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Feature Requests: Lbs/oz, %'s, Fermentability of Sugars

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 1:52 pm
by Holter
Hey everyone, first time post on here but I have been a longtime BTP user. I have a couple of feature request that i thought i would post on here.

I have used most of the brewing software available and like Beer Tools the most. But for me, recipe formulation using BTP has never been as thorough as I would like.

LBS/OZ

I would love to see the ability to add weight to each grain in Lbs and Oz rather than decimal points for pounds. Im not proud of this, but on more than one occasion when i was measuring out my recipe I looked at 12.8lbs and read it as 12lbs 8 oz, which is obviously wrong. Now when i create my recipes i add one line for lbs and one line for oz. This works, but then i have to add %'s together to figure out the total % for a particular grain. Ive tried to convert to the metric system, but i just prefer lbs/oz.

%'s

Along the lines of lbs/oz I just recently learned that you can drag the slider bar for %'s in the recipe section. This is a huge benefit for me because at the end of the day I would prefer to assemble all of my recipes based on %'s rather than weight. I dont always brew the same volume. Sometimes its 5gal, others its 10 and occasionally 15-20gal. Its hard to keep track of your recipe in your head by weight and I learned long ago how much more vital %'s are to recipes than weight is. While the slider bar is a great tool, i would prefer to add grains by %. I cant quite picture how it would operate, but it might be as simple as adding all of your fermentables and setting their % number. Then you just need to adjust your base malt's weight to achieve your desired OG.

That or have the ability to lock a percentage once you adjusted the grain's % to be what you wanted it to be. If i dragged my 2-row slider out to be 80% of the grist, i would then lock that number. etc.

FERMENTABILITY OF SUGARS

When you formulate a recipe, the software will give you an expected FG based on the grain bill you added and an average attenuation % set to 75% (which is adjustable). What the software doesnt seem to take into consideration is two things. First, mash schedule. If I set my sac rest to be 60 minutes at 148F or if I set it to 154F there is no change in my expected FG, which in my experience is wrong because different mash temperatures will produce more or less fermentable sugars. When formulating a recipe like a IIPA, its very important to know that with the sugars added to the mash and the mash temperature selected you have a good idea of where this beer will end with your particular yeast strain. On given brew day if my schedule was set for 148F mash but i overshot it and hit something ridiculous like 156F, i would love to be able to see my expected FG change in my recipe so i can continue to use this recipe as a guide to track my brew during fermentation.

Second, in most of the recipes i brew i like to include somewhere around 5% Carapils Its just something that i have always done and probably always will. What i know about carapils is that it produces dextrins which are not as fermentable. Or even crystal malts, etc. From what I can tell when i add these malts to a grain bill the expected FG is not adjusted to account for the sugars produced which are less fermentable than say the sugars produced from 2-row.

There is a lot of math that probably goes into both of these requests, and I am not blind to that. At the end of the day once the beer is finished and I update all of my numbers I can see how i did which is a fantastic part of BTP. But i would also like to track what was expected vs. what was acheived so that I can continue to improve my brewing process and generate more reliable initial recipes.

Thanks for your time-
Holter

Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2012 8:43 am
by jawbox
You should try using the Eric system for weights. Much easier than dealing with lbs and Ozs.

I'd also like the percentage feature to be something I can enter rather than sliders.