Water Profile in View and on Printout

[Craigerrr]

I have decided to give the Brewers Friend recipe editor another go (I switched to Brewfather a few years ago when the recipe editor went haywire).
Everything looks good, and seems to work well.
I am glad to see that the "Other Ingredients" are part of the recipe builder now, and that editing them in the recipe adjusts the mash pH etc.
If I could change anything it would be the "Water Chemistry" section.

Both in view, and when printing a recipe, the "Target Ion Levels (ppm or mg/L)" is shown.

What I would like to see in display is both the "Target Ion Levels (ppm or mg/L)" and the "Overall Water Report (mg/L)"
If it isn't possible to show both in View, I would prefer to only see the "Overall Water Report (mg/L)"

On the print out I would prefer to only have the "Overall Water Report (mg/L)" shown.

I have never used the "Brew Session" function here or in Brewfather, I brew from my printed recipe, so the target is meaningless to me in display or on the printout. The only time the target is needed for me is when creating or editing a recipe.
Thank you for your consideration.

 

[Megary]

On the print out I would prefer to only have the "Overall Water Report (mg/L)" shown.

Completely agree. At the very least, the OWR should be included with the Target.

 

[Craigerrr]

Something else that I am noticing is that you need to jump out to a calculator the determine your required strike water temperature.
Shouldn't this be calculated automatically based on your equipment profile, grist, and resulting water requirements?

 

[Pricelessbrewing]

Something else that I am noticing is that you need to jump out to a calculator the determine your required strike water temperature.
Shouldn't this be calculated automatically based on your equipment profile, grist, and resulting water requirements?
View attachment 27895

Welcome back! I'll get back to the feedback on the chemistry stuff above, as that's actually on my to-do list for today. We'll be redesigning the chemistry section to fully integrate the chemistry calculator into the recipe builder and 100% eliminate the link/save+update/reload water records back and forth. One thing we have also considered is merging it with the mash guidelines, but that may slow down development further and get kicked down the road until later.

Click the hamburger menu

and click the "add QWR" and it will automatically add in the mash volume and start temp based on the target temp, using your equipment, ingredients and boil sizes.

 

[Craigerrr]

Thanks @Pricelessbrewing

Good to hear on the streamlining of water and water chemistry.
My opinion would be go big, or go home, take the extra time to have a fully integrated recipe editor.

I tried deleting and re-adding the QWR as you suggested, and I don't trust the result on this recipe.
The other software I have been using is generally bang on, and it recommends 70C strike water temperature

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/1442924/whole-lotta-rosie

 

[Donoroto]

Thanks @Pricelessbrewing

Good to hear on the streamlining of water and water chemistry.
My opinion would be go big, or go home, take the extra time to have a fully integrated recipe editor.

I tried deleting and re-adding the QWR as you suggested, and I don't trust the result on this recipe.
The other software I have been using is generally bang on, and it recommends 70C strike water temperature

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/1442924/whole-lotta-rosie
View attachment 27907

When I copy the recipe and do the calculation, it tells me 73.1 C is the strike water temperature with 18 C grain.

In the upper right hand corner of that section, click on Mash calculator.

 

[Craigerrr]

When I copy the recipe and do the calculation, it tells me 73.1 C is the strike water temperature with 18 C grain.

In the upper right hand corner of that section, click on Mash calculator.

@Donoroto
That is what I did, it gave me the result you see above.
Maybe there is something in my equipment profile that is skewing the result?
I created a new profile, added it to the recipe, and am getting the same result.
Here is the profile

 

[Craigerrr]

I just corrected the default mash thickness to 3L/kg, reloaded the profile in the recipe, same result.
Something isn't right, I just don't know what needs to be corrected.

 

[Craigerrr]

Could one of you guys help me out with this? @Pricelessbrewing @Donoroto ?
Something is causing my strike temperature to be too low

 

[Donoroto]

Could one of you guys help me out with this? @Pricelessbrewing @Donoroto ?
Something is causing my strike temperature to be too low

I'll send something tomorrow.

 

[Craigerrr]

I'll send something tomorrow.

Thank you kind sir!

 

[Donoroto]

I just corrected the default mash thickness to 3L/kg, reloaded the profile in the recipe, same result.
Something isn't right, I just don't know what needs to be corrected.

