What's Up with the Brew Log?

[Nosybear]

Trying to enter data for my brew session on Sunday, a few things stick out:
- Where's the calendar picker for the date? Trying to enter the data manually is difficult because of the formatting, there used to be a calendar to select the date.
- Water volume? I'm interested in how much wort I got in the kettle. Where do I enter that? The help text for the entry is no help - the percentage of total sugars extracted in the mash tun. Sounds more like efficiency to me. I believe the label should read something like mash yield. When I put the mash yield in the box, I got the efficiency I expected.
- It's storing entries in weird order, backward, and doing really weird things with efficiency:

The rest of the steps seem to be behaving as expected. The brew steps are still coming out in an odd order. I'm very happy I keep paper records....

 

[Yooper]

I will take a look- but where are you seeing “water volume”? The screenshots ask for wort volume.

I’m digging into this now.

 

[Yooper]

The first thing I find is the calendar date picker once I click “brew it”. That seems ok.

Then all of my mash steps are in order. If yours are mixed up, can you provide a quick screenshot so I can see the problem?


Are you maybe sorting the steps? I am not, just using the default ones that I’ve added (like make this #1, etc). Here’s mine:

In the brew log, the calendar is gone on my iPad- but it’s easy to pick the date and time:

I see where the water volume entry is but that doesn’t seem to be an issue for me. It keeps track of the volumes. If that is a problem, I’m sure it can be changed. Why is that out of place there, though?

Last question (I promise!). My brew log entries are in the appropriate order but I can’t recreate your weird date order. Can you tell me how you got that, so I can recreate for a ticket?

Sorry to ask so many questions, but I really have to nail down each individual issue in order to submit a support ticket. I need to know what is disliked, what isn’t working well, how it happened, etc.

 

[Nosybear]

I never use the brew steps so that can't be an issue. Here is the "order" of the brew steps showing a very strange "days" reading for the first entry:

Here's the weirdness with the "Mash Complete" entry:

I find "water volume" to be an odd way of saying "Wort Collected". The math works with the numbers I put in - the amount of wort I got from the mash (it's a 3-gallon batch) but the label is confusing to me: My water volume was the five gallons I put into the mash. Also, there's no date picker next to the "Date" box. This has really only been a problem for me this one time: I completed my brew day late so didn't record the steps immediately, then recorded them three days later.

I can't get a screen shot of the help text from clicking on the "?" after "Total amount of water used" but it delivers a help text that looks a whole lot more like efficiency than water used or wort collected.

I was using a Surface Pro 4 running Windows 10.

Thanks for looking into this!

 

[Yooper]

Gotcha! Thank you so much. I’ll dig into this and get a support ticket in right away.

 

[Yooper]

I never use the brew steps so that can't be an issue. Here is the "order" of the brew steps showing a very strange "days" reading for the first entry:

When you say you couldn’t use the calendar/date picker, what did you see? On my iPad, I have a “rolling” date picker:

On my laptop, I have to click the little arrow (triangle):

And that brings up the calendar. Maybe that will help with the date picking.

 

[Nosybear]

No, I wasn't using the "Brew It" feature. I'd done that on brew day, then entered the steps three days later. There, where you point, where I circled here, is where I was expecting to see it. Note I'm working on a different computer today than when I was entering the data:

I didn't see it in any of the brew steps I used. Clicking in the box didn't bring a date picker up, either.

 

[Pricelessbrewing]

I never use the brew steps so that can't be an issue. Here is the "order" of the brew steps showing a very strange "days" reading for the first entry:

View attachment 8818

Here's the weirdness with the "Mash Complete" entry:

View attachment 8819

I find "water volume" to be an odd way of saying "Wort Collected". The math works with the numbers I put in - the amount of wort I got from the mash (it's a 3-gallon batch) but the label is confusing to me: My water volume was the five gallons I put into the mash. Also, there's no date picker next to the "Date" box. This has really only been a problem for me this one time: I completed my brew day late so didn't record the steps immediately, then recorded them three days later.

I can't get a screen shot of the help text from clicking on the "?" after "Total amount of water used" but it delivers a help text that looks a whole lot more like efficiency than water used or wort collected.

I was using a Surface Pro 4 running Windows 10.

Thanks for looking into this!

@Yooper

The mash complete log should be showing water volume, as it's necessary to calculate the conversion efficiency correctly. It cannot be calculated accurately using only collected wort volume without making a lot of assumptions about your equipment and grain absorption rate.

However there should also be a line item for wort volume, for record keeping, that does not affect the conversion formula.

As far as the order, I believe the log order follows chronologically based on the timestamp, so if you enter boil complete first, then mash complete, it will show in reverse. This matches the image attached, since mash complete was logged the day before preboil complete.

 

[Yooper]

Gotcha. The issue with the mash complete and volume is that it’s not clear from the tooltip and the efficiency explanation on what exactly it needs. The verbiage is very confusing, and the tool tip does not help.
You should be able to put the correct time in the brew log, as sometimes you add the data later on. Or am I misunderstanding your explanation?

