
Yep, that is fine. You can open, change and use it in OpenOffice and LibreOffice without any problems at all as long as you remember to always save it as .xls. As for that warning thing, you will get that even if using Excel. It's really just telling you that you are saving it in an older format. Forget about italanem wrote:PP The BIABacus file I have now attached... I saved it in Open Office as XLS

So the file you attached is great! The only thing that happen when you use OpenOffice or LibreOffice is the colours get changed a bit. All formulas, protection, everything else stays the same.
As for a blank BIABacus, finding the latest one is a bit hard atm as time has not been on our side. All you have to do though to get a blank is delete the fields in any BIABacus. I'll attach a blank PR1.3I for you here though


The Plan
Here are the key points. (Forget the small decimal places below. I am just putting them in to prevent distortions).
1. Fill Kettle A with 12.25 L of cold water and heat to 72.6 C. At this point, that water will have expanded to 12.49 L (see SWN in Section K).
2. Add bag and 3835 grams of grain to the Kettle.
3. Mash this for 30 minutes.
4. Whilst Kettle A is mashing, fill Kettle B with 12 litres of cold water (see 'Water Used in a Sparge' in Section W) to 66 C.
5. After 30 mins, pull the bag from Kettle A, giving it a quick squeeze. Dump the bag into Kettle B. The bag will remain in Kettle B whilst Kettle A undergoes a boil so make sure you insulate Kettle B as best as you can.
6. Add 2.5 L of cold water (or 2.6 L of boiling water) to Kettle A and bring it to the boil. (See "Water Added Before the Boil" in Section W.)
7. Thirty minutes into the boil, make you r first hop addition. This will be one half of 12.5 grams i.e. 6.25 grams.
8. Continue to make "half" the hop additions as appropriate ie 20 mins before boil end and then again at the boil end.
9. At the end of the boil, place the lid on this kettle and put it somewhere to cool. (Consider chilling it in the laundry sink if you want a fast chill.)
10. Now remove the bag from Kettle B after giving it a squeeze.
11. Bring Kettle B to the boil.
12. Add the other "half" of each hop addition as and when required during the boil.
13. At end of boil, put lid on kettle and no or fast chill as required.
14. When cooled to pitching temp, carefully decant wort from each kettle into fermentor and pitch.
That's it

In the BIABacus file, there is a Y beside Hopsock in Section Y. If you carefully decant (transfer) the wort from the kettles to the fermentor, you should get similiar trub results as if you did use a hopsock.
I decided on 30 minutes for the first "mash" as the figures I have kept on past brews shows that 30 minutes into a 90 minute mash gets you about half-way to your gravity goal.
The only problem with this whole scenario is that you won't be able to take any meaningful volume or gravity readings until you get everything into the fementor but that is no big deal. For future reference though, if you do get time, it would be valuable to collect some volume and gravity reading at the beginning and end of each kettle's boil. Don't make it a huge priority though.
Initially I said this would only be about 20-25 mins longer than a normal brew day. I was probably drunk or something. It will actually add about 40 minutes to the brew day assuming it takes 10 minutes for you to get from mash temperature to boiling point.
Hope this all makes sense Al

PP