PistolPatch wrote: ↑

6 years ago

Has anyone written to Greg Hughes and asked him to explain what his numbers are based on? What software he's using? Has anyone got time to ask him?

http://www.biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=3230

Ting tong had some info here that may help?

Your file indicates a 36.6L kettle, is that correct? Yet you say 27L.

I'll have another look tomorrow Miles*. (Thanks for the link mally; will review that as well )

Meanwhile, Miles, the question MS asks above is a good and very important one. If your Kettle matches the dimensions in your BIABacus file, your kettle will hold 36.6 L.

As for the pic, yep, that came up fine.

Besides answering Mad_Scientist's question, the other important thing is to let us know if you've read the "stickies" I mentioned in an earlier post. Scott also mentioned one of those stickies, Clear Brewing Terminology, which, for example, defines Mash Volume. (If the definition there is not clear, just copy it here and someone will expand on it.)

* I said I'd look tomorrow, but it's probably more appropriate I wait until you give more info on the above.


PP

Sorry for the slow reply Miles, I had to do microsurgery on my motherboard

Stockpots are often labelled for what weight/volume their handles will support while carrying them. The BIABacus gives you the real volume.

I think the best bet for you would be to let us know what beer styles you like and we'll give you a recipe or...

If you have Wheeler's book, I know that there are some of his recipes on the site that have already been calculated, especially in this thread. Go towards the top of this page and type 'Graham Wheeler' into the "Search this topic" box and see how you go.

And, read more of the stickies so as you know what recipes have "integrity" and which ones don't

Hey Miles,

Let me take a stab at helping you again on this...

On the BIABacus I would fill out other areas necessary (sections E through H...and maybe I) should you like the final result of this beer - to be able to repeat it in the future. This includes mash temperatures and times, yeast, etc. We normally like to mash for 90 minutes total and do a 90 minute boil. Doesn't mean you can't make good beer with reduced times, just that "best practice" is to extend this for best final result. Longer boil time will also give more evaporation, so hopefully the pot is large enough to allow this. Looks like you are good to go, and could even brew a larger volume batch if desired.

I can't vouch for the recipe and our ability to copy it. BUT...following others' comments on this thread, it sounded like others helped to dial in what everything meant so to be able to copy the recipe. (???) Seems fairly close. If you are close, what the heck, give it a whirl... At a minimum it will make beer, similar to the recipe you are trying to follow. Could be good. Give it a shot and for certain let us know how you like it.

Certainly following a good recipe when fairly new is preferred to just guessing yourself. And later too... My wife is a great cook, but although she could probably do it, seldom throws things together without referring to a good recipe. It's the same with high quality recipes in brewing. I like the BCS Book (Brewing Classic Styles) because of the ability we have to know how to copy the recipe and what high quality they all are. Something about THIS recipe intreagued you at the start... My recommendation - get as close as you can and take a swing at it. Give it a try. Do follow our "best practices"... See what you think. Might be great. Then for the future, also pick up that BCS book. Add it to your resources in your recipe cache.

I hope this works. Seems like you are within 15 minutes of finishing setting up your BIABacus, being done with recipe formulation, purchasing ingredients and giving it a go!

Hey Guys!!!

Just finished drinking my second batch of Charlie Papazian's Silver Dollar Porter based on Mad_Scientist's interpretation of the recipe:
http://biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php?f=5 ... ter#p44891
It is yum so I thought I would give another Papazian recipe a try. Using MS' technique, I entered the Phat Fired Weizenbock recipe (Joy of Home Brewing, ed. 3, pg. 309) into the Biabacus -- the recipe grain bill balances for a setting of VIF = 17.0 L.

Question: If I want 18.92 L VIF (5 gallons), can I now just enter that value? Or do I need to do something else?

Thanks,

Steve

I think your fermentation is out of control Steve

Mad_Scientist wrote: ↑

6 years ago

I think your fermentation is out of control Steve

Ah ha! Got your attention, MS

shetc wrote: ↑

6 years ago

Hey Guys!!!

