Post #26 made 12 years ago
If you really need to see it on your screen you can,adjust you grain bill or desired osg until the program returns the number you want. As Todd said,it really hinges on you attenuation.
AWOL

Post #27 made 12 years ago
Lylo wrote:If you really need to see it on your screen you can,adjust you grain bill or desired osg until the program returns the number you want. As Todd said,it really hinges on you attenuation.
Of course! didn't think of that :idiot:

Think I just proved Yeasty wrong :)

Thanks guys!
Last edited by GuingesRock on 27 Jan 2013, 23:35, edited 2 times in total.
Guinges

Post #29 made 12 years ago
It's really interesting that other people may want this feature, as i thought it was just me.
I rarely use the BIABacus as intended, similar to GR, I prefer to add ingredients and see what the OG & IBU in a recipe is.
So as Lylo mentioned; i will often have gravity figures of 1.049683 in the OG field to give me nice round numbers of weight of grain & hops.
It is a "back asswards" way, but it gets the job done!
G B
I spent lots of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I squandered
I've stopped drinking, but only when I'm asleep
I ONCE gave up women and alcohol - it was the worst 20 minutes of my life
    • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From Great Britain

Post #30 made 12 years ago
mirogster wrote:Batch volume scaling (and resp. IBU too). It would be really nice feature. Of course, I can do basic algebra, and I know that implementation could be a pita. But having that feature in one place, will be a cherry on the top, for my Biabacus expectations ;)
Can you give a little more info on this one miro? Any recipe in the BIABacus can be scaled by changing the Volume into Fermentor value in Section B. If you try this all the weights under 'What You Will Use' in Sections C and D of PR1.2 will change. I'm thinking this is batch volume scaling but do you mean something else?

Thanks for asking and answering the questions,
Pat
Last edited by Pat on 28 Jan 2013, 19:47, edited 2 times in total.
Are you a "Goodwill Brewer?" Pay forward and Buy Some BIPs ;)

Post #31 made 12 years ago
Pat. Thanks for the answer :). It was exactly, what I was looking for [:facepalm:]. I'm really sorry for the mess & confusion.
P.S. Abut BIABacus - it's really hard to say what I'm feeling, when I'm using it - sheer pleasure, joy and happiness = yup, it must be love :)
Thank you all, for your hard work, hundreds of hours put into designing and finalizing such brilliant idea. And for that absolutely magnificent 'final product'. Chapeau bas, gents!

Post #32 made 12 years ago
That's no problem at all miro. Sections C and D are the hardest to understand and we wish we could do better there. Hopefully when the help is written it will be easier.

There's a natural desire to focus on the left hand side of those sections whereas the weights you actually need to use in your brew are on the right. The current heading, "What you will use...," is also slightly ambiguous but every alternative so far has had similiar problems. Hopefully someone can come up with something better for there prior to release.

Any brewing software with guts, always takes a while to learn so don't be worried if it takes a while to 'see' some things. We think that the BIABacus, despite being a spreadsheet, offers more to 'see' than any other software but is still faster to learn so any time you spend on it should be well worthwhile. Asking questions like you have done speeds up the learning process for everyone which is excellent.

Thanks miro,
Pat
Are you a "Goodwill Brewer?" Pay forward and Buy Some BIPs ;)

Post #33 made 12 years ago
OK, so after all the hard work everybody has poured into this I decided to give it a try. I pulled a recipe I have in BeerSmith2 and entered it into the BIABacus. While the volume #/s and gravities match up quite well, I have a question and a comment.

First, the question:
-This recipe uses a FWH and dry hop only, what do I use in the "Mins" fields for FWH and DH?

Second, the comment:
-As an advanced brewer I have several different equiptment profiles (5 gallon chill, 5 gallon no chill, 3 gallon chill, 1.5 gallon chill, etc) each of which results in different efficiencies, trub loss, equiptment loss, etc. While I do appreciate all the hard work and blood/sweat/tears that have gone into the BIABacus, until it is something that allows me to store and use different equiptment profiles I am sadly stuck with using commercial software.

Many thanks to all that have contributed and I look forward to watching the continued genesis of this software.

