No problems Al. Let us know when you are back and if my last post made sense and we'll see what we can come up with.

Jealous of you going to Orange. I spent two years in the 80's there studying Farm Management at the agricultural college. It was an excellent few years - loved it!

NearbyStars wrote: BIABacus gives me roughly 2 gals of water to mash with. My kettle is actually 11 inches internal diameter and 9.75 inches internal height. I boiled 3 gals of plain water in the kettle for 90 minutes and got about 0.6 gals/hr evaporation.

Any help will be appreciated, as I'm fairly new!

Cheers,
NearbyStars

This looks real good NBS.

A couple of things;
remove 2nd OG in Section C (far right)
if your hops are a different AA%, enter that # in 'Substitutions' (just the AA% #)
if confident in your evaporation rate, enter 1.6 L/HR in Section X

Nice job Nearby Stars ,

Only suggestions I have are as follows...

1. 1 Gallon is a very small VIF. Smaller batches are harder to brew in many ways than larger ones. For example, measuring out 1.5 grams of hops is a lot more inclined to inaccuraccy than measuring out 7.1 grams say. If you can ferment more than a gallon then consider doing so.

2. Also always consider a 90 minute boil. The third link in this post gives some reasons why.

3. In Section H, type in your yeast and fermentation times and temps. Also, in that section if you put in an attenuation of 83% then your final gravity (and therefore ABV%) will match the original recipe.

4. In Section D, the 5.5 Gal (20.82) you typed in for the recipe's EOBV-A is probably correct but unfortunately like most recipes on the net, the original recipe report does not contain enough information for us to be certain. I would stick with the 5.5 gallons you have typed though. (For more info on why this number is often a problem, read Does this recipe have integrity? Can I copy it?

5. If you want to, you can type in 2.0 SRM beside German Wheat and German Pils in Section C. (Rice hulls are zero.) THis will give you colour estimates.

I hope you didn't find it too hard to use the BIABAcus. Hopefully it was actually easier than the Calculator .

Once again, great job ,
PP

P.S1. Have attached the above changes in the file below.

P.S2. It looks like you have downloaded an older pre-release file. In the latest version of the BIABacus, some of the terminology has changed. The latest version can actually be found in this post. It hasn't been put out as a main pre-release version yet as there are still some things that are going to be tweaked.

alanem,

Get healthy first! Brewing can wait a bit more. It goes against common wisdom saying that I know but there more important things than beer. Name your next beer "Gall Bladder Wort" and hope it doesn't get infected?

Hi Guys,

Bottled the Vienna Lager on the W/E, tasted good out of the fermenter now just have to hang on a couple of weeks to get a sneaky taste, then more waiting while it lagers, didnt realise you needed this much willpower for brewing.

For our next brew my brewing bud and I have decided to have a go at the Jamil Show Hobgoblin clone recipe.

I have noted the receipe from the podcast and entered it into the BIABacus which is attached.

I think its looking good but would appreciate it if someone can have a look over it for me please.

I am not sure about the VAW to enter in the BIABacus, in the Podcast Jamil said 6G EOB, I am not sure if that is Ambient or not?

I am also not sure what to do with the Cane Sugar, I think I have to make an adjustment in section Y but wasnt really confident I knew what I was doing.

How critical is it to use the Kent or Styrian Goldings hops? Do these differ much between them? I understand about the AA content but not sure if say I used all Kent Goldings? Just wondering.

Finally, what style would we say this is? On their website Wychhwood say it is a Ruby Beer but that isn't in the BJCP style guide (as far as I could see) I am guessing this is a Pale Ale...?

Appreciate your feedback.

Cheers

PS I am really liking the BIABacus, it is really so simple to use, and I just love the unit conversion tab. Overall very well put together.

Homemade, will come back to you in a separate post.

alanem wrote:PP. After reading the upsides and downsides of a sparge and doing a 15lt wort in a 19 ltr kettle I have decided against it for the moment and will be limiting my brews to about 11-12 ltrs or whatever I can get in for the 1V mash/boil...