OK, after fooling with it I (think) I found that the Mash Calculator does not update the recipe (which is unlike the water chemistry calculator, which does). Once you figure out the strike temperature, you need to type it in to the recipe yourself.

My process:
First, I copied the recipe as it is, renaming it and saving it in my list of recipes. Then, in Mash Guidelines, I clicked the hamburger menu (three horizontal lines top right) and selected Mash Calculator. In the window that opens, I changed to metric units (you might not have to), adjusted the grain weight (it showed 4.5 kg, not sure why), changed Water Volume Entry to Strike Water Volume, adjusted the volume to 28.64 liters (from your recipe), then clicked Update. That gave me a strike water temperature of 72.4 C. I then copied that number back into the recipe.

On one hand, it is nice there is a link to a strike calculator, but on the other hand it surprised me to not see it update the recipe automagically. On the third hand, I guess having to type in a number is not much of a burden.

Try it and let's see if that does the trick?

 

[Craigerrr]

Thanks Don, I appreciate the effort.
While it surely isn't a burden, it is perplexing to me that the software doesn't calculate this.
I'm just glad I looked at that before brewing based on it.

 

[Craigerrr]

Welcome back! I'll get back to the feedback on the chemistry stuff above, as that's actually on my to-do list for today. We'll be redesigning the chemistry section to fully integrate the chemistry calculator into the recipe builder and 100% eliminate the link/save+update/reload water records back and forth. One thing we have also considered is merging it with the mash guidelines, but that may slow down development further and get kicked down the road until later.

Click the hamburger menu View attachment 27903 and click the "add QWR" and it will automatically add in the mash volume and start temp based on the target temp, using your equipment, ingredients and boil sizes.

I guess I spoke too soon, I am going to stick with Brewfather for now.
Let me know if the software is updated so the it automatically calculates strike temperature, this is a bigger deal to me than the water report printing out instead of the targets. Although that would be important to me too.
I would like to come back, but I feel that the software needs to be more intuitive, I mean that is what it is for

 

[Pricelessbrewing]

Could one of you guys help me out with this? @Pricelessbrewing @Donoroto ?
Something is causing my strike temperature to be too low

Sorry for the delay, the strike temperature formula is pretty standard across all software and really hasn't changed in the past several decades.

Are you seeing the same volume amount between the two? Could be that your equipment settings in brewfather are not assuming an all in one and is adding what we have labelled as the "mash strike heat loss" variable to the strike temperature, I know beersmith has a similar setting at least but haven't looked at brewfather in some time.

 

[Donoroto]

Sorry for the delay, the strike temperature formula is pretty standard across all software and really hasn't changed in the past several decades.

Are you seeing the same volume amount between the two? Could be that your equipment settings in brewfather are not assuming an all in one and is adding what we have labelled as the "mash strike heat loss" variable to the strike temperature, I know beersmith has a similar setting at least but haven't looked at brewfather in some time.

I think his concern is that one must leave the recipe and use an external calculator (that works well) to see accurate strike values.

 

[Craigerrr]

I think his concern is that one must leave the recipe and use an external calculator (that works well) to see accurate strike values.

Thank you Don, that is correct.
@Pricelessbrewing strike temperature is calculated within the recipe with Brewfather.
It is seamless, intuitive, and I have found it to be flawlessly accurate.

 

[Yooper]

I think his concern is that one must leave the recipe and use an external calculator (that works well) to see accurate strike values.

But you don't. So I'm not sure where someone else is going. The QWR are right in the mash guidelines and will populate there.

 

[Sunfire96]

Maybe someone needs to create a QWR tutorial, because the strike water in my recipe is never correct. I use the Mash Calculator on brew day to determine strike temperature

 

[Donoroto]

But you don't. So I'm not sure where someone else is going. The QWR are right in the mash guidelines and will populate there.

OK. I went into a recipe, and selected With minor fiddling (rearranging the order of the steps), I got this:

Clearly, my strike temperature for the grain (at a temperature) I'm using comes to 159 for a 153 target.
All good. @Craigerrr you might want to play with that: Add WR (or view, I suppose) should get you what you want. Without having to go into the mash calculator.

OK, so that being said / done:

From the view above, I then clicked "Add Quick Water Requirements", and this is what appeared:

It seems to me that 2.28 gallons for a 5 gallon batch is insufficient. It also seems to me that it must be user error.
Can anyone tell me where?
I have set the recipe to be public. It is called "Don's Nevada 2" and found here