---Todd
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Post #34 made 12 years ago
Todd,what I did was set up and save the BIABacus for may different profiles ie: 44l kettle BIABACUS 25l Biabcus etc Then just open the one I want to use. It is good to remember to save your new recipes under a different name of course but this works great for me.
FWH is still mostly a mystery to everyone (even the pros)as far as calculations isn't it?
AWOL

Post #35 made 12 years ago
thughes wrote:
Second, the comment:
-As an advanced brewer I have several different equiptment profiles (5 gallon chill, 5 gallon no chill, 3 gallon chill, 1.5 gallon chill, etc) each of which results in different efficiencies, trub loss, equiptment loss, etc. While I do appreciate all the hard work and blood/sweat/tears that have gone into the BIABacus, until it is something that allows me to store and use different equiptment profiles I am sadly stuck with using commercial software.
---Todd
I don't think you are forbear to use commercial software only. It seems to me one spreadsheet per kettle would work and you already know your loses per profile.
Last edited by Mad_Scientist on 29 Jan 2013, 08:35, edited 3 times in total.
    • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From United States of America

Post #38 made 12 years ago
I sense an inventive, creative, inquisitive mind, working with the new BIABacus :)

I want to join in now, after all the discussion, and have another go with it! I noticed Yeasty and Mally posted BIABacus Guinness spreadsheets on Here today. I grabbed them both and they are nicely placed on my desktop. Thanks!
Last edited by GuingesRock on 29 Jan 2013, 09:14, edited 2 times in total.
Guinges

Post #39 made 12 years ago
Mad_Scientist

Thanks for noticing the missing ...'s. They were accidentally whited out but will go back in the release version. The gal/hr is a formatting error which we'll also get fixed up and it looks like there are some more in that section. Picking up these things now is a real help thank you.

Equipment 'Profiles'

It is very important to take some time to understand the concept outlined below as it explains how all commercial software has a critically limiting design which the BIABacus totally avoids. This opens up a whole new world for the brewer.

One thing that is not realised by most brewers is that commercial brewing software, to be used correctly actually requires you to write and store a profile for not only each equipment set-up you have (one for most brewers) but also for every gravity brew you do. A 1.040 gravity brew should not be giving you the same efficiency into kettle as a 1.060 brew made with the same equipment.

The BIABacus however only requires you to have a profile for the different equipment you have as the efficiency estimate is automated and can be fine-tuned if necessary. This is revolutionary stuff.

As most brewers only have one equipment set-up, things are very easy but, even a brewer with several different equipment set-ups has several easy options open to them. As Lylo mentioend above, the equipment can be saved as several different 'masters' which is the same as you will do with commercial software except in our case you have to save the whole spreadsheet which is a bit clumsy but not debilitating. Alternatively, it might be easier for you to simply change the kettle height, diameter and VIF in Section B as it doesn't take long to remember what these are for different kettles.

Auto-Efficeincy works on EIK not EIF

Todd, in your sheet, you have over-ridden the auto-efficiency and set it to 72.5%. This is very low for a 1.050 brew. I'm guessing by 72.5%, you actually mean 'Efficiency into Fermentor (EIK).' The BIABacus however uses 'Efficiency into Kettle (EIK)'. This is another area we should make clearer somehow.

Please try this... Have a look at your different efficiency estimates in Section P. Now delete your 72.5 in Section X and look at Section P again. You'll see the EIK is now 83.1% and EIF is 69.8% which is not far away from your 72.5%.

As a user, I would be very reluctant to over-ride the auto-efficiency estimates as they tend to work very well. After ten brews of different gravities, the user might notice that the BIABacus is under or over-estimating by a few percent. Then it would be okay to use the first field in Section X to make the appropriate adjustment. The second field should really only be used for helping to 'decrypt' external recipes as the concept of a fixed efficiency as used in all other software is a faulted one.

Another great question thanks Todd. The FWH one is a whole other area that I may not get time to address for several more days.