Firstly Al, sorry to see you didn't make it to Orange . Hope you are feeling a hell of a lot better than you must have been a week ago. Bob's post would cheer you up .

On the brewing side, I was thinking abut your set-up and had another idea in case you wanted to brew larger batches. Here's what I was thinking...

1. Mash in your first 19 litre kettle for only 20-25 minutes. (Use half total water needed).

2. Pull the bag and put it into your second 19 litre kettle with the other half of your water. Let it mash for 65-70 minutes. (Maybe put it in the oven to keep it warm or just give it the occasional tickle up on your stove?)

3. While the 'second' mash is happening, boil your first kettle for 90 minutes. Chill in sink when done.

4. Boil your second kettle for 90 minutes and do your flavour and aroma additions to this kettle. Chill in sink when done.

This would only add 20-25 minutes to the brew day but would give you a lot more wort at the end of the day. If this is of interest, the only point worth having a look at (and it probably isn't even worth worrying about) is hop utilisation.

Anyway Al, get back to us when you are feeling better if you want to explore this method. Otherwise, if the smaller batch size is okay, we'll look forward to hearing how everything goes.


PP

Homemade wrote:For our next brew my brewing bud and I have decided to have a go at the Jamil Show Hobgoblin clone recipe. ...

Thanks for letting us know that the BIABacus is working well for you Ian .

Good question you have on whether Jamil means an EOBV that is ambient or not. We go for the 22.71 L (6 US gal) that you did. I'm pretty sure that we tested five or six recipes and looked at all the gravity numbers and found that 22.71 L worked best. i.e. we think he (and the same goes for the recipes in "Brewing Classic Styles") mean that the 6 gallons EOBV is at ambient.

However...

John and Jamil often deal in extract recipes as well as all-grain. They also use the Rager formula to estimate their IBU's. Rager always reads higher than the Tinseth formula**** but Tinseth works better with all-grain recipes. So we have another layer of potential probelems here.

[EDIT: ***Just when I thought I saw a pattern. No, Rager does not always read higher. Your Hobgolin recipe actually comes out lower. All the other recipes I have iopen here come out lower ]

So my thinking now is for Brewing Classic Styles Recipes to forget about completing VAW in Section D (old BIABAcus versions called this EObV-A) and instead just type the IBU's from the book into Section D. Mind you, in light of my edit above, I give up!!!!

To the File...

Can't really check the file against the original recipe unless I listen to the whole podcast. Here's a few things though...

1. Why is the hop bill changed so much? On the left we have two additions at 60 minutes and two at 15 minutes. The right hand side has three changes to those four additions but they are very big changes. I'm thinking something is not right on this bit Ian. Maybe tell us what your thoughts or aims are on the hop bill.

2. This beer is meant to be 5.2% ABV from the one site I find on it but the recipe is only coming up with 4.2%.

(The above two points are worrying me )

3. Cane Sugar - In Section Y, put 100 beside Cane sugar in the FGDB column and put 0 in the MC column.

4. East Kent Goldings versus Styrian Goldings - Remember Ian, most brewing terminology will drive you insane. There actually is a difference between these two hops. Bookmark this site and read about the differences there.

5. What Style? - I couldn't find Ruby on their site Ian but only had a look for a few minutes. Any time you find a link and refer to it, copy it into your post if you can - saves a heap!

6. In relation to the last point, if you have a podcast link and the minutes at where they list the recipe ingredients/specifics, then that would be the way to go. Atm, we really have nothing to check against if that makes sense .


PP

Hi PP,

thanks for the attention to my post, much appreciated.

I have listened to the podcast and double checked my notes and this is the recipe, sorry I should have listed it in my first post. The podcast link is here: http://thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/791" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

The brewers starts to go over the recipe and brewing details at 24 min 30 secs
Jamil and co list the recipe and their brew details at 105 mins into the podcast.

