Fruit Juice Addition Won't Save

bhive01

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I do a lot of fruit beers and one thing I've not understood much is how to add this to my recipe. If I add it as "Other ingredients" it is very easy, but then it doesn't enter into the fermentable calculations at all. But, when I try to put it into the Fermentables it's confusing as hell and it won't let me save it.
I get an error: "Error: Name of custom fermentable must be specified when amount is provided."

As far as I can tell I gave it a name, but it won't save.

What am I doing wrong?

Could it be easier to specify nectar/juice inputs?
I'm thinking I could type in the grams of sugar per serving and then input how much liquid I'm pouring in. I imagine this could work for pastes, purees, and concentrates too.
 

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I do a lot of fruit beers and one thing I've not understood much is how to add this to my recipe. If I add it as "Other ingredients" it is very easy, but then it doesn't enter into the fermentable calculations at all. But, when I try to put it into the Fermentables it's confusing as hell and it won't let me save it.
I get an error: "Error: Name of custom fermentable must be specified when amount is provided."

As far as I can tell I gave it a name, but it won't save.

What am I doing wrong?

Could it be easier to specify nectar/juice inputs?
I'm thinking I could type in the grams of sugar per serving and then input how much liquid I'm pouring in. I imagine this could work for pastes, purees, and concentrates too.

I can't see anything wrong here- but juice would be hard to guess the ppg I think. If you want to give me some details on the juice, I can try to enter it in your account and see what the issue is.
 
Oh, wait- it looks like the juice ppg is -2.5(?) in your first screenshot. I can't tell for sure, though.
 
The first thing to note is that in the recipe builder, the fermentables are always by weight. One gallon of juice isn't 128 ounces by weight (that's fluid ounces on the container), so it should be more like 8 pounds. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/estimating-ppg-for-fruit-juice.598368/ and https://byo.com/article/brewing-with-fruit-techniques/ and one last one (to help with the math):
https://www.brewersfriend.com/forum/threads/adding-apple-juice-to-inventory.12364/

if you haven't taken a refractometer or hydrometer reading of the juice itself, it may be hard to estimate but I'm thinking that the reason it didn't save is because of the decimal. I'd go with a whole number, ie 4 instead of a decimal but I'm not sure that's the reason.
 
I just realized how confusing my post was. Sorry about that.

When using fruit juice, having a refractometer is ideal, but you can take a hydrometer reading of the juice. Say you get 10 brix on the refractometer. That means that 10% of the mass is soluble sugar. Since table sugar has gravity contribution of 46 at 100% extract, that means a 10 brix juice would have 10% of that total of 46. So 10 brix juice would give 4.6 ppg.

Does that make sense?
 
There's a formula to convert sugar content from nutrition labels to PPG as well, but I haven't used it in years so ...


I would take a gravity sample, and use https://www.brewersfriend.com/brix-converter/ to convert to brix.

The total weight of the juice is going to be

Weight = Volume (gallon) * 8.326 lb/gal * specificGravity

ie

53 = 1 gallon * 8.326 lb/gal * 1.055 = 8.784 lbs.

That's probably in the BYO articles but I'm feeling lazy right now:p
 
Math aside when I type in any PPG number in the interface and then try to save it gives me the same error. Is it something weird about this particular recipe?

Sadly, I've already pitched all of the juice and can't take a gravity reading, but I've tried to calculate the SG of the juice based upon the sugars alone. There are 30 g of sugar in 8oz or 480g/gallon. That is 1.06 lb/gallon. Most of that is added cane sugar so let's say that's all sucrose. A sucrose solution is 46 ppg, so 46 ppg * 1.06 = 48.76 p. I believe this is 1.048 SG.
Then it's CV1 + CV2 = CV3. 1.038*6 + 1.048*1 = x*7, (6.228 + 1.048)/7, 7.276/7, x = 1.039 SG.
It only raised my SG by 1 point in the end, which was my more pressing concern, but I'm still at a loss on how best to get this into the recipe.
 