Thanks again,
Pat
Last edited by Pat on 29 Jan 2013, 10:51, edited 2 times in total.
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Post #40 made 12 years ago
No, the EIK number is correct for that particular equiptment profile. That number is an overall average based upon a couple of year's and a few hundred gallons worth of brewing (low and high gravity OG's), which is why I chose to over-ride the "auto-efficiency estimates" of the spreadsheet. I suppose I could delete my over-ride and see how things work out over the long term, I'll get back to you on that in a year or two. ;)
Last edited by thughes on 29 Jan 2013, 11:06, edited 2 times in total.
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Post #41 made 12 years ago
Todd, if you are using something like BeerSmith, shoot me one of your .bsm files and I will look at it. 72.5% EIK is very low for a 1.050 brew and I want to ensure there is no misunderstanding or miscommunication here.

Having to wait a couple of years is now a thing of the past.

The thing about the BIABacus that might be hard to see is that you actually don't have to wait a couple of years at all to establish reliable efficiency figures. In fact, a brewer with a record of figures can immediately fine-tune the BIABacus. In other words, they will have a single profile that will work on all gravity brews.

This is impossible in any other software.

Just like a stopped watch is correct twice a day, any program that uses a profile with any sort of fixed efficiency figure is only going to be accurate in a few instances. In your case Todd, the 72.5% is only the correct average for all the brews you have done. Let's say that the average OG of these brews was 1.050 then, if you use 72.5% on every brew you do, it will be correct for brews with an OG of 1.050 but too low for say a 1.040 brew and too high for a 1.060 brew.

Because the BIABacus adjusts efficiency according to gravity, all brewers have a whole new world of reliability open to them now. Firstly, the default auto-estimates are pretty good anyway so the BIABacus will be autimatically calculating an efficeincy figure that will get the new brewer in the ball-park no matter what gravity brew. Secondly, after a few brews, even if of the same gravity, anyone can easily fine tune the defaults to work well at all other gravities.

That's a very big breakthrough.

If you already have records, you can get 'back to us' immediately.

In the case where a brewer has kept records, they can actually 'back-test' a few brews 'on paper' in the BIABacus and see how well the BIABacus auto-estimate would have worked at the various gravity brews you have done in the past. In other words, you will be able to fine-tune the efficiency auto-estimates immediately and this should be a once-only task.

Other software will take you years.

Using other software would take you years to develop efficiency figures that are reliable across a range of gravities. You will need to do many brews at many different gravities. Or, you could steal the BIABacus data. No matter which way you collect the data though, once you have it, you will then need to set up and use many different profiles to suit the various gravity beers or just be happy with using a single profile that works okay, on average. The BIABacus negates this need.

This is only one of the many 'profile' problems the BIABacus solves.

This 'efficiency' issue is not the only limitation of profile designs in other software. There are many. Here is another simple example...

If a brewer has a large kettle and sometimes does single batches and sometimes does double batches, they actually need different profiles for the two even assuming they always brew beers of the same gravity. In the BIABacus though, all the user has to do is change the 'Desired Volume into Fermentor (VIF)' figure in Section B. It's a two second task.

There are many other examples of how the BIABacus is not only safer, more fexible and accurate than other software but also faster to use. If you can adjust to some of the annoyances and minor inconveniences that occasionally result from the spreadsheet form we think you will be way ahead.

Looking forward to PP getting back. My fingers are worn out :),
Pat
Last edited by Pat on 29 Jan 2013, 14:10, edited 2 times in total.
Are you a "Goodwill Brewer?" Pay forward and Buy Some BIPs ;)

Post #42 made 12 years ago
Wow! I had no idea! Reading that I remember now, I am frustrated with Beersmith.

There seems to be compromise with all computer programs. I use Windows at work all day long, and I hate windows, it drives me crazy.

I bought an old Audi A6 eight months ago. It probably cost me less than almost any car in this town cost because it’s an old one. I love it. The way it drives, the way you can drive it. Designed by aircraft engineers. It’s a piece of sheer genius, and manages to turn the chore of driving into pleasure. Not sure why I put that in, suppose I ‘m trying to say that I appreciate things that have been intelligently thought out, and things that aren’t frustrate me.