Just finished drinking my second batch of Charlie Papazian's Silver Dollar Porter based on Mad_Scientist's interpretation of the recipe:
http://biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php?f=5 ... ter#p44891
It is yum so I thought I would give another Papazian recipe a try. Using MS' technique, I entered the Phat Fired Weizenbock recipe (Joy of Home Brewing, ed. 3, pg. 309) into the Biabacus -- the recipe grain bill balances for a setting of VIF = 17.0 L.

Question: If I want 18.92 L VIF (5 gallons), can I now just enter that value? Or do I need to do something else?

Thanks,

Steve

No one?

How'd we miss you shetc? Sorry Steve!

I'm not sure what you mean by MS's technique? When you say the grain bill balances at 17.0L, that doesn't necessarily mean you have the original recipe interpreted correctly; in fact, it's not sounding quite right to me. It's hard for me to tell without seeing the original recipe and your file.

With external recipes (non-BIABacus ones) what you are trying to do really is discover the VAW (Volume of Ambient Wort) of the original recipe. This is very really given in external recipes. Here's the typical situation we are faced with....

VAW = VIF + KFL
VIF (Volume into Fermenter) = Usually some "batch size" figure is supplied but we don't know if that means VIF or VAW
KFL (Kettle to Fermenter Loss) = Pretty much never given
EIK (Efficiency into Kettle) = Usually not given but if an "efficiency" percentage is given, we don't know if it is EIK or EIF
Grain Bill = Given

So, what we have to do is some intelligent guessing. Here's the first method I try...

1. Type in grain bill and weights on left of Section C
2. In Section W, change KFL to zero and set auto-efficiency to 75%* if no "efficiency figure has been given
3. If a "batch size" is given, type that into VIF in Section B

* This effectively turns the VIF in Section B to VAW. 75% is the most common % users tend to use in "static" software (other brewing software).

If, after doing the above, the right hand weight in Section C matches the left, then you would be in the very rare situation in which the original recipe author meant "batch size" = VAW (not VIF) and the efficiency figure they supplied (or the 75% you guessed at) means EIK.

It's usually much harder than that though (often impossible) and requires a bit of knowledge of not only the poor terminology used but also the different ways in which other software can be used. It's a massive mess.

Let's say you did get things balancing with the above, then what you would do is type the VAW you have determined into the top of Section C, delete the zero and 75 you typed in Section W and then finally, over-write the VIF in Section B with the volume you want.

Of course, all this would be totally unnecessary if all recipes were published with VAW. (That and the grain bill weights is all that is needed.)

So mate, I'd need the original recipe and your file to check if your "guess" of the original recipe's VAW looks okay.

Once again, really sorry you had to wait so long. Oops!


Pat

SamEyes - go for it. Post your BIABacus file and see what happens.

Even though things have been slow around here with only Scott & I replying to a number of recent posts, I am sure there must be others who will give your file a look.
(If that doesn't stir up a hornets' nest, I don't know what will)

I may not have the best answers, but I will try. You know, anybody can jump in and participate.....

[mention]SamEyes[/mention] [mention]ShorePoints[/mention] [mention]Scott[/mention]

(Normally I answer a lot of questions here but I've been unable to lately. What I can say, is that it has been an absolute pleasure today to read through SP's and Scott's answers on the forum. Trust their advice so....)

As SP said, SamEyes, post your file up

Hi again Pinchons,

Once again, I'm headed for bed . Before I do, a few things...

You mention, "our recipe is not for BIAB." That doesn't matter at all. It's simply an all-grain recipe and any all-grain recipe needs "translation" unless the author of the recipe just happens to be sending it to another brewer with exactly the same equipment.

And don't be worried about your humble equipment. [mention]kostass[/mention] from Greece who I spent ages with on Skype working on BIABacus stuff is now opening his own micro-brewery! When we were working on BIABacus stuff, he was actually brewing the tiniest batches ever on a tiny stove!

