that I actually don't know what GP stands for - lol! I hope the below though will answer at least some of your question . Hope it wasn't me that coined "GP" - lol!]

Nup, the sparge doesn't add anything to the end result into your kettle. If your recipe requires 5 kgs of grain and 5 gallons of water, it does not matter if you add the water in one hit or several hits.

I think this makes sense to you and you understand this.

...

You, mally are one of the very few who know and understand 'the washing machine' analogy. Think about this problem from that perspective. How much dirt, relative to the water applied is that first wash cycle getting out? Bugger all. It is really just loosening the stains. However, if all the water available had been added at the start, the stains would not only be loosened, they would have dissolved as much as possible as well.

...

I think I need a few days break. I'm a bit worn out. See here. I don't like writing when I am worn out as I always write badly.

I also get frustrated that my writing might make things sound as though they should be easy to understand. Some of these areas are really very hard to get your head around. For example, I have known about Richard's PLG questions for some time but it was probably only today that I had time to stop and think and have that aspect fall into place into my head. My writing on this probably makes people think it is easy/obvious.

What I am trying to say is that a lot of this number stuff is very simple once you see it. At present, in the brewing world, everyone is thrown a pair of very dirty, smudged reading glasses to see through when it comes to numbers. This site, is way ahead of any other but we still have leaps to go to make all this stuff easy, if there is actually any demand.

Mally, grab a beer and have a few more re-reads of my last post if you get time. This washing machine stuff needs anyone to do that. If it does 'click' I hope you will post back here.

Gotta go and, as I said or implied above, I really need a few days break.

PP, above all else, please get your sleep. No rush...

I was reluctant to post another PLG question. This is not a volume question and am not chasing gravity points either, so rejoice and be exceeding glad.

It's strictly PLG and how it's calculating on a MAXI. It should be just dilution, e.g. a high gravity brew.

Weekend is coming up and I think I have worked out a good way of explaining this tricky area so let's do it . This will take a number of posts and I'll get two of them down now before I go to work. Here is what I think is an easy way to understand this area....

[center]The Sweet Liquor Shop[/center]

Forget about all your own equipment and just imagine that a shop existed where you could go and buy your sweet liquor (unboiled wort). If you wanted to brew a large batch of normal gravity beer (say about 1.050), you might ring up the shop and order 10 gallons of 1.035 gravity sweet liquor.

Let's also pretend that there are three sweet liquor shops in town...

The Full Volume Shop

If you order from the Full Volume Shop, when you pick your order up, he would have most likely put them into two 5 gallon containers so they are easy to carry. He would have produced that wort in one vessel and used the full volume of water in the mash. Both containers will hold 1.035 sweet liquor.

The Pre-Boil Dilution Shop

If you order from the Pre-Boil Dilution Shop, who only has one small vessel, when you pick up your order, you will arrive and find that the shop owner has only one 5 gallon container for you. When you say, "But I ordered 10 gallons," he will reply, "Don't worry, this wort is 1.070. When you get home, just dilute it with 5 gallons of plain water before you boil and you will end up with 10 gallons at 1.035 gravity."

The Mash and Sparge Shop

The Mash and Sparge Shop has several vessels but no big ones so he can't full volume mash. When you go to pick up your order, if you arrive early, you might find he has one 5 gallon container ready for you. He might explain to you that these are the first runnings and will be of higher gravity than the next 5 gallon container which he is collecting from the sparge. When you say, "But I really need my sweet liquor to be at 1.035," he will say, "Don't worry, when you mix the two containers together, they will be at 1.035."

So all shops give us our 10 gallons at 1.035, but they all do it in different ways. In the next post, we'll look at how profitable they are.

[This post and the next one is info that you guys already know but I think setting the scenario up this way is going to make the last post in the series much easier to understand.]

[center]How Profitable are the Shops?[/center]
The Full Volume Shop has a minimum amount of equipment, requires the minimum weight of ingredients and the least amount of work. His business is nice and profitable.

The Pre-Boil Dilution Shop has minimum equipment and work but because his vessel is so small, he can't wash/rinse his grain very clean. In other words his mash/lauter efficiency is very poor. In fact, this shop will have to use about 6.7 kgs of grain for your order compared to Full Volume Shop's 5.3 kgs. Not so good! He could choose though to charge a premium for his wort as it is arguable his wort is of the highest quality. See here.

