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Error in strike water volume calculation

cmaziero

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Jan 20, 2020
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Hi all,

I'm using BeerSmith Mobile (version 3.0.10) from a while. Recently, I found a BIG error in the strike water volume calculation. In a recipe for an Oatmeal Stout with 6.5 Kg of grains, it gave me a strike water volume of only 8 L. Then I entered the same recipe in BS desktop edition (3.0.9 for Linux, trial), and got a more reasonable water volume of 17 L. In both cases I used the same equipment and mash profiles.

After that, I removed the recipe ingredients one by one, to isolate the error source. It seems the problem is related to the Weyermann Pale malt. However, this ingredient's details are exactly the same in both platforms...

I shared two simplified recipes (user cmaziero, recipes "Test recipe mobile" and "Test recipe desktop") in which the error appears. The PDFs of those recipes are attached here. Can someone take a look on them?
 

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  • test recipe mobile.pdf
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10 days and not a single reply?

It seems that a +100% error in strike water is irrelevant... :-\

Again, thanks for any help here!
 
I looked at your two shared recipes but, as I only have the desktop version of BeerSmith, they both come up with the same numbers.  Sorry, it would take someone using both pieces of the software to give you some guidance.
 
I wonder if a recent patch introduced some defects in this area.  I have had excellent results in the past with calculations in BS.  Starting about a month ago I noticed that my strike water amounts and temps were off, so I have started to use online tools for that.  Today I am entering a recipe that I plan to brew soon and for a BIAB batch with 10 lbs of grain 150F mash temp, and 7 gal pre-boil volume, it says I need to add 7.04 gals of water at 150.3F.  It seems to think I have zero grains?  The OG, ABV, IBU, etc calcs seem correct.

Shared the recipe here:  https://beersmithrecipes.com/viewrecipe/2896704/test-belgian-single

Looks like it keeps setting my Grain Weight Basis to 0.5 lbs.  Even if I manually update this to match my grain bill, it gets reset to 0.5 lbs.

Edit:  So it seemed to not count my 9lbs of "Pilsner (Weyermann)" in the mash.  I played around with toggling some values back and forth (from Mash to Boil, and checking and unchecking the "Recommend Mash" option on the Grain Details section) and now it is calculating my Grain Weight Basis correctly (9.5 lbs).  Now I get a more reasonable 7.65 gals at 154.8F.

Edit 2: This same issue that was reported 2 years ago??  http://www.beersmith.com/forum/index.php?topic=18013.0

I looked back at another recent recipe where the water calcs were off, and yep, the Grain Weight basis was wrong.  It seems to not be including the "Marris Otter (Crisp)" in the calculations.  It seemed like drilling down to the Grain Details and changing Mash to Boil, saving, then changing Boil back to Mash fixed the issue.
 
I came here to post what you guys said. I just bought the mobile app and can't even get going with my first recipe on it because of this error.

Not a good sign at all that it's been almost 2 months since OP posted about the error and it's STILL UNSOLVED!

The app is completely unusable.
 
Hi, I can confirm issues with the calculation of water/grist ratio on the mobile version of Beersmith. Only the first grain ingedient is used in the calculation which of course can give very different results depending on the recepie used.

It should be an easy fix if the bug report actually could reach the developer. Are there better ways to report bugs?
 
I just signed up because I was looking for a fix for the same error.

I have figured it out though - any Weyermann malt that you add to your malt bill is not being included in your total grain weight. For example, I have made a recipe with 5.35kg of Gladfield malt, and 0.31kg of Weyermann malt. When I look at my mash water, it is based on a grain weight of 5.35kg (e.g. the Weyermann has not been calculated). If you update the grain weight to the correct number, your mash water should correct itself, however this is only momentary, as it will revert to the grain weight not including Weyermann.

Someone at Beersmith needs to adjust something to ensure Weyermann is included in the totals....
 
I found a two-years old mention to this same issue in another post (http://www.beersmith.com/forum/index.php/topic,18652.0.html). There is a reply from the developer, from July 2018, saying that "This will be corrected shortly when I release mobile version 3.".

I tried to contact them through the contact form of the BS website and also by Android's Google Play, but did not get a single reply.

Most of the specialty malts I have available in my area are Weyermann. This hurts BS Mobile use for a lot of users in the same situation...
 
I apologize - I've been working the latest mobile update today and came across this one.  Can anyone send me a sample recipe please to beersmith at beersmith.com as I've had trouble duplicating this in the latest code and want to verify that the "weyermann" issue is closed.

Brad
 
Hi Brad  :)

I have a shared recipe in my cloud account (cmaziero) called "Test recipe mobile" that shows this bug. For 3.5 Kg of Weyermann Pale Malt, it proposes only 3.91L of strike water. This recipe was entered directly in the mobile app.

I attached two screenshots of the Mobile app.

Best regards,

Carlos
 

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Hi,
  I found the problem - somehow the "Weyermann" add-on had bad data in the F_G_TYPE field that caused problems on the mobile.  I've since corrected the add-on and uploaded the corrected one.

  If you uninstall and then reinstall the Weyermann add-on and then create a new recipe with the corrected ingredients it should work now.

Brad
 
Nice, worked as a charm!

I re-created the recipe and the strike water went from 3.91L to 9.13L, as expected.

Thanks and best regards!

Carlos
 
Not sure how the bad data got into the add-on - it came from a third party and they must have edited it by hand or something.

I also put a fix in the upcoming version to detect the bad data and correct it just in case.

Brad
 
I think we found that the entire "Weyermann" add-on had bad grain data in it which was the root cause of this problem. 

The add-on has been corrected and if you remove and then add the Weyermann add-on and then replace or rebuild your recipes using the new grains it will work correctly.

Brad
 
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