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Q. How many Fields must I Complete to 'Start' the BIABacus? Answer. Five[/center]
On a first glance, the BIABacus will seem daunting however, once you become familiar with it, you will find it is incredibly fast and flexible. For example, one common question is, "Is my kettle big enough?" Let's take a look at that one common question...
There are actually only five fields you need to complete to get this answer. Six, if you want to trigger the warnings. The following picture shows these fields. 'Kettle Height,' in Section B is marked with a dotted arrow. It is not essential but it would be silly not to type this number in.
BIABacus - Trigger.JPG
Let's say you have a stock pot shaped kettle that is 40 cm (15.75 ") wide and 40 cm (15.75 ") deep. Typing these two numbers into Section B will tell you that your kettle has a capacity of 50.3 L (13.28 G). Let's assume that you want to boil for 90 mins and that your fermentor safely handles 23 L (6.08 G). Let's also say that the brew you wish to do has an Original Gravity of 1.050 and is all-grain (no sugars or extract). Here is how your BIABacus should look now...
BIABacus Trigger 2.JPG
All you have done is fill in the four fields in Section B, 'Original Gravity (OG)' in Section C and type, '100' into the first, 'Grams,' field in Section E.
[SIDE NOTE: On your BIABacus, at the bottom of Section E, you should see a red warning that says,
Percentages have been used above so no original colour estimate. Weight
or percentages can always be used in Section E.]
There are no red warnings at the bottom of Section B so you can conclude that you can safely full-volume BIAB 23 L into your fermentor of a 1.050 all-grain recipe. Another thing you will see is that in Section F, it tells you that you will need about 5362 grams (11.82 #) of grain for such a brew.
I have those six numbers typed in. What else can I learn?
A lot can be learned and built on from just those numbers. For example, if you jump over to Section O, "Your Estimated Volumes," you will see estimates of every volume figure from the, 'Total Water Needed (TWN),' through to your estimated, 'Volume into Packaging (VIP). (Please see
the Brewing Process and Terminology Chart for more explanation.) With our original numbers, it should look like this...
BIABacus Trigger 3.JPG
You might also ask, "What's the most I can safely brew of such a recipe?" If you type, 24.6L (6.5 G) into the, 'Desired Volume into Fermentor (VIF)' field in Section B, all looks good. Now type in, 24.7 L (6.53 G). You'll now see the warning,
WARNING: Mash Volume approaches kettle limits. Type in, 28L (7.4 G) and you'll see,
WARNING: Mash volume exceeds kettle size.
[SIDE NOTE: When changing VIF above you will have probably noticed that your cursor jumps to an inconvenient location of the BIABacus. This is one of the limitations that a spreadsheet has. Some spreadsheet programs allow you to change them so that upon pressing Enter, the cursor does not move. Do this if possible. Otherwise, with some practice, you will learn to use the mouse rather than your Enter button to navigate.]
Another question you can answer is, "What's the biggest beer I can full-volume BIAB with my equipment?" Set your VIF back to 23 L. Now go to Section C and keep increasing your OG until you see a warning. Your first warning will be triggered at an OG of 1.064.
Playing the Game of Twenty Questions
If you put in the diameter and width of your own kettle, you'll notice that to get the answer to the last two questions above, you have to keep typing in numbers by trial and error until you see a warning triggered. When you have to do this, we call it, "having to play the game of twenty questions."
The less you have to play this game the better.
The two questions we explored above are, 'one-off,' questions. A unique feature of the BIABacus is that you will rarely find a need to play this game. All major brewing software we have explored requires continual employment of this game for it to function correctly. This is a very subtle but incredibly convenient and useful feature of the BIABacus.
One Layer of Many
The above shows one of the first layers of the BIABacus. Many of you will need nothing more. If you see warnings pop up though with your equipment, you will need to firstly explore Section K and L. If warnings still persist, you will need to explore the Maxi-BIAB Adjustments section.
Learning any new software takes time and can be difficult. If you have any trouble with the BIABacus, do not hesitate to post your questions to
this thread.
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