Math aside when I type in any PPG number in the interface and then try to save it gives me the same error. Is it something weird about this particular recipe?

Sadly, I've already pitched all of the juice and can't take a gravity reading, but I've tried to calculate the SG of the juice based upon the sugars alone. There are 30 g of sugar in 8oz or 480g/gallon. That is 1.06 lb/gallon. Most of that is added cane sugar so let's say that's all sucrose. A sucrose solution is 46 ppg, so 46 ppg * 1.06 = 48.76 p. I believe this is 1.048 SG.
Then it's CV1 + CV2 = CV3. 1.038*6 + 1.048*1 = x*7, (6.228 + 1.048)/7, 7.276/7, x = 1.039 SG.
It only raised my SG by 1 point in the end, which was my more pressing concern, but I'm still at a loss on how best to get this into the recipe.

I’m going to log into your account and see what’s up. I’ll copy the recipe and call it ‘Yooper” or something, so I don’t mess up your recipe, ok?
 
Sure, thanks for poking around.
 
I did get the error the first time I tried- I had “guava juice” in both blanks, and it didn’t like that so I made up a brand name, and it saved just fine. I wonder if there was a blank there (in the lovibond maybe?) in yours that caused the problem. Here’s what I did:
612EF6A2-997E-48AB-AE27-2B5E3B2FA358.png
 
Yeah, I left the lovibond blank. It's pink not brown so I didn't know what to put. Was that the issue? Or was it the name?
 
Yeah, I left the lovibond blank. It's pink not brown so I didn't know what to put. Was that the issue? Or was it the name?

I’d love to tell you that I’m so smart that I know the answer to this question. My guess is the lovibond was blank- that shouldn’t ever happen and the software didn’t accept it. But...................I wouldn’t bet on that. I’d say it’s most likely.
 
Well, that was it in the end. I needed to put something into the lovibond and DP box. Then it saves. I played with it for a bit doing one thing at a time until it worked. Perhaps the error message could be more helpful?

One thing though, am I misunderstanding the PPG? If it's 1.046, isn't it 46 PPG? The SG is super high unless I put something in 1/10th that. Then it's close.
 
I just realized how confusing my post was. Sorry about that.

When using fruit juice, having a refractometer is ideal, but you can take a hydrometer reading of the juice. Say you get 10 brix on the refractometer. That means that 10% of the mass is soluble sugar. Since table sugar has gravity contribution of 46 at 100% extract, that means a 10 brix juice would have 10% of that total of 46. So 10 brix juice would give 4.6 ppg.

Does that make sense?

Remember that any ppg is expressed in terms related to sugar's gravity contribution. 10 brix, as an example, is 10% of that reading, that's where the numbers come from.

I guess I'm not explaining it very well, but the links I gave should help.
 
No you did and I was too tired to get it. Sorry.

So if I have something close to 1.046 SG that means my refractometer would've been about 11.5%. Brix
So I take 46 * 0.115 and I get 5.3 PPG.
 
No you did and I was too tired to get it. Sorry.

So if I have something close to 1.046 SG that means my refractometer would've been about 11.5%. Brix
So I take 46 * 0.115 and I get 5.3 PPG.
Correct
 
I have a ticket open (@Yooper #1526) for adding indicators to the required input fields before you can save, and adding an error message to the inventory and shopping lists.

Checking my notes from before it looks like PPG, lovi, and DP are all required for custom fermentables.
 
I have a related question. In the recipe editor, I can add flavorings to the "other" category. I can not get those same ingredients added to the other category in my inventory. Any tips?
 
I have a related question. In the recipe editor, I can add flavorings to the "other" category. I can not get those same ingredients added to the other category in my inventory. Any tips?

You're trying to add flavorings in a different category, like fermentables or yeast or hops?
 

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