The Mash and Sparge Shop has more equipment and much more work involved but, on the good side of things, like the Full Volume Shop, he will also only need to use 5.3 kgs to produce your order.

...

Hopefully the above is all okay and makes sense. In the next post, which I'm not sure when I'll write, we'll look a little more closely at similarities between the shops.

Just read your last post properly Richard, downloaded one of your files and saw that you aren't sparging . In other words, the above two posts and the next one I write won't answer your question . My current thinking is I don't have an answer for you! Maybe something will come to me later once I finish the 'shop' posts.

PP, If you have to hold back some Hot water, since the mash Kettle is Too Small for full volume mash, you already have the 2nd pot.

So as you need to remove the grains, why not take some time and let the grains sit in the 2nd pot for a while.

Then Squeeze the *&^(* out of the bag, and add the remaining water/wort to the kettle and be done.

Maxi-BAIB does not need the Sparge, but it won't hurt, since you MAXI-BIAB!!!

Sorry PP, I feel responsible for making you spend all that time writing down info unnecessarily (to me anyway).

I was purely interested in what the BIABacus is/was doing.

GP - I was referring to total Gravity Points.

mally, no need to apologise at all. Your and Richard's questions are always great . I just get annoyed at myself when I can't come up with a good way of explaining things. It's all part of the process that sometimes gets a little out of control . Will probably write another 'shop' post tomorrow but I'm thinking that those first two posts might come in handy for future maxi-BIAB questions.

josha, yep that is fine if you have a second vessel large enough to handle the grain bag etc. A lot of people don't though. Anyway, we can't get into the many different ways of maxi-BIAB'ing here as that is very off-topic in this advanced thread.

Good on ya ,
PP

''THE SWEET LIQUOR SHOP'' is the best explanation for BIAB VS all other mashing methods I have read BY FAR .
Consider to use this if you are planning to write BIAB instructions .
I am looking forward the part three!!!
Keep up the good work PP.

I was also going to say what a great explanation that was, but nik beat me to it.

I'm pleased that the 'shop' posts read okay, nik and Dave. Thanks for letting me know. The funny thing is I wrote them in answer to questions that hadn't even been asked . Once again mally and Richard, my apologies for not reading your post/s properly initially.

I have just done a few small edits on the shop posts, changing the name of the Dilution shop to the 'Pre-Boil Dilution Shop,' and adding in these two sentences, "He could choose though to charge a premium for his wort as it is arguable his wort is of the highest quality. See here." to the Pre-Dilution Shop paragraph in the second post.

Also, I have done edits to reflect that there will now be more posts, not just three, as I think the three shop analogy can cover all the scenarios I can think of from traditional to pure BIAB except the scenario where dilutions are done during or after the boil. I don't think this is a biggie though.

Treat the next post as the third but not final post in the series...

[center]Can the Shops Compete?[/center]
The three shops, by varying their brewing procedure, can all actually produce the same quantity and quality of sweet liquor as the other two shops. Only the labour and time costs vary.

Producing Premium Grade Sweet Liquor

In the last post we saw that the Pre-Dilution Shop produces the highest quality sweet liquor but that premium grade sweet liquor cost more in ingredients to produce. The other shops though also can produce premium grade sweet liquor quite easily.

The Full Volume Shop simply uses the same amount of grain and water as the Pre-Boil Dilution Shop. All this means, is that during the production cycle, their vessel is only about half full. This also means though that this shop could complete a much larger high quality order than the Pre-Boil Dilution Shop in one production cycle, in other words, for no extra labour cost.

The Mash and Sparge Shop can also produce high quality wort by using the same ingredients and water as the Pre-Boil Dilution Shop. Labour-wise, this is easier for them than their normal production cycle as they will simply put all the water into the mash - no sparge is required.

But, if the Mash and Sparge Shop received a much larger order for high quality wort, unless they had a relatively large mash tun, they will not be able to produce that order in one production cycle. In other words, they do not have the same labour advantage here as the Full Volume Shop.

Producing More Quantity of Standard Grade Sweet Liquor

In our last post here, we saw how the town shops all might handle an order for 10 gallons of 1.035 sweet liquor. For example, the Pre-Boil Dilution Shop, with the one small kettle, produced 5 gallons of 1.070 sweet liquor, then told the customer to dilute that with 5 gallons of tap water to get their 10 gallons of 1.035 wort.