These are the salient points from the brewer

Overall colour using "European standard" = 50-55 (EBC?) Brewers calls it "Ruby Red"
Bitterness using EBU = 24-26
Batch Size 24,500L
OG: 1046
FG: 1011-12
Mash: Single infusion 1hr @ 67C - "Thick Mash" No mash out

Grains: Weights not given only % and these are his descriptions:
90% English Pale Malt
7-8% Simpsons Crystal (150 EBC?)
2% Simpsons Chocolate (1200 EBC?)
Invert Sugar poured into copper

Boil length 1hr @ 101C - vigorous boil, approx 10% evaporation over the 1hr little bit of caramelisation.

Hops: No weights or AA% given only qty% of each hops at both additions:
Bittering Hops:- 50%/50% English Goldings and Fuggles - "added at 80C" before wort is fully boiling
Aroma Hops: Brewer refers to them as "whirlpool hops" and regarding quantity refers to "a hugh...significant amount" to get the citrus aroma and mouthfeel
20% Cascade and 80% Styrian Goldings

Yeast is a unique strain, top fermenting, name not given.

Primary Ferment takes about 72hrs it is abit difficult to fully understand what he says but it seems that it starts at 16C then raised to 20C until primary ferment is finished (72hrs), then its cooled to 8C over 2-3 days, then sits at 8C for about 3 days, so yeast drops out.

These are the salient points from the Jamil
VEOB = 6gallons
VIF = 5.5 Gallons
SRM = 15.5 using Mora?
SG: 1046 11.49 Plato
IBU using Rager = 36.3
70% Efficiency
60 min Mash @ 67C
60 Min boil
The Ferment schedule was not as detailed as brewers but they used same three temps.

90% (4.29kg) British Pale Ale Malt
7.5% (360g) British Crystal Malt 75-80
2% (100g) British Chocolate Malt
.5% (20g) Cane Sugar

60mins 40g Kent Goldings
60mins 14g Fuggles
15mins 16g Cascade
15mins 64g Styrian Goldings

WLP023 Burton Ale Yeast

There is a difference between the % of hops detailed by Jamil over the brewer from Wychwood. I have listened to the hop amounts over and over and it "could" be they are staying 14g of Kent Goldings and 14g of Fuggles but I think they are saying 40g and 14g. The 15mins additions are definitely 16g and 64g.

Jamil and his crew believe they have cloned it near enough to call it cloned given they are using different yeast. the colour is apparently spot on.

I suppose the only concern is the amount of hops if I am misunderstanding what they are saying?

Re: your comments on my file:

I messed up the hops, I didnt change the AA% or times on the substitutions section. Have done so on this version.
I am aiming for 50L into the fermentor which is more than double the Jamil VIF so I guess the hop quantity will increase a lot.
Re: the ABV this is not mentioned in the podcast that I could tell but the start and end were mentioned by the brewer and Jamil followed the OG/SG so I am not sure about this. Not to worry too much if its a little less alcohol.
I checked the BJCP style guide again (using the search function of the iPad APP) and found Hobgoblin as a commercial example of a Nothern English Brown Ale, which is interesting...The Wychwood website says the style is a Ruby Beer? Not sure but I am not concerned what its called just how it tastes
I have played around with colour - not sure about the Pale Malt, neither brewer nor Jamil gave a colour, J Palmers How to Brew suggests 3L (SRM?).

Probably too much info here for you but again any help is appreciated.

I am beginning to grasp the concept of integrity regarding recipes...

This

Just realised I input the wrong values for the grain weights, I input 4.29kg instead of 4290g. I have changed that and the colour totals work out better.

I didnt attach a new sheet as it isnt important and didnt want to confuse the issue.

cheers

Great post/s Homemade .

That attention to detail really makes a difference. I was able to find hopefully at least one right answer for you without evening listening to the podcast.

Also bear in mind there are some very important bits of info missing from the original authors. For example, 'a huge, significant amount' doesn't do much for us nor does the lack of AA%'s . There's heaps to comment on in this area alone but it would just be a re-hash of 'recipe integrity' stuff which I'm wrapped to see you are exploring/becoming aware of. That awareness already puts you way ahead of most brewers on number stuff .

Your new file...