It sounds to me like BIABacus is very intelligently thought out. Should we get together and throw some money at this, or find a backer, or a computer programmer who would be prepared to donate time, to migrate this to a commercial type format, make it as beautiful and sleek to drive as an Audi, or do people prefer the spreadsheet format?
Last edited by GuingesRock on 29 Jan 2013, 17:26, edited 2 times in total.
Guinges

Post #43 made 12 years ago
There has been discussion with regard to improvements in the Biabacus. I still only have a few brews under my belt, but I'm pretty familiar with software of all types as I work as a computer network engineer. To me, the Biabacus is a great tool, it reliably predicts all the numbers I need on a brew day. I think of it more like my trusty Honda Civic, it's not as pretty as some, it does not have all the bells and whistles of an Audi, but things can become too complicated, power windows can break, and dashboard computers can fail. I still get there at 40 mpg, my hand reliably winds the windows, and the analog speedo is all I need. I have other "pretty" software which can formulate recipes, and give me every detail I need for 3v brewing, which I don't do, but I love that this one is specific to Biab, it's purpose built, it's accurate and it just plain works, whereas the others have Biab as an afterthought.
I have one other comment. I have spent many a long, sleepless, weekend upgrading computer systems only to arrive Monday morning to complaints about minor features that have changed or are missing, when the user has no clue of the work entailed to accomplish such a feat and make it look effortless. I know you guys have worked your arses off on this, it's dissapointing when users, including me, suggest improvements immediately without apparently appreciating the work and thought that has gone in to make this happen. Most of us Biabers are problem solvers, improvisors, and think outside the box, or else we would not be doing Biab, so it is in our nature to tinker. The Biabacus appeals to simplicity without sacrificing quality, it may not need any " improvements" to it's features lest it become too complicated.
Cheers and well done again :champ:

Post #44 made 12 years ago
I'm not arguing with you Porchfiddler. I think you are right on every count, and I'm humbled by your programming knowhow.

But! if someone goes to the dealership and there are two brand new cars there, both maintenance free and warranted for life, both have same gas/petrol mileage, and both are on sale for the bargain price of twenty bucks, quid, euros etc. One is a black ford and the other is an orange Lamborghini. Which one will that person buy? Perhaps not the best analogy, because BIABacus might be the Lamborghini, but I hope you will see what I am getting at.

There is a post # 45 Here here about money to run the site and how much more could be done with more funding or donated help from experts. I interpreted that post as partially referring to the BIABacus project. That's where I was coming from any way.
BIABrewer wrote:Please excuse the slow reply GuingesRock. We're running behind schedule as always and your post has a few questions that are very hard to answer.

As for the donation/financial side, we rarely focus on this. I think the only time we actively asked for donations was buried half way through the Favourite BIABrewer Ads post. We asked for $350 to give to Kostass who worked hundreds of hours on a version of the BIABacus. Nine members here raised $305 of that and BIABrewer made up the difference.

Apart from the above, there were 7 donations totalling $185 last year. Less the $45 above makes $140. That and a lot more evaporated into tech stuff.

So, you can see why every donation is individually acknowledged and appreciated.

Well over half the donations above came from active posters/contributors. We would prefer that these members had to put in nothing as they already contribute so much. One member, at times, actively refused paid work to contribute here. That added up to many thousands of dollars.

The main costs here are really skills and time. We want the site to be great and we have a lot of ideas that have sat latent since the site began. We currently don't have the skills/time to make them happen quickly. To do this probably requires a few people who are retired computer geniuses or perhaps a marketing genius who could raise the money to pay such people?

With a bit of patience, maybe these people will pop up. For now, the greatest asset we have are those who ask and answer questions here or who create interesting discussions.

BB
Last edited by GuingesRock on 29 Jan 2013, 20:04, edited 2 times in total.
Guinges

Post #45 made 12 years ago
I'm in the networking end so I am about as good a programmer as I am a brewer, which means not very good!
Sure I'd pony up a little money for a better interface, but not necessarily a more complicated one, something more on the lines of one of those new fiats :) Guinges, you and I are both new to the site in addition to being Pommies (pom's?) we'd better watch out before we start "helping" those Aussies ;)

Post #46 made 12 years ago
Firstly, we would like to apologise that we have not acknowledged some of your most considerate posts above. Re-reading them and thinking on them in detail is on our most pleasant lists of things to do. There is some more written on this below.

[center]BIABacus PR 1.3 is now available in the first post of this thread.[/center]
The first post of this thread has been completely re-written. Please re-read it now so as you will know where to get help and how to give it.

