MLT Size Spreadsheet / Can I mash it / What tun should I get?

After enjoying the 5/10/13/15.5 gallon gif that was in the thread:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/how-big-your-mash-tun-needs-123585/

and seeing that the main image got lost and later attached 20 pages deep...
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/how-big-your-mash-tun-needs-123585/index20.html#post5651256

I decided to build a more flexible spreadsheet for the same results:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmGsOePpypKmdFRVR1J5YzBQUXM3Nk5ncE96eUtxQVE#gid=0

Other than being based on imperial measurements, it's very flexible and customizable, but by default offers 1 to 44.5 gallon tuns in half gallon increments. You can change the mash thickness, absorption, target batch sizes to compare as well as efficiencies to compare.

Any suggestions?

I always used this calculator for "can I mash it":



http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

However, I like how yours also incorporates OG potential, not just grain weight. Good job!!

Hammy71 said:

I always used this calculator for "can I mash it":



http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

However, I like how yours also incorporates OG potential, not just grain weight. Good job!!

Click to expand...

This one came up in my research, but doesn't really answer the question of "my recipe says X pounds of grain, what size tun do i need.", just the inverse. For what it's worth, i think i borrowed the algorithm used there for my calculations.

Vaevictus said:

This one came up in my research, but doesn't really answer the question of "my recipe says X pounds of grain, what size tun do i need.", just the inverse. For what it's worth, i think i borrowed the algorithm used there for my calculations.

Click to expand...

Sure it does, under the section "Can I mash it?" you just put in your grain weight and desired mash thickness, hit calculate and it will give you the total space needed for your mash.

opiate82 said:

Sure it does, under the section "Can I mash it?" you just put in your grain weight and desired mash thickness, hit calculate and it will give you the total space needed for your mash.

Click to expand...

Oops, right, i got that backwards.

I have tun X, what can I mash?

Mind you, I'm only posting this because you solicited suggestions.

You've got some really good numbers going on here, but the presentation could use work. Hell, I've made one of these for myself a year ago and it took me several minutes to figure out what I was looking at on yours.

Let me give you an example. For a living, I work in a 4-person IT Security shop with 3 (me), 12, 15 and 18 years in the industry respectively. We work for the big boss and his ~half a dozen subordinates, who command a multi-thousand-person data processing campus crammed to the teeth with servers and workstations. If I handed this to my boss, he'd look at it for all of 8 seconds, hand it back, ask "the f*** is this? i'm not showing this to the big guy", and walk away. That 8 seconds is how long you have to communicate the meaning of the chart before a non-sympathetic viewer will move on. The big guy will give it about half of that.

Essentially, you're attempting to boil all of the math down to two pieces of information: max gravity points at a specific mash thickness vs size of the mash tun. To make this super easy to read, you should convey those two pieces up front, toss the cool customizable variables on Sheet 2, and hide the calculations (or toss them on Sheet 3). For example, on a quality wrist watch, the time readout is front-and-center on the face, the adjustment knobs are on the side, and the gearing is hidden entirely (skeleton watches excepted).

On mine, I added a third axis: quality of fit. This can be conveyed by color.

Still with me? Here's a good example of such a chart. You've probably seen it before. If you can emulate this table, you're in the money.

http://www.kegerators.com/carbonation-table.php

Mind you, I'm only posting this because you solicited suggestions.

You've got some really good numbers going on here, but the presentation could use work. Hell, I've made one of these for myself a year ago and it took me several minutes to figure out what I was looking at on yours.

Let me give you an example. For a living, I work in a 4-person IT Security shop with 3 (me), 12, 15 and 18 years in the industry respectively. We work for the big boss and his ~half a dozen subordinates, who command a multi-thousand-person data processing campus crammed to the teeth with servers and workstations. If I handed this to my boss, he'd look at it for all of 8 seconds, hand it back, ask "the f*** is this? i'm not showing this to the big guy", and walk away. That 8 seconds is how long you have to communicate the meaning of the chart before a non-sympathetic viewer will move on. The big guy will give it about half of that.

Essentially, you're attempting to boil all of the math down to two pieces of information: max gravity points at a specific mash thickness vs size of the mash tun. To make this super easy to read, you should convey those two pieces up front, toss the cool customizable variables on Sheet 2, and hide the calculations (or toss them on Sheet 3). For example, on a quality wrist watch, the time readout is front-and-center on the face, the adjustment knobs are on the side, and the gearing is hidden entirely (skeleton watches excepted).

On mine, I added a third axis: quality of fit. This can be conveyed by color.

Still with me? Here's a good example of such a chart. You've probably seen it before. If you can emulate this table, you're in the money.

http://www.kegerators.com/carbonation-table.php

Here's what mine looks like so you can see what I mean by being able to read quickly. This isn't the layout I'm suggesting... just an example of quick readability.

Note: This is a snippet from my grain/hop order forecasting sheet. It's compact and ONLY SET UP FOR MY 70-qt TUN as I didn't want a full tun chart bloating it out.



I type in the gravity. The three colored columns automatically calculate tun size needed for each batch size (in quarts) and color codes according to how "tight" the fit would be:

Green - < 50% tun capacity (easy peasy - not a problem to mash)
Yellow - > 50% tun capacity (getting a little fuller - don't splash)
Orange - > 75% tun capacity (plastic tun walls start to bow outward in this range)
Red - > 100% tun capacity (you can thicken the mash and maybe it'll fit, but it's going to be messy)

If you need help with the conditional formatting, just let me know.

Note this one's a quick-n-dirty calculation and not nearly as sophisticated or accurate as yours.

anyone got this in metric?