That's looking heaps better .

Okay, you know how on the hops, you were wondering if it was 40 and 14 grams or 14 and 14 grams? I think it is 14 and 14 for two reasons. You see how the original brewers mentioned a 50/50 English Goldings and Fuggles addition? I think that is the first hint. The second one is that if, in your BIABacus, you change 40 to 14 grams on the first hop addition then the Tinseth IBU estimate changes from 54.7 to 40.4. The latter is far more in line with Jamil's Rager estimate of 36.3.

So, change your 40 to 14 grams. This means your file will end up looking like this. (Still have no idea how you get your BIABacus looking yellow - lol)So, looking on the right hand side for your desired VIF, you will be needing 34.2 + 34.2 + 39.1 + 156.4 grams of hops.

As for your last post on the kilograms versus grams thing, that is fine. The left hand side just deals with ratios. As you know, that is nothing to worry about EXCEPT this will throw your left hand side colour estimates out - more two paras below.

As for the ABV, I only pulled this figure from one site after a quick Google search. I would trust your figures more.

As for your colour/style question, something is wrong there. Correct the grams thing and then do some more research on the style thing. BJCP says a brown ale is 10-25 SRM. BIABacus will give you 17.8.

...

Once again, great post Ian. Even though the above took quite a while to write, without your detail, it would have taken heaps longer to get some sort of result.


PP

Hi PP,

thanks for the follow up and encouragement. As with all things in life, I find the harder I investigate the more I learn...

I have been playing with IBU estimates and reading abit including the link you gave me, beerlegends.com, aside of the different results from each IBU formula it seems most important to know when trying to recreate a recipe: the IBU estimate of the original recipe, the qty of hops used, %AA and type of formula used.

We didnt have the qty. %AA or type of formula used from the original brewer but Jamil gave us those and on tasting their brew Jamil and Co thought it was close to the original so I guess we can assume his info is reasonable. Interestingly his formula gave a much higher result (36.3 IBU) than the original brewers of 24-26 EBU (which I understand to be about the same as IBU). I am guessing the brewer didnt use Rager.

Moving on, to test the theory of 50/50 for bittering hops, I looked up some IBU calculators on the net and I came to the same conclusion as you that given the original advice of a 50/50 split Jamil must have said 14g & 14g. Interestingly all the sites I visited gave differing results for both Rager and Tinseth. I visited rooftop brew.net, brew365.com and brew heads.com. I have no idea of the accuracy of any of these but I thought it only served to confirm the amount of different information out there and that it is probably best to stick with just one formula and calculator and be very careful when copying or converting recipes I guess sticking with one system and calc gives you a static reference point you can compare against.

And there was me thinking that ...a significant amount... was a scientific measurement that ranked alongside a 'smidge'

On the topic of ABV their website says 5.2% in bottle and 4.5% in casks. We are at 4.5% so not sure if that has any significance but hey that's enough alcohol to be getting on with.

I think this was a good exercise to go through, it didnt take that long really, it brought up a few more issues to learn and cemented some others and gave me an opportunity to dig deeper into the BIABacus. All in a good days brewing ha ha.

Thanks again PP. I feel confident to go ahead with this now and now we shouldn't get a hop bomb...

Cheers

Another great read thanks Ian. You are definitely getting your head around the IBU debacle .

I thought I'd found every IBU problem there was to find but in the last week realising that anyone who converts an extract recipe to an all-grain one (or vice versa) as is done in Brewing Classic Styles, maybe should also be adjusting the hop bill. You'd think no adjustment should be necessary but with a bit more thinking, it could actually be necessary to use more hops in an all-grain wort than an extract one. Let's not think on that here though .

Interestingly his [Jamil's] formula gave a much higher result (36.3 IBU) than the original brewers of 24-26 EBU (which I understand to be about the same as IBU). I am guessing the brewer didn't use Rager.

The original brewer may have actually used no formula. He may have actually been quoting the IBU's he actually measured with lab equipment. So, that's a fourth thing to throw into the mix - Tinseth, Rager, Garetz and lab-tested .