This post will not include a change-log as the main focus of PR 1.3 is to concentrate on encouraging old and new members to bypass 'The Calculator' and move straight into using PR 1.3 and posting BIABacus files in the appropriate threads.

PR 1.3 marks the end of support for, "The Calculator," and the introduction of, "The BIABAcus." It marks something much more important though in the thinking and psychology here at BIABrewer.info.

The Calculator vs The BIABAcus vs Other Software

The Calculator, despite its many faults, was actually better and more accurate, in many ways than any other software. It was, "very clumsy and non-intuitive and badly presented," to quote the original author who is the major BIABacus developer/designer here. But, it was educational. It resulted in the right questions being asked and the right answers being given. It did result in The BIABacus and, the principles in the BIABacus are, without doubt, revolutionary.

No matter how revolutionary The BIABacus is, it is just a tool. It's very safe, fast to learn, versatile and extremely powerful. It does enable a rapid learning curve for members of the numbers persuasion and, after that, it gets them exploring.

This is what BIABrewer.info is all about and what it should always be about.

A Major Psychological Shift.

Until the new site structure and BIABAcus help is completed, it is going to be a very messy time for BIABrewer.info.

The most important aspect of The BIABacus, by far for us, is still not complete. No matter how impressive we make the BIABacus, it will only be a tool that enables the efficient asking and answering of questions.

It is going to take a lot of time to nail that and that is where BIABrewer.info needs to spend the most time. One big test of The BIABacus is whether it enables the members here to help each other out.

So, our shift is, during this transition, you will enjoy...

Educating Each Other.

We will be relying on all the members here to help fellow members out until we can write and position essential information in a manner that will save every brewer, new and experienced, time and energy.

So, if you think you have an answer or can help someone out, jump in. If you make an error, someone will correct it in a really nice way and let you know that you are making the same mistake they did for years. This forum is, without doubt, the best for that. All we care about is education and fun.

Well, it's much more than that but education and fun is the main end-result.

Now is the time to start being an educator.

No matter at what level of brewing you are at, you can already educate others here. Most of the information we have to still publish officially has already been written here on the site.

This is where anyone can immediately be of help.

If you are an active reader or poster here, you might know how to find some of the many treasures buried here. It often takes BIABrewer.info, five to ten minutes to find one of these treasures they actually know of!

So, next time anyone sees a questions here, why not do a bit of searching and try and answer it really well? The biggest winner in answering a question that challenges them is nearly always the responder. A good responder usually needs a few easy, "warm-up," questions first so don't forget the questions you can ask easily and quickly.

Now is the time to start being an educator..

We always keep a close eye on those who post well here. Those who consistently offer value here over a long period of time do get rewarded but only in the manner that we acknowledge that we value and respect their opinion. It gradually improves from there.

Please enjoy PR 1.3 and the new thinking it so easily enables,

BIABrewer.info

Previous Posts to this Thread

The future development of BIABrewer.info and the BIABacus requires a lot of people to put in clever thinking and a lot of time. Our current thinkers and time contributors are fully over-loaded at the moment, and will be for quite a long time, so, please continue to post your thoughts on the future even though you do not get a response here. It is also, often more valuable and less stifling, in these sort of areas, for us not to post.

The unanswered posts above usually relate to raising money. If you guys can think carefully and find an unobtrusive way of raising money then that would enable us to pay people to work on many things. I suspect that would cost a fortune though.

Concentrated thinking and many hours of donated time are, always what really count. For example, every minute you spend at the moment answering someone's question well saves BIABrewer.info financially and mentally.

There are certainly a few years of full-time work that could be spent on the site so please let us know if you do have any ideas on how this can be enabled.

BIABrewer.info
Last edited by BIABrewer on 19 Feb 2013, 23:20, edited 2 times in total.

Post #47 made 12 years ago
Pat I can't seem to save this in ods form as I always have before.I get a message that one of the sheets is password protected.Will I be able to use this as an Open document?
AWOL

Post #48 made 12 years ago
It opens up fine and saves in both OpenOffice and LibreOffice here. However, even if you use Libre or Open, please save the BIABacus as an Excel file. Perhaps you have a security setting enabled that warns you when a file is password-protected? Please let me know if you still have trouble.

