maddspoiler said:
Yes I will agree there is an issue here but its not what you think.
So, to summarize your post, there is an issue, and the issue is me?
This is feeling like a Apple/Mac fanboy forum. There is an obvious issue with BeerSmith. Why is there so much denial and resistance?
I did not bother to reverse engineer what the exact fault is, since it would be much easier to look at the code. I do have a hunch, though.
maddspoiler said:
Lmao a hunch eh, why not come out and say it if you know.
I had a longer reply, including the mash efficiency effect, but it disappeared when I tried post due to a forced re-login.
Also, root cause of faults is very hard to determine without knowing the code or doing lots of repetitive tests. Neither I nor you can know for sure exactly what is happening without seeing the code, or doing many more tests/use cases to be certain. Many software problems are not what they appear to be externally.
maddspoiler said:
-it recalcs the mash eff when you enter a super high loss in one area because nothing else is being changed.
ex-It sees a 8 gallon boil with 8 gallon of loss to trub its going to increase your mash eff to keep your recipe the same.
I don't know for certain what is causing it, but I did identify the repeatable issue-
Using the "edit equipment setting for this recipe", the amount of trub loss increase entered causes a corresponding increase in the mash water volume, but does not scale the recipe- either by 'diluting' everything or 'scaling up' the recipe. All that happens is the efficiency is increased to compensate.
Are you saying that is a feature and not a bug? Now I will 'lmao'.
maddspoiler said:
I ran this test and it changed my mash water amount, kept my gravity the same but changed my mash eff. I entered a 10 gallon batch and 10 gallons of trub loss. It automatically added more water but shot my mash eff up to 1600%. Seems wierd but it isnt because your forcing BS to make a mistake.
Ah yes, just like an Apple fanboy, the user is at fault for making the software break.
Try adding even a reasonable amount of loss, like 1 gallon, and your mash water volume will increase, but no change to the OG or batch size. You are saying this is the proper way for BeerSmith to behave, and I am supposed to manually account for it? BeerSmith should either scale the recipe, or decrease the batch size. There is no other way to do it correctly.
maddspoiler said:
The problem is it automatically figures and changes your est mash eff. It should keep this the same and drop your gravity (or display a red dot indicating a problem) because trub loss has nothing to do with mash eff, it has to do with you total brewhouse eff. This is what Brad should change if anything. In fact Ive never encountered this problem before running the test today. So I agree with MaltLicker that its not an issue with beersmith.
This is like reading Chinese propaganda. In one sentence you admit that for valid user inputs BeerSmith displays values that are incorrect, and in the following one you say the problem is not with BeerSmith. Whose fault is it? You agreeing with MaltLicker doesn't make it correct, it makes you both wrong.
maddspoiler said:
The issue is the lack of knowledge of how to set up equipment profiles and stumbling onto what seems to be a programming error. Its like having a calculator in math class. Yeah the calculator gives you the answer but if you dont know the fundamentals or how to solve the problem by hand or show your work its a meaningless tool.
I understand the fundamentals, and that is why I know that I would not increase mash efficiency to account for trub losses. I would recalc for the lost volume by either upping the ingredients, or decreasing the batch size. This is what BeerSmith already does when 'scaling', and is what it needs to do in this case as well. It is blatantly wrong for BeerSmith to simply change efficiency when trub losses are added.
maddspoiler said:
What I think is your having problems setting up your equipment because you are assuming volumes and such.
I am not assuming anything, I updated trub losses for that specific recipe by using a tool provided by BeerSmith, and it quite obviously is 'doing it wrong'. Changing to another equipment profile with the same changes resulted in what appears to be proper ingredient scaling, but when switching back and forth multiple times between equipment, there was errant behavior with the grain bill ratcheting up, without any batch size change or OG change. I guess that is just more operator error.
maddspoiler said:
-I went from mashing in a 5 gallon gott and boiling in a 8 gallon kettle to a 10 gallon gott and a 15 gallon kettle. I used the same #s that I used for my 5 gallon system (just doubled everything) but was consistently coming up short on gravity. This is because I assumed the losses were the same % (twice the losses due to twice the size of batch). I was dead wrong. My kettles diameter was larger than the preset calc in BS and my old kettle, I had more loss in the new kettle due to its wider diameter and more boil off losses. Also I had a larger deadspace in my mash tun.
Here is the boil off tool I used and a previous post by Pat that will explain equipment set up.
http://www.beersmith.com/forum/index.php/topic,5140.0.html
http://sigginet.info/brewing/tools/boil-off-calculator/
So I need to use other tools, and hand calcs, to make sure I don't confuse BeerSmith into giving me bad numbers?
Sounds like Steve Jobs' fix to the Iphone antenna issue- "Don't hold it like that!"
maddspoiler said:
As far as a hop loss tool goes most brewers know to add an extra qt per gallon on average when using whole hops.
What do you think I was trying to do when I discovered the problem with BeerSmith? Although your equation is all wrong. The correct way to account for hops is liters wort/gram hops. Compensating by adding volume wort/volume wort is beyond incorrect, it is idiotic.
There is no other place to account for this except 'trub loss', which is the appropriate place, except BeerSmith doesn't scale the recipe or reduce the batch size appropriately. The only other way would be to up the batch size to account for the hop absorption, but there would be no indication of why it was done, and would make sharing recipes difficult.
maddspoiler said:
Yeah it would be a nice addition but I dont think its needed.
The reason why an integrated hop absorption calculator is absolutely needed is this- If I increase the batch size to account for absorption, the hops will increase, and I would need to increase the batch size again. But then the hops will increase and I need to increase the batch size again......... Do you see the problem?
These concepts are not that difficult, just complex, and architecting the software and data to handle it properly can be done. I have coded similar solutions that were much more complex.