Interestingly all the sites I visited gave differing results for both Rager and Tinseth.

Yep, it's all pretty hopeless Ian. What you are seeing here is the software writer interpreting the original formula poorly. For example, the Tinseth formula has a term used in it called, ambiguously, 'boil gravity'. Some sites are using pre-boil volume and others are using end of boil gravity. Some are using a mix. If you go to the Tinseth site, you will find that boil gravity means OG (or better still, end of boil gravity).

The same goes for the volume figures. Some sites are using 'Volume into Fermentor (VIF)' instead of 'Volume of Ambient Wort (VAW)'. [Note: VAW is the same as End of Boil Volume at Ambient Temp]. If the software writer uses an incorrect volume and/or gravity number in their base calculation it throws the result wildly.

Major brewing software has made (or still makes) these errors so we can't be too hard on others. We actually spent ages here scratching our head trying to match some major software whose formulas seemed to lack basic logic. We even wrote to Glen Tinseth to check our thinking. Months would have been saved if we had simply ignored major software or if the major software had stopped for a minute and seen that some of their key formulas actually made no sense .

The main point to take out of all this is that if the original formula authors had used clear, unambiguous terms, none of us would have any of these problems today. This is why you might have noticed this site spending a lot of time and energy carefully creating and building a new terminology base.

I think this was a good exercise to go through...

I think it is great to get to a stage where you know enough to be suspicious of recipes but simultaneously know that any all-grain you brew will usually taste fantastic. (I personally think that hidden/subtle infections or poor instruments are the cause of most crap beers.)

I think you are definitely good to go Ian. Looking forward to hearing how it turns out.


PP

maevans wrote:Also, the Donate button is still broken!

That is very nice of you to notice that maevans . From what I've heard, BIABrewer has to photocopy or scan a billion documents such as driver's licence, electricity bills, mission statements, bank statements, purpose of business and then send them to PayPal - ffs .

I'm sure great posts like yours make them feel their trouble is worthwhile so good on you .

Okay, let's go... (I need to fire three screens up for your question!)

While I am waiting for the third screen, my laptop, to open, I see straight away a worry in the original recipe. This is silly stuff. It's on the berdujour link. It has 'Batch Size' and 'Wort Size' being the same.

That is just not right.

..

I really have to bow out of this one sorry maevans. The more I look at the original recipe, the more problems I see.

Can anyone else here please explain to maevans the many problems of the original recipe, even though the source is a very well-respected one? I just deleted a few hundred words above because the problems just went on and on.

Maybe a few member here could just describe one problem? (Yeasty, Mad-Scientist, Mally might be some who could pick one of them many faults in that recipe report.)

What really annoys me is the fact that you have gone to a great effort maevans, have done a top job on the BIABacus and I am not really being of much help.


PP

P.S.. I really hope some others will be. It's the end of boil volume in Section D of 26.8 that they need to address as well as the bullshit original recipe report/format.

maevans wrote:Hello all,

Would anyone be able to sense check my recipe? Think I've got the hang of the biabacus!

I'm scaling down this recipe so its suitable for my little pot!: http://beerdujour.com/Recipes/Jamil/Jam ... lStout.htm

Hey meavans, This is the same recipe from his book "Brewing Classic Styles" page 168-170, but maybe an earlier post from the net. I have used the BIABacus to help me figure out the scaling (See Section X). Based on the book, page 41, uses 20.8 L into fermenter (See Section B). And Section D VAW is copied from Section K.

PistolPatch wrote: I really have to bow out of this one sorry maevans. The more I look at the original recipe, the more problems I see.

Can anyone else here please explain to maevans the many problems of the original recipe, even though the source is a very well-respected one? I just deleted a few hundred words above because the problems just went on and on.

Maybe a few member here could just describe one problem? (Yeasty, Mad-Scientist, Mally might be some who could pick one of them many faults in that recipe report.)

I think some differences detected from Jamil's ProMash report just didn't compute, e.g. "Batch Size (Gal): 6.00 Wort Size (Gal): 6.00". I also feel the 26.8 Tinseth IBU fits nicely to this style/OG per the book.