Also note that The BIABacus looks best in Excel, then LibreOffice and last of all OpenOffice.
Are you a "Goodwill Brewer?" Pay forward and Buy Some BIPs ;)

Post #49 made 12 years ago
Lylo, I would ditch OpenOffice and use LibreOffice as The BIABacus looks very poor in Open Office. An .xxl file is not the right format to save in.
Only ever save The BIABacus, no matter what program you are using, as an .xls file.
There is no advantage at all in saving the file as an .ods file. PM me to let me know if that works okay for you.
Last edited by Pat on 20 Feb 2013, 18:27, edited 2 times in total.
Are you a "Goodwill Brewer?" Pay forward and Buy Some BIPs ;)

Post #50 made 12 years ago
ADMIN NOTE: My answers are in red below.]

Pat, How were you thinking of structuring the BIABacus help? You mentioned that part of it was daunting. There are many complex angles here
that have to be considered and then made very simple. The BIABacus actually has been designed so that most users, in most situations, should be able to get under way without even using the help.


What I would like to see, is the question mark in each section linking to help for that section as you had planned. This is one aspect of the help but there are many more aspects such as recipe forums.

Could you set up locked posts for each section already and then add the help in stages. This is what we have planned. Please try to keep the help concise, maybe the top half of each help subject could be beginners, with a heading below for advanced users, for users that want to explore the program in more detail. This is also what we have planned.

Please start with beginners (dummies) part of each help post, so I can get started without too much headache. Unlike with other software, The BIABacus user does not need to over-think anything. The most powerful feature of The BIBacus is that you can put in very little information and still get very safe numbers to work from. The BIABAcus will also take the input of very advanced numbers but these are not necessary for nearly all brewers.

I think it would be quick to do So did we until we started the project. Even the process of ensuring the threads appear in correct order, due to the forum format, is extremely tedious. We will just keep plugging away at it.eg. Section B help. Add kettle height in CM, next add kettle diameter in CM and a brief explanation on what to put in boil vol and VIF, and then put a note that advanced help for this section is pending. I’m stuck on C as I don’t know how to enter grains. I’m sure it is a simple one-liner to explain. This is a great example of where over-thinking might slow you down GR. All you need for grains is the name of the grain and it's weight or percentage. There should be enough notes and warnings in that section for you to be prompted if you have to do anything else. If it is an all-grain recipe, you don't.

That way beginners like me could actually get started quickly and contribute with feedback. There are already several beginners here who have jumped in and have The BIABAcus working for them. All have followed the procedure in Post#1. We believe it is the fastest software to learn but you still will need to follow the procedure in Post #1. If you want to wait for the clickable help you might be waiting a while :) and it actually won't speed up your basic learning curve that much. Don't be scared of playing with The BIABacus. There is nothing safer.

Sure I could pour myself a beer and get started by playing around with BIABacus, but my life is so f**king hectic, that if I actually have an occasion to pour myself a beer and relax, without children clamoring for attention and chores to be done, I’m going to spend some long overdue time playing with my spouse and not BIABacus. We have a baby sitter planned for Saturday and we have been looking forward to it for weeks. I haven’t even had the time to brew in the last two weeks for goodness sakes.

I wake up with my morning tea, before the kids get up and I read this site. It’s my hobby. I love the humour here, the advice and the sociability, but my brain isn’t taking on any challenges at that time of day. As soon as I get going and stumble into that office, my brain has to switch into high gear and stay there for eight hours until it’s completely done for...bit like you working on BIABacus all day, then being asked to figure out the theory of relativity from scratch at the end of it.

I need help for dummies and the luxury of being a dummy and receiving simple advice and help from a brilliant professionals such as you and PP, Yeasty, Mally, MS etc...for a change!!!

If you would be so kind :) Hopefully I have covered everything with the points above. When you have the time, just jump in and play. Then, ask any questions you have in the Use this thread to convert recipes to suit your equipment... thread. For example, you should not have hesitated to ask your grain question in that thread.

So, following the directions in Post #1 will serve you, the developers and admin best for now.


Thanks :peace: :luck: Pat
Last edited by GuingesRock on 20 Feb 2013, 18:52, edited 2 times in total.
Guinges

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