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z987k

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I love this little app. What's great is it's FOSS and is available for XP, OSX and any other unix/linux.

You can also add your own styles and if an ingredient isn't in there, you can add those to.

Anyone else use it?
 
I've played around with it just a little bit. How do you add your own ingredients to it? I was going to put in a recipe a while back that required pale malt extract, and couldn't find it. It would be good to know how to add the ones that I don't find on it.
 
Never mind the previous question. I played around with it some at lunch and it looks pretty easy to add the new ingredients. New question though. Is there a good website to get the specifics on ingredients? E.g. the SRM value of pale malt extract.
 
Not that I have run across, but I haven't looked for one either. I'd be willing to bet there is one out there somewhere.
 
bradsul said:
The wiki has a malts chart but nothing for extracts. If you find anything please post so we can update the wiki.

I could give some close numbers for the malts, but in my experience not all malt is the same color.
 
I use Qbrew as well. There is a new, enhanced version of it due any day now.
 
yeah, I think I have it. Version 0.3.9?
It was the version in the repositories when I upgraded Ubuntu, so thats the one I installed. The newest on their site is 0.3.5.
 
Thank you for telling me that. I switched from FC to Ubuntu and I hadn't reinstalled Qbrew. I was about to build it from source. I'm running 0.3.9 now too.

However, that isn't the upgraded version. The upgraded version is going to have a calculator for mash volume, strike temps, etc. I don't see it on 0.3.9.

Linux rocks !
 
yeah 0.3.10 is on there if you want to build from source. I am actually helping the guy out a bit by adding a **** load of stuff to the qbrewdata file because well it's missing a lot of hops and grains, especially specialty grains. Now only if I knew how to program in qt.
 
yeah I think the latest requires qt4. But any package manager should take care of that for you.
 
z987k said:
yeah 0.3.10 is on there if you want to build from source.
There are also snapshots of 3.10 that are pre-compiled. I just downloaded the Windows snapshot and installed 3.10 on my laptop.

And it doesn't look like any of the advanced calculators made it into the 3.10 release yet (at least not in the snapshot). All I could find was the Alcohol Tool and Hydrometer Tool.

I am having some difficulty using this new relase. For some ingredients, it is impossible to change the parameters. For example, if you add the first hop to the recipe, you can select the type, but not the quantity, alpha acid, time, etc. If you add a second one, then it works. Strange.

I guess I will just go back to an earlier version. Does anyone have a link to the Windows installer for version 3.09? I can't seem to find that version.
 
Flyguy, I've had the same problem with the latest. I actually ended up going back to the earlier version.
 
I just downloaded it and I like it. It's given me a better understanding of hop additions (the one thing I seem to have neglected as "not important" out of noobiness)

I don't see anything re: mashing but it looks nice for recipe formulation.
 
I run Debian GNU/Linux "Sid" and love that this application is mainained and packaged. :)

I've contacted the author of this application (David Johnson) and he plans on continuing it's development. :)

Are there features you guys would like to see added to this? Because i refuse to touch stuff that doesn't come with source code and rights to modify it, I haven't used restrivtive versions of stuff like ProMash and BeerSmith. I've got a decent programming background, thought no QT4 experience and I'd like to learn by trying to expand this application and submitting patches upstream. :)
 
well it needs more grain and hop types added. I think I have at least 20 I've added via the xml file. Right now the version packaged for ubuntu - 0.3.9 has a bug where if you save a recipe and open it later it only shows the top grain/hop in their respective tabs.
I also have little programming experience and can only really get around with files that are plain text or make sense to me. I took a class on java so I can do some stuff with that.

So basically a little java, bash scripts, config files, xml and stuff like that.
 
anyone using 0.4.0? I updated ubuntu to 8.4 and it came with qbrew 0.4.0 and it's got a very big problem. When you change the mash efficiency, it doesn't effect the estimated OG at all. That is given an amount of grain, and 70% eff or 90% eff, it gives the same estimated OG. That basically ruins it for recipe formulation.
 
figured I'd post back, after upgrading to 0.4.1 it fixes the efficiency bug. Note to ubuntu users, .4.1 is not in the repository yet and they're horribly slow at updating this app in the repository to you have to compile it yourself.

Also as of this release there are still no mash tools.
 
For some reason, QBrew will not run on my XP (Media Center Edition) computer. I get an error message saying that the program is not configured properly and to try re-installing. I've tried the various compatibility modes, etc, but no luck. Any ideas?
Thanks!

Chris
 
I played around w/ qbrew a bit, but when I did I was still VERY new at brewing and had no idea what I was doing, and found it a bit too difficult to use. I've been using BeerAlchemy for a while and really like it, it was a bit easier to use and taught me a lot. I'd be willing to play w/ qbrew a bit more now that I have some experience...
 
I am new to brewing and am really liking qbrew. Would any of you with data additions like to share? When you add data it gets put into a .qbrewdata file in your home directory. If you could post it or email it to me that would be great (will PM address). I could make a patch and send it to the qbrew author.

Thanks,
-Rob
 
I've been using QBrew to calc some recipes and I have an Ordinary English Bitters in mind.

But "hitting" the style numbers requires I have about 3.25 gallons of bottle-able product.

So when using QBrew to figure out your values, is the batch size equal to what you want to have left, or what you start with?

I ask this because I want to have enough brewing water to account for evaporation (15% per hour) and trub absorption (~5%).

I'm trying to compensate for coming up short at the end of the process.
 
So it looks like development on this application has ceased, as the last update was back in, what, `08? I've downloaded the source and am starting to look through it, but I'm not familiar at all with the different brewing softwares available and the required/desired feature sets. If you were going to add one thing to qbrew, what would it be? What about two things? I want to get a feel for what I can do to improve this software.
 
Sounds like the perfect feature for me to play around with the software with! Great suggestion, I'll see what I can do.

Sent from my HTC Vision using Home Brew Talk
 
Has there been any further development with this program? I'd love to keep using it but it is getting kind of old.
 
I've been adding tons of ingredients, malts, extracts and yeast to the database to keep it up to date with what's available today. It's free and you can download it with the link below

qBrew - Homebrewers Recipe Calculator

I've added additional support for non-Windows users and there's even a video tutorial to help you get started. qBrew is easy to use and perfect for doing basic what-if recipe calculations.
 
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