Most everything fell into place after the scaling, we can't expect Jamil to be a prophet, to have known the volumes to use for a BIAB.
MS
Richard

[EDIT: Sorry MS, I was writing the below while you were posting. Hopefully the below helps a bit. You'll be interested in the link I give towards the end ]

maevans wrote:I thought I was on to a winner with that recipe! I could be reading it wrong, but I took the 6 Gallons to be the Volume into Fermenter amount.

It lists the pre-boil wort size as 7.74 Gal, so allowing for 15% evaporation during boiling (as the recipe states) and then contraction as it cools, you'd probably end up near 6 gallons.

Mike, you are doing much better than me! How you are thinking above is right/correct. I've had some sleep now so let's see if I can be a bit more useful now.

Okay going along with your correct logic above, we would end up with 7.74 * .85 *.96 VAW This equals 6.32 gallons or 23.92 litres. So, in your file, change the VAW on the first line of Section D to 23.92 L (6.32 Gal). (Note this is not the final answer though. Read on..)

When you see batch size and wort size in Pro-Mash being equal, it usually means that the user has set their kettle to fermentor losses to zero. In other words, their chilled end of boil volume (our VAW) equals their Volume into Fermentor. It is strange that we have an almost 3 L discrepancy here. Is the VAW 23.92 L (6.32 Gal) or is it really 22.7 L (6.0 Gal)?

Let's Investigate this Further...

Putting a VAW in Section D when copying a recipe can give us two things. One is an estimate of the hop bitterness of the original recipe and the other is a colour estimate of the original recipe.

In the file attached below, I have typoed in the colours for the grains rom the original recipe. The oringal recipe estiamtes the colour of the wort to be 35.3 SRM but the BIABacus shows 34.1 SRM. However, if I change the VAW to 22.7 L, the BIABCus now estiamtes 35.3 SRM so...

We are going to set the VAW at 22.7 L. THis number actually works for most Jamil or Brewing CLassic Styles reipes but...

There is one last problem...

Look at the estimated IBU's in the BIABacus. It says 27.3. In the original recipe, it says 36.1. Usually we'd explain the difference as being due to different hop estimate formulas being used and normally this is the right answer but...

Recently I noticed that any Jamil or Brewing Classic Styles recipe I brewed was under-hopped. Most recipes I was brewing were lower IBU's such as Dortmunder or Munich Helles and I would still get silvers on these beers but the comments kept coming back, "Could be more hoppy." I then brewed an English IPA and this was totally under-hopped. This got me investigating and I have written my thoughts on this in this post.

For the reasons written there, I now recommend that if the IBU's in the BIABacus read lower than the IBU's given in BCS or given by Jamil, that you type in the higher IBU into the BIABAcus.

In the file below, you will see I have typed in 36.1 on the second line of Section D.

Great job on the file mike . With the additions I have made in teh file below, you should now be good to go.


PP

Mad_Scientist wrote:I also feel the 26.8 Tinseth IBU fits nicely to this style/OG per the book.

Sorry, my bad. A 26.8 IBU would be good if on the low side of the BJCP style guidelines for a 1.048 OG. A 36 IBU fits the 1.055 OG better.

PistolPatch wrote:[EDIT: Sorry MS, I was writing the below while you were posting. Hopefully the below helps a bit. You'll be interested in the link I give towards the end ]

For the reasons written there, I now recommend that if the IBU's in the BIABacus read lower than the IBU's given in BCS or given by Jamil, that you type in the higher IBU into the BIABAcus.

In the file below, you will see I have typed in 36.1 on the second line of Section D.

This makes perfect sense to me. Copying a recipe, from a Rager formula, produces an unexpected result on the BIABacus. The BIABacus did its job. In this case, 27.3 IBU Tinseth equals 36.1 IBU Rager in ProMash.

Since there's a lot of different programs and formulas, it's a good idea to evaluate/scrutinize the hop bill, if it's your intent to brew within a style guideline.