We also saw that this cost that shop a lot more in ingredients. Compared to the other shops, his limited kettle space meant that he was only able to wash and rinse his grain with much lower quantities of water. To compensate for this lack of ability to wash and rinse the 'sugar' from the grain (mash/lauter efficiency), this shop owner had to buy more grain than the other shops.

The only advantage this gave him was that because his grain didn't get the 'living daylights' washed out of it, he might be able to say to the customer, "My shop uses a lot more grain than the other shops to produce a superior sweet liquor and so I would like to charge you a higher price."

In reality, very few customers could probably taste the difference between the beer that came from this shop's sweet liquor and the other shops so it is quite reasonable for the customer to say, "No, I won't pay a higher price." To get the sale, the shop owner might just have to wear the ingredient cost but, there is one other main option.

If time and labour are of less importance than ingredient costs, then this shop-owner could buy the same amount of grain as the other shops, split this grain in half and do two 'full-volume' production cycles ending up with two five gallon containers of 1.035 wort. Twice the labour costs and time but a saving in ingredient costs.

Any of the shops of course can increase their quantity by adding more production cycles but it is obviously not a great way to go.

In the Next Post

The production of Premium Grade Sweet Liquor is not very practical. In the next post though, we are going to see how the Sweet Liquor Shops, if asked to produce a Premium Grade or high gravity sweet liquor order, can make use of the sugars left in the spent grain that would normally go to waste.

I know you guys reading this thread won't mind me having a slight ramble here.

I actually wrote three more shop posts on Saturday afternoon. One of them, the longest, I posted above and I don't think I should have because I think there is more value to extract here. There isn't much point putting the other draft posts up until we can see if we can find a few more birds we can kill with the one stone. (I have several in mind.) In other words, it would be nice if when certain questions get asked, instead of having to write the same stuff on a new slant, we can just say something like. "Have you read the 'Sweet Liquor Shop' thread or the 'Whatever' thread? It will answer your question."

...

Also on the weekend I looked at the PLG formula. If we all want to save ourselves a heart attack, let's just think of PLG as meaning Post-Lauter Gravity with Post-Lauter meaning, if you are a sparger, the gravity after your sparge but before your pre-boil dilution if you have one.

I'd forgotten, but the weekend reminded me, why all the commercial software avoids a Pre-Lauter Gravity figure or, if any amateur software comes up with it, it is flawed.

You are "WAY" over my head with all of this. I am sure happy that I am a perfect brewer and never made a mistake (sic)! The time and effort you have put out will be epic! The rewards will be given to the users not the creators. Sad, but that's the way it works! Thanks again. The check is in the mail!

PistolPatch wrote: Also on the weekend I looked at the PLG formula. If we all want to save ourselves a heart attack, let's just think of PLG as meaning Post-Lauter Gravity with Post-Lauter meaning, if you are a sparger, the gravity after your sparge but before your pre-boil dilution if you have one.

I'd forgotten, but the weekend reminded me, why all the commercial software avoids a Pre-Lauter Gravity figure or, if any amateur software comes up with it, it is flawed.

PP, I didn't know that the PLG formula was flawed in your opinion. I know it was a pita trying to wrap my arms around why I wasn't hitting that estimated gravity, and I don't sparge. I add water before the boil. I would scrap that dude.

For Section M: I would like to see a, gravity at flame out (GFO) check point to replace it?

The three would be;
GIB
GFO
GAW

I do pure BIAB with chill, so the additional water steps are somewhat beyond me.

There are two essential measurement/calculation points for gravities and volumes:

1. After all sugar has been extracted from the grains
   (This is before the boil and before pre-boil dilutions, if any)
   • For pure BIAB, this is after the mash and bag drain
   • For spargers, this is after the mash, sparge, and bag drain
2. After the boil
   (This is before post-boil dilutions, if any)

(I prefer the after-boil volume to be at ambient, but I understand that this does not necessarily work for the no-chill folks. If need be, this volume can be at boiling temperature as long as a calculated ambient volume is displayed--I can then play with the hot volume I record until the calculated ambient volume matches what I measured.)

There would also be efficiencies calculated at both Points 1 and 2.

As far as I can tell, any volumes, gravities, or efficiencies at other points in the process are based on dilutions from these two points.