Yesterday I mentioned filling out Sections A, B, C and D of the BIABacus and posting it up. In your post above, you have all the info needed to do that so, give it a try and post up the file.

Here's some hints...

Kettle (35cm*35cm - diameter*height) [Put that in Section B]
5,07 Kg (90%) Malt Pilsen 3 EBC [Put that in Section C]
0,28 Kg (5%) Malt Carapils 3-6 EBC [Put that in Section C]
0,32 Kg (5%) Malt Cara Red 70 EBC [Put that in Section C]
Mashing 90 mins 67 ºC [Put that in Section E]
Boiling 90 mins a 100 ºC [Put that in Section B]
Density before Boiling: 1046 (This is OG right?) [No. Leave that out.]
Hersbrucker 31 gr 60 final mins [Put that in Section D]
Tettnanger 31 gr 15 final mins [Put that in Section D]
Curaçao (Bitter orange peel) 15 gr 20 final mins [Leave that for me]
Cilantro (Coriander) 10 gr 10 final mins [Leave that for me]
Ibus 25 [Put that in Section D - second line]
Initial Volume: 24,0 l. [I'm guessing that is Volume into Fermenter so put that in Section B]
Initial Density : 1058 [That's your OG. Put it at the top of Section C]

I look forward to waking up and seeing your first BIABacus attempt tomorrow Pinchons
You'll learn a bit just by typing the above in. In fact, there will be very little else to do.


PP

That's great Pinx - nice job Let's have a look and see what we find...

The first thing is we see The BIABacus throwing up red warnings so we want to check those out first.
The warnings are indicating that we're asking too much from a kettle of that size. We all know it would be impossible to produce 200 litres of beer from a 33.7 litre kettle! But, how much can we get?

When our kettle is too small for the amount of beer we want, something has to give. We have to do one or more of the following: lower the volume we want, decrease the quality, increase the ingredients and/or increase the labour/time we spend on the brew. Here are three posts that might help with understanding this...

Sweet Liquor Shop 1
Sweet Liquor Shop 2
Sweet Liquor Shop 3

If your kettle is large enough for the brew you want, then none of the above has to be considered. Everything is easy. But, we're not in that situation so we have to make some decisions on what to compromise on. There are no right or wrong answers on what to compromise on. For example, one brewer might be happy to simply lower the Desired Volume into Fermenter to a size that suits the kettle (see Belgian 15 L pic). Another brewer may go to extremes and put as much water in to the mash as the kettle will take, then, after mashing, remove the spent grain to a second vessel and then sparge with as much water as is possible so as their boil starts with the kettle full (see Belgian 21A L pic). Another brewer might not want to muck around with a second vessel and sparging and instead, add water before and during the boil (see Belgian 21B L pic).

Notice how the grain needed for 21A is 6065 grams and for 21B it is 7075 grams? In other words, the second method costs an extra kilo of grain but avoids any mucking around with a second vessel and sparging.

You could even get 24 L as indicated in Belgian 24 pic.

It's up to you to decide what area/s to compromise on but for this post...

I'm going to work on 21B

Sections A, B and C (and Section W) are all sorted. The only real problem we have left to solve is Section D.

In Section D, we don't have the AA% of the individual hops used and for the reasons listed here, the "25 IBU's" doesn't really help us.

I've played around with a few things (such as using the average AA% for Hersbrucker and Tettnanger, 3.5% and 4.5%) but I'm not getting the numbers to balance.

Pinx, can you post up the actual .bsm file (BeerSmith file) you are working from? I think we are going to need it.

I'll wait for your reply before going any further. All the other stuff is easy.

I also know there is a lot to absorb above. Unfortunately, when your kettle isn't as big as you need for the amount of beer you want, things do get tricky. On a positive note though, the BIABacus is the only software that is capable of handling that trickiness .