 

[Yooper]

No, I wasn't using the "Brew It" feature. I'd done that on brew day, then entered the steps three days later. There, where you point, where I circled here, is where I was expecting to see it. Note I'm working on a different computer today than when I was entering the data:

View attachment 8823

I didn't see it in any of the brew steps I used. Clicking in the box didn't bring a date picker up, either.

Thanks for that- I need to know which computer platform and browser you were using when you got that screen. I can add that to the ticket.

 

[Nosybear]

As mentioned above, a Surface 4 running Windows 10. I just changed the value to indicate the total amount of water rather than the wort collected. Dang, I'm good, 175% conversion efficiency! The pre-boil efficiency of 136% is realistic, as I had to add 12 ounces of DME to reach my desired OG. When I switch back to the wort collected (4.125 gal), the conversion efficiency comes down to 144% - more realistic considering the DME addition.

Can you explain the math to me? I don't see how total water is relevant to the conversion efficiency unless you are trying to account for sugars left in the mash tun, the assumption that you can (and want to) sparge all of the sugar out of the draff.

 

[Pricelessbrewing]

As mentioned above, a Surface 4 running Windows 10. I just changed the value to indicate the total amount of water rather than the wort collected. Dang, I'm good, 175% conversion efficiency! The pre-boil efficiency of 136% is realistic, as I had to add 12 ounces of DME to reach my desired OG. When I switch back to the wort collected (4.125 gal), the conversion efficiency comes down to 144% - more realistic considering the DME addition.

Can you explain the math to me? I don't see how total water is relevant to the conversion efficiency unless you are trying to account for sugars left in the mash tun, the assumption that you can (and want to) sparge all of the sugar out of the dross.

Sure thing, it'll have to wait till I get home from work and I can walk through it and see if anything has changed since the Nov update that addressed this formula that I'm unaware of.

 

[Pricelessbrewing]

Recipe
https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator

12 lbs of malt, 37 PPG. Total points = 444.

Batch size is 5.5, 70% brewhouse is 311 points or 1.0565 og.

Strike water is 7.19 gallons. 100% conversion is 444 points, or 1.0561 og.

Mash runnings is 6.36 gallons at 1.0561, or 311 points.

This implies an apparent mash wort volume of 444 / 1.0561 = 7.915.

The additional 0.724... gallons is due to the sugars, proteins, and starches that are dissolved into the wort. The difference of 7.915-6.36=1.55 is the amount of wort that is trapped in the grain still.

Open the recipe and enter a mash complete log of 1.056 and volume of 7.19, you should get 99.8% conversion (due to rounding errors). Remember the apparent wort volume is 7.915, so 7.915 * 56 =443.24 points. 443.24/444 ~= 100%

If you enter the same mash complete for the first runnings of 6.36 gallons @ 1.056 (356 points). This gives 88% conversion.

There's no way, that I know of, toaccurately calculate the conversion efficiency without knowing the infusions volume without losing accuracy due to using expected absorption rate and mashtun loss instead to get the total amount of sugar in the mash wort.

 

[Nosybear]

I brewed this weekend, a 5-gallon batch of Maerzen. When entering the "Mash complete" numbers, just for grins, I entered the total water used, 8.56 gallons. This led to a conversion efficiency of 104%! Changing this to my yield of 6.5 gallons led to a more realistic 77% conversion. If I'd have used only the strike water, 4 gallons, my conversion would have been down around 50%. I understand that we are invariably leaving sugars in the grain and the desire to account for them (complete accuracy would require either taking a gravity reading on the runnings of a batch sparge or the final runnings of a fly sparge, even then there are still sugars left in the grain). So the question: Are we looking for an absolutely correct value or a good one that makes sense?

 

[Pricelessbrewing]

I brewed this weekend, a 5-gallon batch of Maerzen. When entering the "Mash complete" numbers, just for grins, I entered the total water used, 8.56 gallons. This led to a conversion efficiency of 104%! Changing this to my yield of 6.5 gallons led to a more realistic 77% conversion. If I'd have used only the strike water, 4 gallons, my conversion would have been down around 50%. I understand that we are invariably leaving sugars in the grain and the desire to account for them (complete accuracy would require either taking a gravity reading on the runnings of a batch sparge or the final runnings of a fly sparge, even then there are still sugars left in the grain). So the question: Are we looking for an absolutely correct value or a good one that makes sense?

Conversion should generally be 88-95%, 77% conversion indicates a notable pH or crush issue. 104% is a bit high though, can you link the recipe and your measure data? (total water used, temperature at measured volume, and sg). A reading above 100 probably indicates some sort of measurement or potential difference, maybe your base malt was 38 ppg instead of 37, or your total grain bill may have had a half pound extra, 1-2 oz's here and there add up, or maybe the total water is off by a quart, or some combination of the above.