pist, keep playing....Pat and the other Founding Fathers have made a truly great website that wants to help us amateur brewers not beat them down.

rbcon2 wrote:I check my no chill plastic bottle, it is a 7 gallon not a 5 gallon. I changed the VIF to 26.00L

Welcome to the forum Roger.

Yes, that file is good to go. But download the latest version, PR1.3K, so we all can talk the same terminology.



MS

Roger, I guess you have a standard keg, US 15.5 gallon, plug these numbers into section b, 39.2 cm as kettle diameter and 42.4 cm as kettle height,,, then plug 4.3 L into section x under 'kettle shape volume adjustment', that is the amount of volume at the bottom before it starts to hit the straight sides. The kettle capacity becomes 55.5 L / 14.65 Gal. which brings the volume up to the welded seam. If you ever what to max out your keggle during a mash, it's okay to mash at the seam.

Have you cut out the hole yet?, if not, you can plan your cut so as to fit a 12" lid, like mine.

...just a few things here, Roger.

The third hop should be 0 mins., that will tell you how much hops to use.

The hop AA%'s should be changed in the substitutions column for what you have on hand.

You can sub a pale ale for JW Traditional Ale, or go with the MO.

I recommend using a 5 gallon paint strainer bag or your BIAB bag, then you can keep the 'Y' in Section G, as is. If it gets un-checked, you will notice the grain and hop bills change. It seems cleaner to me to do this with pellet hops. You can then pull the bag and squeeze it dry.

Blank out Sections L, M and N.

Cheers.

rbcon2 wrote:
One thing you could advise on, A digital temperature controller for controlling mini frig or freezer chest. I have a mini frig that will work in the short hall for a fermenting temperature controlled environment.

I have a Johnson Controls A419 on my upright freezer for fermenting;

Link example;
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/brew" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... oller.html

9/21/11 by Mad Scientist Brewhaus, on Flickr

...and one on my kegerator;

10/6/2011 by Mad Scientist Brewhaus, on Flickr

rbcon2 wrote:Hello MS,

I need clarification of this recipe. The check list refers to "Galaxy Hop" addition. The hop bill shows no reference to these hops. Please clarify this .

That is somebody else's file that wrote in the check list.

The file offered for download here; viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1869#p25993
doesn't have those check list notes.

Both files does refer to Galaxy as a substitution however, so if you look in Section D you will see Galaxy. I guess your file is different?

Zeptrey welcome aboard,

I would personally enter them as a 0min additions. The answer to your question really relies on a lot of variables. Do you no chill or chill your wort. If you do if so how long is your hot stand how long is your whirlpool for? If you do chill how long does it take to get below 170 or down to 65. All these will have impacts.

Hi Bob,

1.3T is the file to go for. The Div/0 error is being caused by you having a B beside all your grains. There should actually be nothing there. Only use a 'B' (meaning added during the boil) for sugars and extracts.

So, get rid of all those B's in Section C and all will be good. You'll also find that once you do that the two files will match very closely. There has been one correction made to the 'Total Water Needed - (TWN)' formula in PR1.3T which I am hoping will act as a better default.

I'll be around for a few more hours so if anything above is unclear, ask away.

zeptrey wrote:Could use a couple more Hop fields and how do you account for Hop Standing or Whirlpooling Hops? Another question in the same vein; if you whirlpool and don't pull the hopsack, to account for that time over ~170 F hops alpha acids are still isomerizing, so would you just add that time to the boil time for the rest of the hops? I'm probably making this way too complicated.

Not at all, this is a great question. I brew hoppy ales, and use hop stands for every one. There are many discussions here on the matter, which you should find with a quick search.

Basically, for a 30 minute hop stand between 175-212F ... I enter 12 minutes into the file to calculate theoretical bitterness. The addition is obviously at 0, but the 12 minutes has satisfied my taste-o-meter within this context. I didn't go at it blind though, this article claims 10% utilization rate to be reasonable, so I went from that.

Generally, 30 minutes after the boil on a homebrew scale ... temperatures will drop below isomerization range. I have hop standed the same beer for 30-80 minutes with no discernible difference in the final product. I also no-chill (hop particles removed) recipes that were previously chilled, and there is again no difference in bitterness.

For simplicity I generally only make a bittering addition, and then a flame out addition. This really makes it easy to calculate what might happen for a hop stand, so obviously a brew with a 20,15,10,0 hopping schedule would require more thought.

Also, my simple hopping schedule allows me to adjust my boil length without worry of boiling hops longer than planned.

Been happy with my hoppy ales, so I continue to brew them this way. Of course, we are all different so I don't expect you to brew like I do. Just felt like it was appropriate to explain my methods, because they really only apply to me and those who brew as I do.

If you were to disclose the context of your brew, we could have a discussion about how to enter it into your BIABacus in this thread.

[MODNOTE: zeptrey, please contribute to this thread to gain full access and further answers from the site.]

SIlentBob wrote:Thanks...
So with removing those does that mean the 'defaults' for that Amarillo Pale Ale recipe show a VIF limit of about 21L based on the 40L urn dimensions?
(without doing something like upping the expected OG and adding water afterwards)

That's correct Bob. (When you had all the B's there, the BIABacus thought those things were not in the mash.)

If you need 23 L into the fermentor, then go to Section W and play around with 'Water Added Before the Boil' and 'Water Added During Boil'. Adding numbers there, will however require you to use a little more grain because you are washing the grains in less water. The higher the liquor to grain ratio (see bottom of Section W) the better you can wash your grain and therefore the less you need.

When you play in Section W, look at the dynamics between the total grain bill required on the bottom right of Section C and the first three bolded volumes in Section K.

I'm not exactly in the loop here, and I'm currently using PR 1.3K – should I continue using that as the best beta, until there is an updated on the first posting in this thread?

+1 to more hop fields, though, I see how much of a headache that could cause with the spreadsheet organization!

rbcon2 wrote: I notice in the photos you provided that the Johnson controller you have is tied to a gauge with the rubber hose going through the freezer wall? What is the for and why are the two tied together?

I also ordered the controller which should be here next week.

That setup (gauge) is called a spunding valve and is tied in series with my corny kegs, for fermenting under pressure, see link; viewtopic.php?f=37&t=1933

2/24/2013 by Mad Scientist Brewhaus, on Flickr

9/21/2011 by Mad Scientist Brewhaus, on Flickr