We're nearly there
PP

Lol Pinx

I hope my last post didn't throw too much info at you in one hit - it is hard info to take on.

If you're happy to go with "dilution" config, we'll work with that. Note though, that you can change your mind on that config at any time and the BIABabacus will adjust everything accordingly.

So, how do we go on?

What I've done, just now, is some Googling using combinations of keywords such as "Belgain saison" "clone" "carapils" "tettnanger" "belle saison" etc. But, I didn't have any luck in gaining information with that so...

We are in a situation where we lack clear information and direct access to the original recipe. Normally, I'd initially deal with this problem by researching the style however the "saison" style is massively broad so, we can't really gain any ground with that strategy. Another strategy, for you, is if you know a commercial example of what you wish to brew, you can research that and get some info or even a recipe clone. So, consider that and come back to me if you have any luck and then we can utilise that information.

The only strategy I have, and this is fine, is to explore the information we have a bit more. Often the terminology used or some of the numbers given, can help me identify what software was used. If I can work that out, then I can often get the numbers to "balance" or make sense. (This is not a skill that you should need to acquire and you don't want to because it involves knowing all the nuances, errors, etc in a heap of different software and even publications.) So, let me have a bit of a play-around...

Okay, the play-around has given me a feel for the type of software that was probably used for the recipe. I won't write on this as it's too confusing. (Later, if you want more info, a search of posts written by me that contain the phrase "recipe detective," would give you some insights into this process. Don't search for that now as you'll just blow your brain up .)

You may be worried that the BIABacus is showing the recipe will have 17.5 IBU's instead of the 25 the original recipe says. This could be due to one or a combination of the following:

1. The original recipe's hops were from a harvest that had higher alpha acid yields than normal.
2. The original recipe's software uses an incorrect IBU formula which works on Volume into Fermenter instead of Volume of Ambient Wort. This error over-estimates the IBU's.
3. The original recipe's software contains a second error in the IBU formula where Gravity into Boil is used instead of Gravity of Ambient Wort. This error also results in an over-estimation of IBU's.
4. The original recipe's software used the Rager formula rather than Tinseth, which for several recipe types can, once again, over-estimate the IBU's.

We have no way of knowing which or how many of the factors above apply and this can be disheartening but don't let it be . For a start, all-grain recipes are really forgiving. It's not serious if you stuff up the hop bill, the resulting beer will still be a pleasure. On a second brew of the same recipe, you might decide to lower or increase some things. It's definitely not worth worrying about.

In the file I've written the hop bill as an educated guess but I'm not familiar with the style so, feel free to delete the 24 L I wrote at the top of Section D and instead, on the next line, type in an IBU figure but don't go higher than 25.

All that then remains for you to do in Section D, is find out the Alpha Acid percentage of the hops you will be buying and type that in on the right-hand side of Section D.

The Rest of The BIABacus

In Section E, you have that you are mashing at 100 °C. Mashing at boiling point would be a disaster .

As I mentioned above, saison is not a style I'm familiar with however I did brew one a year or so ago last year using help from other members of this forum and it was excellent. After reviewing their advice which began here and the final recipe (which under credits I have written [mention]Contrarian[/mention] , Brewing Classic Styles and Gordon Strong), I've entered the following:

Section E: 67 °C on first line plus some other things (see Section I below).

Section H: What you want to do here is pitch at 20 °C and keep it there for say two days until high krausen comes. After that let the temp increase about a degree per day for 8 days. (That equals ten days but on my I would have let the ferment go for 14 days, probably gradually lowering it back down. My notes are not as good as they should have been )

Also in Section H, although your original recipe says 86.2% attenuation (it doesn't say if that is real or apparent attenuation which are two different things) I've set the apparent attenuation to 90%. (I set that for the batch I did which, like your recipe, contained no sugars, just grain. It came out at 89.6%. Rarely you'll get estimated numbers match actuals!)

Section I: This is a really interesting mash schedule.

Okay, I think that's it for now. Phew!
PP