- Joined
- Jul 16, 2012
- Messages
- 10,254
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I spent a bit of time punching in recipes last night and here are some of my observations:
- Honey as a fermentable is listed as 42 ppg, the same as DME. The actual range according to the honey association is 32 - 36 ppg. I'd use 34 as a happy medium for generic and buckwheat honey but it needs to be adjusted.
- Normal order of entry is amount, then units. Please adjust the input boxes for fermentables to only recalculate when the units change, in other words, when there is an amount and an ingredient. If there is no ingredient, assume that the user is inputting and don't recalculate the amount. Example: If I input 1, the unit showing as default is quart and the fermentable is blank, do not recalculate when I change the units to gallons. Conversely, if there is a value and an ingredient, recalculate.
- Most of the values in the recipe appeared to be reasonable. I didn't hand-check but the amounts came out right.
- I used honey as a "late addition." It didn't appear to contribute to pre-boil gravity or bitterness calculations, proper behavior. In this case, however, I need a "post-boil gravity" calculation - the post-boil gravity is different than my true "OG" for ABV calculation. I'll have to manually subtract the honey's contribution from the OG to determine what my refractometer should tell me about the wort going into the fermentor. About the only scenario missing is if I add sugar to the boil - I'll need a pre-boil gravity that does not take that sugar into account but the post-boil gravity will equal the OG.
Otherwise, things went well. I'm not terribly worried about efficiency, it doesn't matter to me so none of the complaints strike home. As is, Brewer's Friend covers about all the scenarios I commonly use except decoction and sugar additions and you've said you're working on that. As far as I'm concerned, we're down to tweaks to the recipe calculations. The interface can use some simplification but that's workable, as long as the software works.
- Honey as a fermentable is listed as 42 ppg, the same as DME. The actual range according to the honey association is 32 - 36 ppg. I'd use 34 as a happy medium for generic and buckwheat honey but it needs to be adjusted.
- Normal order of entry is amount, then units. Please adjust the input boxes for fermentables to only recalculate when the units change, in other words, when there is an amount and an ingredient. If there is no ingredient, assume that the user is inputting and don't recalculate the amount. Example: If I input 1, the unit showing as default is quart and the fermentable is blank, do not recalculate when I change the units to gallons. Conversely, if there is a value and an ingredient, recalculate.
- Most of the values in the recipe appeared to be reasonable. I didn't hand-check but the amounts came out right.
- I used honey as a "late addition." It didn't appear to contribute to pre-boil gravity or bitterness calculations, proper behavior. In this case, however, I need a "post-boil gravity" calculation - the post-boil gravity is different than my true "OG" for ABV calculation. I'll have to manually subtract the honey's contribution from the OG to determine what my refractometer should tell me about the wort going into the fermentor. About the only scenario missing is if I add sugar to the boil - I'll need a pre-boil gravity that does not take that sugar into account but the post-boil gravity will equal the OG.
Otherwise, things went well. I'm not terribly worried about efficiency, it doesn't matter to me so none of the complaints strike home. As is, Brewer's Friend covers about all the scenarios I commonly use except decoction and sugar additions and you've said you're working on that. As far as I'm concerned, we're down to tweaks to the recipe calculations. The interface can use some simplification but that's workable, as long as the software works.
