Mark, it looks like Yeasty and Simon have you sorted - good on 'em
,
There's a lot you and others have to battle with when starting out and some things you wrote above really highlight this. You have had to battle with...
1. Inconsistent answers from software.
2. Ambiguous terminology on other boards and in other software.
3. Inconsistent answers on other boards.
4. Faulty Recipes (even though written in a book!)
5. An initially scary looking spreadsheet.
This site is the only place you will find that recognises what a major problem the above is and that is working hard on trying to make things consistent, easy and logical for everyone. The hardest thing to get your head around is that 1 to 4 above actually exist in the first place. Obviously when the poor new brewer comes across 1 to 4 above, they naturally assume that they are just getting something wrong or missing something that must be obvious to everyone else
They aren't.
Let's look at the points above...
1. Inconsistent answers from software.
This is where, I think, most problems originated. In the early days, some commercial software came out that had some major errors in their formulas. For example, one major error that went on for many years in the most popular program was that bitterness and colour calculations were based on the 'Volume into Fermentor (VIF)' instead of the VIF plus kettle trub or what we call, 'Kettle to Fermentor Loss (KFL)'.What this meant was that the program would tell Brewer A who say had a VIF of 5 gallons and a KFL of 2 gallons per batch that they would end up with exactly the same colour and bitterness as Brewer 2 with a VIF of 5 gallons and only 1/2 gallon of KFL. It's not hard to see though that Brewer 1 would need a lot more hops to achieve the same bitterness levels.
Just coming to grips with the above major errors took a long time because the way that commercial software was designed combined with its lack of transparency makes the above error very hard to even notice.
If this error had been fixed when first pointed out, things would be a lot different these days. Like an unexamined weld in a water pipe in a wall, if you cover it with render and a cupboard, you won't notice how major the damage is until half your house is ruined.
The above errors were not examined and so those who realised that there was a problem, started to use the software in a different way from what was intended but in a way that would give them the right answers. For example, Brewer A above would call their "batch size" 7 gallons while Brewer B would call theirs 5.5 gallons and both would set their kettle trub to zero. For their "brewhouse efficiency" they would put in their 'kettle efficiency' while the poor new users would be typing in their 'fermentor efficiency'. This gave them the correct bitterness and colour calculations.
The above was the major cause of the problems we have today but we have found many other errors. For example, you can put exactly the same recipe into different programs and get different answers for the "Tinseth" IBU's. All software though should give an identical answer.
2. Ambiguous terminology on other boards and in other software.
This basically stems form the above. One person's understanding of batch size or brewhouse efficiency, even if they use the same program could mean two entirely different things.
One of the first, longest and hardest jobs taken on by this board was coming up with new unambiguous, fast to learn, terminology such as VIF and KFL.
3. Inconsistent answers on other boards.
A lot of this also stems from 1 above nut not all. On most boards, you'll notice an abundance of answers that may only be one or two sentences long. This creates a culture of fast answers. There have been recent studies done on just how bad fast answers can often be. They should come and do some study on brewing forums!
For example Mark, you were told about Liquor to Grain ratios on other forums but as Simon mentioned, these are irrelevant in BIAB. I remember when I started out (before BIAB) and would read stuff giving contradictory advice on sparging. It wasn't until much later, I could see that one person was a batch-sparger while the other was a fly-sparger. Did they mention that critical info in their posts? No.
Obviously I don't like saying it but most info you find on other boards is very ambiguous and often just wrong. (I've written a post on this
here.)
4. Faulty Recipes (even though written in a book!)
Most recipes on the net are dodgy at best. Read
this. That is hard enough to accept but when you find errors in books, it gets even harder to accept. For example, in the same thread as that post, look at
post #8.
That post shows how exactly the same recipe can give you three different IBU estimates
. How many new brewers, let alone experienced ones would be expected to know or understand that?
So, we have books getting published that don't tell us what formula (or software) they have used to do their calculations. The problems go much worse though once again probably mainly due to one above but also a lack of education or maybe even just laziness? For example, many books fail to provide detailed volume figures or AA%'s of the hops they have used. Let alone the fact that in an all-gain version of a recipe, you should use more hops than in an extract version. (This was my main warning sign in post#1. I can now see why they wrote it that way but the instructions are still wrong - no time to deal with that one in this post though).
