Yes, absolutely. Enter same recipe into BIABacus and post it up here for us to give it a look.

Also, would be nice to see photos of your RIMS in the Electric BIAB thread

Peace

MS

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[Oops! MS has written above while I was writing the below. Hope I haven't doubled up!]

Welcome to the forum Carmine ,

That's a great first question as well .

BIABacus Can Handle Any Brewing Situation

Firstly, even though The BIABacus does not advertise it, it actually can handle any method of brewing whether it be pure full-volume brewing (which you are doing), all-grain that includes sparging (traditional all-grain brewing), and, even extract brewing.

So, the answer is, "Yes."

BIABrewer.info actually put a lot of suggestions and input into BeerSmith2 prior to its release. BIABrewer.info also wrote guides on BeerSmith2 and, for a short time, even sold it. Unfortunately, the time taken to explain various intricacies or errors in, not only BeerSmith, but with any brewing software resulted in it being far easier to create the BIABacus.

No Chill

No-chill is not associated with BIAB. Any "hot" brewer can no-chill (passsive chill is a better phrase) or actively chill.

Sometimes no-chill and BIAB are associated because both techniques were first questioned and investigated, on, at the time, a very popular home-brewing forum here in Ozland. The germs of BIAB started here and here.

Anyway, no-chill started there a year or so before BIAB

Before Going Any Further

If you already have your recipe ready to go with BeerSmith2, then, just go for it Carmine.

The BIABacus is, without doubt, despite it's spreadsheet form, far superior to any other brewing software and far more versatile. The info you'll get on this site, like-wise, BUT...

It is quite hard to brew a crappy all-grain beer, even if you are 20% wrong in your planning and 90% wrong in your knowledge (not saying you are btw). All-grain is delightful and you should always see it as that first.

So, I reckon just brew it.

...

Take some volume and gravity measurements, if you get time, during the process (let hot gravity samples cool and then pour them back into the kettle). Section L of the BIABacus shows you some opportunities where you can take measurements but it is hard to take all of them. Just make sure that any time you take a gravity measurement, you also take a volume measurement as, one, without the other, is meaningless.

To sum it all up, get brewing and let us know how you go.


PP

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Glad the above was of some help Carmine .

Something has been annoying me about this thread though. I've been and trying to find what was nagging me. At a first re-read, I thought my statement, "The BIABacus is, without doubt, despite it's spreadsheet form, far superior to any other brewing software and far more versatile," was what was nagging me, but, even though put forward arrogantly, that is actually true.

I've worked it out now, and it wasn't even a question you asked . In your first post, you referred to the "no chill method." We explored the history of that a little but not the practicalities. Here you go...

Some brewing programs make adjustments for no-chill, but, the calculations they do, are incorrect. It's a bit like me saying to you, I can't even think of a good analogy at present but here is a really poor one... "Bake your loaf of bread for 35 minutes and sprinkle it with sugar at the end of the bake." What we don't know is if the loaf is left to cool in the oven or is remnoved from the oven immediately. Yep, I know, it is the worst analogy ever, but, in brewing, and I'm not talking no-chill here, what happens at the end of the bake is anyone's guess...

I have a professional (in other words, he has run craft breweries) home brewer mate who lets his kettle sit for 30 minutes before he runs it through his chiller. Other brewers (including another pro brewer) will start their chill immediately, and, it could be with an immersion chiller or plate-chiller equivalent.

For software to try and make IBU adjustments before even asking how the brew was managed post-boil when there is no standard, is, and I hope you can see this, just nonsense.

You'll very rarely hear from another brewer, pro or home-brewer, how they manage their batch post-boil, but, for many styles, this is critical information should you want to copy their brew. (I first rattled on about this here.)

Anyway, two things: Unless brewing software allows you to record what chilling and hop management methods are used in a brew, that software should not even begin to think on adding "no-chill" adjustments; it is a total nonsense. The BIABacus, on the first two lines of Section G, allows the brewer to convey a lot of info, and, if needs be, that info can be supplemented in Section I.

...

I remember Section G taking ages and ages to write but can see a few improvements now I never saw before!

So, good question Carmine ,
PP

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BIABacus suitable for BIAB-like no-chill use?

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I read your post above the other day Carmine but never had a chance to reply until now. I really enjoyed the read and thanks for letting us know that you discovered the logic to the BIABacus .

On the no-chill (passive chill) versus active chilling, try not to get married to either method too much. See if you can have both methods at hand. (If you can afford a chiller, use an immersion chiller as they offer the furthest extreme from passive chilling). In other words, treat chilling methods as tools in your brewing tool-kit.

For example, there are some beer recipes that will benefit from fast chilling. Passive chilling can 'stew' the hops in such recipes. Another negative of passive chilling if you want to pitch within a day is that unless you passively chill in the kettle or fermenter, you have another vessel to clean and maintain.

Some styles, especially those that are not reliant on flavour and aroma hops, will have no negatives if passively chilled. And, if you can't actively chill but are brewing a recipe that is flavour and aroma hop driven, you can, on some recipes, first wort hop and dry hop to help in those areas. And, if you want to save the wort for weeks or even months, then passive chilling is your only option.

I passively and actively chill the same worts (double size batches - first half into a no-chill cube and the second half actively chilled) but have, very stupidly, over the last few years brewed too much beer which has meant that I have left my no-chill cubes sit for far too long. Beers like a Schwartzbier do well with no-chilling. Other beers I have done have changed from APA's to Cream Ales as I have left them so long. (Quite a few I have thrown out after almost two years but I think this was more to do with dodgy seals than anything else).

What I'm trying to say is that we all have different brewing needs/wants but we all have access to quite a lot of tools/methods. As one of my sisters said, being married to one tool can really limit you.


PP

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