oldwhiskers
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2013
- Messages
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I'm not sure I have everything entered correctly for my system, water, kettle, etc. It showed the pH for your entries when I pulled it up.
It's suddenly working fine again for me. I don't know what the original problem I had was. The only difference at my end is that I had moved everything over to a new/used lap top right before downloading 1.16. When I initially tried it it didn't work, then I remembered to set "Always Recalculate", and it still didn't work, but now it does. Perhaps it merely needed to go through a reboot after setting "Always Recalculate" to on?
It appears that the Malt Acid Type dropdown is not working (Columns E/F); the dropdown doesn't provide selection window.
Does the Water Volume calculation take into account expansion/contraction of the water from mash to boil to packaging?
What are the units for the Mash Tun Thermal Mass?
What does the thermodynamic constant represent and what are the units?
Thanks,
MT
My brewing hiatus lasted around 18 years. I hope yours doesn't last nearly that long.
I wish you well and offer my best wishes to you Derek as you transition. And thank you for the many contributions you have shared over the years. I look forward to hearing from you whenever you visit this forum.There is so much good beer in my area on a regular basis that i may never come back. I've always been more fascinated with the mechanics of the process and the theory and science. When that starts to wane I find less and less of a reason to be involved.
Looking good, can't wait to try it out!Well, I couldn't sit idle for as long as I thought.
v.1.20 will be dropping next week. Preview:
View attachment 630124
The most noteworthy additions are the Kettle pH calculations and the yeast section. I also added the Sinamar calculator to the color section and revamped the formatting.
Looking good, can't wait to try it out!
Just plugged by 2 - 10 gallon batches for the weekend in!! Thanks for the update!v1.20 is up.
Proceed with care when it comes to the Kettle pH calculations. I feel good about them but that's no reason to trust them blindly. Added some other features as well and reformatted.
Have at it.
Just plugged by 2 - 10 gallon batches for the weekend in!! Thanks for the update!
I will have to investigate this... My helles came in at a pH of 5.13 (I was shooting for 5.4). It wasn't first time using Avangard pilsner malt so that might be part of the problem. Thanks for your hard work!The Brewing Engine is back up and running.
v1.22 is the current version. I fixed a major error in the acid calculations so I urge anyone using an older version to update.
I will have to investigate this... My helles came in at a pH of 5.13 (I was shooting for 5.4). It wasn't first time using Avangard pilsner malt so that might be part of the problem. Thanks for your hard work!
MT
I asked the HBT admin staff to help me retire my old post:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/new-brewing-software.653060/
so that I could reintroduce a spreadsheet I've been working on. It's called "The Water Engine" and it's based on the background functions developed by A.J. deLange and incorporates my typical spreadsheet formatting and the Excel Solver. The Mass based and Percentage based grain input versions, along with help documents on enabling both the Excel Solver and Macros can be found here:
https://waterengine.yolasite.com/
The sheet is based in Metric, as all the background calculations are based in Metric, but i included a handy little conversion table in each sheet for people to use to convert the few important inputs needed from Standard to Metric.
I hope it turns out to be useful. Please report any issues you encounter directly to me. It is a simple sheet so any problems will be quick fixes i'm sure.
Enjoy!
What he's got up right now is at https://brewingtroubleshooter.yolasite.com/
Thanks!
Couple questions for dark beers specifically. I'm brewing an imperial stout.
1) If I'm brewing a dark beer with significant amounts of roasted grain, will this sheet give me better PH prediction than Bru'n water? For the same grain bill on an 11 gallon batch (very soft NYC water) Bru'n Water is telling me to add 20g of baking soda to hit my mash PH of 5.5 vs. WaterTroubleshooter only saying 8g to acheive 5.5 PH
Only by making two identical batches, with one using each softwares baking soda recommendation, combined with careful mash pH measurement done 30 minutes into the mash, and with pH measured at room temperature, can your answer (or just as likely, some other answer) be found.
Yeah... But what if i don't want to f*ck up my next batch?
I'm asking others based on their prior experience. I could obviously measure and test for the future but that won't do me much good for the next batch
I have found no software that is regularly even close for most beers. (Trusting software against my conditioned instincts did in fact cause me to f*ck up a batch this past weekend, even worse than usual when trusting software, dump the mash, and reset for an emergency brew the next day.) All of these calculators are dead on sometimes, but so is the proverbial broken clock. No offense to any of their authors. But the only method I trust at this point is what I've relied on since long before software was available: Start with conventional wisdom/ old brewers' rules of thumb; brew and take notes; incrementally refine batch by batch. Which is exactly how that conventional wisdom/ rule of thumb was generated, but not, it seems, how algorithms will be developed. I trust that someday software will be adequate to the task, but it is not yet. Data points generated in threads like these may contribute to development, but there is a long road ahead, I fear. If it was going to be easy, these Science boards here on HBT would be thousands of pages shorter (and I'd never have been drawn in and joined HBT.) But I agree: brew, test, and learn is the only sure prescription here. Sorry, @Unicorn_Platypus, I know that's not what you want to hear. Those who are really in the trenches, best of luck and carry on. I'm rooting for you.
Was just asking for friendly advice based on experience.
Sorry, that's what I was trying to give. Yes, the same parameters entered into different calculators give wildly different predictions, and, IME, all are likely to be wrong to different degrees in different cases. All are based on different assumptions and none has the whole picture. I feel your frustration. That's why I trust practical experience and am stepping back from expecting the available software to be of real help. Again, sorry I can't be of any greater assistance.
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