A beta test for all of our helpers!

Yooper

Administrator
Lifetime Member
Staff member
Established Member
Joined
Nov 16, 2013
Messages
3,097
Reaction score
2,419
Points
113
Location
Upper Michigan/S. Florida
We could use extra eyes on the beta version on the hops, water profiles, pH stuff. By that I mean, make a recipe or two, play with it, add the water calculator, look at the pH stuff, see if the water calculator additions "pull" into the recipe. It seems ok to me, but all the extra eyes and different equipment profiles and recipes can give it an extra test.

The one issue I had is on Chrome- after about 8 days or so, the hops amount box "locks" and I can't enter an amount without rebooting. If it's just me, that's fine, but I would love to be sure it's not happening to others so if you're using chrome, I'd love it if you could pay extra attention.

I will sent the link to the beta version to all of my "already agreed" testers, and if you could post your comments/issues/feedback here in this thread, we can address any problems. Thank you so much! You guys rock.
 
Are you referring to the "hops amount box" under IBU Calculator or the Recipe Creator?
 
I got some strange water calcs back the other afternoon , linked to water from an existing recipe and loaded it .
Came up with completely different beer in grist info with a title similar to Geoff's IPA , units were in silly non metric units and source water very very hard ( poor Geoff will struggle to make IPA with that water )
Refreshed page and it was normal again
 
the water calculator has promise, still has a few bugs but they'll get it ironed out, just report what you see and screen shots are better
 
Couple things I noticed playing around with it this morning:
1) Adding hops to recipe from inventory - When I click the top option from my inventory it collapses the menu and doesn't add it. Any other one is working fine, just the topmost one. This happened on the computer and my phone.
2) Water Calc pH - When I went through the water calc linked to my test recipe it estimated my mash pH to be 5.35 but then when I went back to the recipe and updated it, the pH in recipe view said 5.5.
3) Water Calc grains - I notice when I change the type of grain from base malt, crystal, roast, etc... it does not change my mash pH at all. Only when I change the Lovibond. I was under the impression that the calculation for base vs crystal was a little different that roast grains were pretty consistent regardless of the degree Lovibond. Quick search brought me to the Bru'N water "Water Knowledge" page with this table in it:
Malt Acid Content Relationship
Acid Production (mEq / lb of malt)

Base (0.28 x Lovibond Rating)
Crystal (0.21 x Lovibond Rating) + 2.5
Roast 19
Acid 95

Otherwise it was looking pretty good and the calculated pH matched pretty closely with Bru'N water's predictions which I've been using for the last 3 months or so. I'll let you know if I continue to find anything else when I get to play around next :)
 
one thing I found that in the advanced water calculator if you add a 0 to any blank it pulls that salt into the recipe
 
pH in recipe edit:
First of all it's great to see the pH change as you add/remove different grains, but here are a few finicky things I noticed:
1) When I go to add a grain, first I type in the amount (and notice a pH change despite not knowing what I'm adding which is not so good) and then select a grain, the pH does not change again (also not so good, especially if I'm adding a dark or roast grain) until another grain is added or I go back to the dashboard and open the recipe up again
2) When I want to remove a grain if I put a zero in the amount, it changes the pH (good). If instead of putting a 0 back in I delete the grain entirely, the pH doesn't update (not so good). Then afterward it seems to continue to act as though the grain is still there until the whole recipe is refreshed
***I would think this should work like the SRM and gravity which don't update until the grain and amount is put in or removed***
3) Even after getting a pretty good handle on how the mash/water calc works I'm still getting different pH when I look there vs my recipe. My one test recipe is estimated at 5.27 from the water calc screen but 5.41 from the recipe editor. Another one I'm looking at says 5.48 (water calc) and 5.52 (recipe) which both conflict with what I put in Bru'N water (my current go to for water adjustments) which estimates 5.36. I did triple check all recipes contained the same grains, salts, and acids.

Other:
4) I added Whirfloc as an other ingredient and set the amount to 0.5each. When I save, leave the recipe, and go back in it strangely keeps resetting it to whatever number I have as grams of Table salt from the water calculator (for example if I go back to change the table salt in the water calc from 4g to 2.1g, I notice when I update my recipe the Whirfloc changes from 4 to 2.1 each)

That's all I have for tonight. Hopefully this is useful for you guys!
 
Just noticed that when putting additions in manually to the recipe editor that changing the batch size is having no effect on the pH, even when I add lactic acid which seems strange since it would be more diluted.

Lastly, I'm also getting a pH estimate of 2.52 on a recipe I brewed a few months ago when I open it up in edit mode and I have no idea why the estimate would be so low (no water treatment is added, just grains). When I did link it to the mash water calc it shows a much more reasonable estimate of 5.6 (prior to water additions)
 
the water profile you just created from a recipe does not carry over to the recipe instead your default profile shows up
 
This is great help you guys! We really appreciate your willingness to work with us to get the software perfect. I am reading and annotating all of these, and the developers are working hard to fix these issues.
Please feel free to keep them coming! Even if something seems minor, please let us know.
Thank you so much!
 
Note on number 1 of my first post about hops not adding and collapsing the menu. This was really weird but I made it my mission to find out what the problem was. Turns out the problem was in the "Note" section of the inventory item. After I realized once I left it blank it would work, I went through a process of trial and error to see what word/words were causing the problem. Turns out, it was the word "It's." After I replaced that word with "The" I have no more problems adding it in. I also noticed if I added the word "It's" to one that was working it no longer would add off the drop down menu.

Here was my full description (problem word bolded):
"Dual | ~Noble | Earthy, herbal

Aroma and flavor are intense but pleasant, combining a subtle and mellow tropical fruit with an herbal/dank back drop

Descriptors include lime, floral, pine, bergmot, lemon grass, aniseed. It's nuanced spicy, woody, floral, aroma can add pleasantly as a later addition."
 
the menu is touch to open and retouch to close, this allows you to select more than one item at once
 
the menu is touch to open and retouch to close, this allows you to select more than one item at once

Yeah I know this wasn't my problem. The problem was when I clicked on a certain hop to add it to my recipe the menu would close back up and the hop wouldn't be entered.
 
if auto save was on then that might have caused it

This was a very repeatable error that happened only with the one hop over multiple days on multiple recipes and only resolved when I changed the word "it's" to "the". If I went back and changed it back to "it's" the error would happen again.
 
To see if you can repeat this add a hop to your inventory and copy/paste the note section I provided. Then try to add it to your recipe. If it doesn't work, change the it's to the, refresh your recipe, and try again
 

Back
Top