5. An initially scary looking spreadsheet.
The BIABacus will look scary at first but just slow down, relax and have a beer and understand each section one by one. We could have made it look easy by doing what other programs do and spreading the information over many sheets. While that makes things easy to begin with, it makes things impossible down the track. From memory, all you need to understand when starting out are Sections B, C, D and K. That's it!!!
And, look out for red warnings.
(I stuffed this thread up initially because I didn't focus on the basics
).
[center]
What is Needed in a High Integrity Recipe?[/center]
The BIABacus Recipe Report gives all the critical information needed for anyone else using any other software to duplicate the recipe. The less information below provided in a software, book or forum post recipe report the lower the integrity of the recipe.
Volumes
Be Wary: When you see 'batch size'. It is a term used in most software but as seen above, it can mean anything these days.
What we Want: We want the equivalent of VIF plus KFL. What this equals is the amount of wort you would find in your kettle at the end of the boil once it was chilled to ambient temperatures. That is the most critical volume figure in a recipe and the hardest (often impossible) to find in other reports. We used to call it 'End of Boil Volume - Ambient (EOBV-A) but in the final BIABacus, we will be calling it 'Volume of Ambient Wort (VAW)'.
Gravity
Be Wary: No Original Gravity figure. Wtf? As linked above, recipes do exist even without this most basic of numbers.
What we Want: Original Gravity is the only gravity figure we really need but the more gravity figures, like any other numbers, as long as they are clearly defined, the better.
Grains
The Minimum: The percentages of the malts used are the minimum numbers we need.
What we Want: Weights are better as from these we can derive percentages anyway. An individual EBC or SRM colour value for each grain is best as well as a colour estimate for the batch.
Efficiency
Be Wary: If the recipe is just published with the word 'efficiency,' depending on other information given, it may be impossible to tell whether that number is a kettle or fermentor efficiency. If you cannot determine what type of efficiency the number means, it is meaningless. Be wary of recipe reports that say 70% or, more commonly, 75% efficiency as these numbers are often recommended by software providers as a "cover my arse," and subsequently handed on, unwittingly by users.
What we Want: A 'kettle efficiency' figure is what we need as a fermentor efficiency is totally meaningless unless we also know KFL. Kettle efficiency can be measured any time during the boil. The BIABacus allows you to determine kettle efficiency by either measuring the volume and gravity of the sweet liquor at the beginning of the boil or the volume and gravity of the cooled wort at the end of the boil. These will be known in the final BIABacus as 'Efficiency into Boil (EIB)' and Efficiency of Ambient Wort (EAW)'.
Hop Weights and AA%
Be Wary: If a recipe just gives hop weights, it is of very low integrity. Hops vary from year to year. Some years a hop variety can be very potent and the next year it might be extremely weak. If you just tell me to use 1 oz of hops, my beer could be 40% more or less potent, hop-wise, than yours.
What we Want: We want weights, AA%, the time the hop was added, how the batch was chilled and the VAW. WIthout the VAW we have to rely on...
IBU's
Be Wary: If a recipe you are copying just says 30 IBU's, it is quite meaningless.
What we Want: We need to know if the IBU's referred to were actuals measured in a laboratory or whether they were estimates calculated by a formula. Just go back to the first line of the first picture in
this post again and you will see how meaningless an IBU number without definition is. We need to know laboratory, Garetz, Rager or Tinseth. In all-grain we want laboratory or Tinseth.
Finishing Up
Mark, I am still worried that in all the above I think there are a few things that we haven't cleared up for you still.
Can you let us know what they are?
PP
P.S. We could probably get that "200 clone recipes" book of yours working for you (and all of us as well). What's the actual name of the book?
.
) and see if I can do a better job here. I've been trying to write a checklist for how to handle low integrity recipes for ages but it is really tricky. Maybe I'll crack it this time?
. That one took about four hours (and lots of light beer) to write 
. (Every post like that though brings us closer to writing something that might be useful for more people*.) 
.
. Looks like everything went well and I hope you didn't get in too much trouble for the blanket - hahaha.