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Finding this software difficult

Bradthebrewer

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Hi all,
I just purchased the BS3 gold subscription last week and must admit I'm struggling with it. I watched the tutorials and eventually made one recipe after a couple hours. Then I realised that I left whirlfloc out of the recipe, do you reckon I can just go back in and add it?

I'm going to try and see if I can get someone in my area to come over & help, but after using Brewer's Friend for the past year I might just stick to what I know.
 
The software does have a learning curve.  The first thing to focus on is to customize an equipment profile to match your system.  Since you should have some experience from Brewers Friend to go on, estimating the total efficiency (Brew House Efficiency) will be easier for you than coming in cold.

After that, tackling the recipes and having them come out for you is pretty easy.  Since you have a recipe already entered, you can change, modify, or add anything that you want to that recipe.  Nothing is etched in stone until you want it to be.  When you want to brew a recipe, you can click on the recipe name and click on 'copy to log' on the toolbar.  This will place a copy of the recipe into a folder called 'brew log' and you can use this copy to enter brew day notes and readings.  It makes a good archival system for recipes, especially if you are fond of upgrading equipment or tweaking recipes as you develop them.

When you get to brewing one of your recipes, keep good notes on the volumes and gravity readings throughout the process.  Using the 'session' tab, enter the measured values versus the projected values and for the first brew, don't fret over the numbers matching exactly.  Take these readings and you can calculate out the grain absorption, boil off rate, mash tun and kettle losses to trub, etc.  Use these values to update your equipment profile to get the software to match your system even better.  There is much in the software that you can customize from a process standpoint.
 
Oginme is spot on

1 thing to be aware of.... is the profiles can either be edited in a specific recipe and will follow that recipe from now on, or you edit the main profiles and with each edit,  you must re-select the profile in the/each recipe for the changes to take place

IOW, each recipe is stand alone, main profiles are changed as needed (once setup, not very often) and are applied to each recipe along the way

Hope this helps and don't hesitate to ask for help when needed.  (Search is pretty good here so give that a try as well)

FWIW, I have been using BS for over 6 years and yes, it can be intimidating, hang in there
Rick
 
One tip is to make a recipe template or templates. They are especially useful if there are steps or ingredients that you use all the time like yeast nutrient or water conditioning additions. Make a "recipe" using only those elements and save it as something like "basic template". Then when you go to create a recipe copy and paste the template and use the copy for your actual recipe.

You can go so far as to select a specific style or or mash or fermentation schedule in the recipe tool and have a: "Pale Ale Template" or "Stout Template"... "Single Infusion 150? Mash Template". That way you don't have to tick all those boxes every time you create a recipe.
 
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