I'm pretty much incapacitated atm Scott (everything in my body is sore, including my brain!) but thought the following post might help everyone...
Talking in Analogies
I taught thinking skills for nearly 15 years and one of the most efficient ways of teaching is to use analogies. This thread is a good example of how an analogy can be used to create understanding. The whole point of this site (and a tool such as the BIABacus) is to provide knowledge plus understanding (wisdom).
All the answers above are correct (good on ya guys
) but I'm hoping that this post might not only help you with your understanding but also help the most generous members above maybe answer questions like yours faster (probably take them more time actually
).
Firstly
The BIABacus works on best practices in it's design. In other words, it's based on the principle, I want to make this beer, what do I need to do it? To put it more simply, let's pretend the BIABacus was a simple instant coffee designer. You would type in that you like two teaspoons of sugar in your coffee and that a teaspoon equaled 5 grams and your coffee mug held 225mls of hot water. No matter what sort of size or shape teaspoon or coffee mug someone gave you, the BIABacus would make sure you always ended up with the coffee you like.
///// Ignore next bit.
Every other bit of brewing software (my brain has had it atm but I'm pretty sure this is absolutely correct) asks you to add ingredients first and then says, "That's a bit more sugar than you like" or "That's a bit more instant coffee than you like" etc, etc. It becomes a game of twenty questions and it is done because it makes the programming extremely easy. It is not only at the expense of having to play twenty questions but it is also at the expense of reflecting reality.////
Tried to adjust the BIABacus and when I took the original recipe and adjusted the steeping malts so that it reflected 0.5 and 0.25 in the final recipes, it cut down the pale ale malt. This didn't make sense to me.
Imagine if you liked two teaspoons of sugar in your coffee but you liked 1.0 tsp of white sugar, 0.75 tsp of brown sugar and 0.25 tsp of raw sugar. If you added 1 tsp of brown sugar and 0.5 tsp of raw sugar, your "CoffeeAbacus" would say, only add 0.5 tsp of white sugar please to get the same level of 'sweetness' you desire. Other coffee software would just result in you ending up with a much sweeter coffee.
A real understanding
What worries me mainly about this thread though Scott is that I want you to be seeing that a beer recipe works more on percentages of malts rather than weights. That is the first major understanding and one that all other software actually totally fucks up in many ways. (Check this site for posts on "colour versus flavour" for one of the less obvious examples). The hops side is a tad more complicated but my interest in your question is to get you back to basics. The BIABacus tells you what weight of what quality hops to add. This should be easy but your last post above tells me there is something we are not teaching you properly*.
Let's keep this thread going Scott until things snap into place**
,
PP
* Going back and adjusting the original recipe is the equivalent of pushing your hydrometer down in the jar (or pulling it up) until you get the right reading.
** I'll make this the only thread I read atm but please don't expect a reply. The above's done me in for a few days at least (I think I have Ross River virus or something). The guys who have answered here already can hopefully help but, then again, long answers take so much time.
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