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Bribie, have you ever used BIABacus?
I tried it a couple of times with the very basic info filled in but found it a little overwhelming during my first brews. I keep meaning to set it up properly and revisit. Appears to leave nothing to be guessed though.
Been using BrewersFriend mostly.
 
I only just recently started using the brewers friend recipe design function and thought I was being conservative by putting mash efficiency in as 86%. Brewed and hit the numbers exactly. Checked the mash efficiency calculator using the exact numbers and it spat out 96% efficiency. It makes me question whether they use the same equation in the two calculators.

Anyone else notice this?
 
I haven't done efficiency calcs since I started with it. I usually put in 75% as the nominated figure at the start of a recipe build. I did try the brewing log entries to work through for it but find it a pita. Too many times I forget to transfer my readings info from paper to the computer, or the computer isn't available.
 
Cool, but knowing efficiency outcome helps when recipe designing. If I change my system or crush then the efficiency will change. If that's not consistent (ie different equations) then using the outcome of the efficiency calc in the recipe designer will result in inconsistent beers.
 
I only just recently started using the brewers friend recipe design function and thought I was being conservative by putting mash efficiency in as 86%. Brewed and hit the numbers exactly. Checked the mash efficiency calculator using the exact numbers and it spat out 96% efficiency. It makes me question whether they use the same equation in the two calculators.

Anyone else notice this?

Absolutely. I've gone away from using Brewer's Friend because their calculators are inconsistent/inaccurate all through the recipe builder, the brewday logs and the standalone calculators. It's 6-9 months since I've used it but from memory the standalone stuff was the most accurate/consistent.

As an example, I could use first principals (and their standalone boiloff calculator) to calculate a post-boil volume/gravity from a given pre-boil volume/gravity, enter both in the brewday log and it would say that the efficiency was different between the two. It took me months of missing my targets before I realised that the calculations were at fault.

I reported a number of issues/bugs/whatever with the calculations probably 9-12 months ago and got fobbed off. As far as I know they still haven't been fixed, so as much as I like their interface and cloud storage I didn't renew my subscription when it came up a month ago.
 
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TBH for most of my brews nowadays I just use "BribieMate" and accurate scales, thermometer - I have a dipstick for the urn, a bucket with marks on and a refractometer as well.

So firing up BribieMate that resides somewhere in the cerebral cortex I can whip out an ESB for example with base malt up to mark A on the bucket, plus whatever spec malt as I have favourite combos like 50 / 50 Carared / Crystal.
I mash at 66 using strike water that was on high dipstick mark and boil down to low mark. I know exactly what 20g of Galaxy or 35g of EKG is going to give and how much Ella or Styrians in the cube.

The only time I hop onto Brewmate is to double check a spec malt or a hop combo that I want to try out. And of course Brewmate is invaluable at Comp Season time as I'm usually branching out into styles I don't regularly brew, Imperial Hefepoodles etc.

No tickets on myself but after nearly a decade of AG brewing I'm well aware of the importance of accurate measurement and records but for day to day brews I guess I'm like a woodworker who can whip up a coffee table mostly by eye or a Two Hatted restaurant head chef who doesn't need to go running to the recipe books every five minutes. Two hatted? Hmm maybe that's a bit too many tickets....:cool:

So in my case I've got my software and I'm not really interested in buying a new system.
 
Fairly similar to what I do.

Most of the time the biggest user error is not in formulation.

It's in silly things like forgetting to put the 'element cover' in the urn and wiping out a BIAB bag. "seeingstars:
 
OT a bit but I guess it depends which approach you want to take. I'm only 12-ish months into my brewing career, I don't brew as often as I like, and I never brew two similar brews in a row, so I don't get much of a chance to develop my own calibrated eye and I've relied on tools/calculators to try to develop consistency. I'm also an engineer and prefer to understand the theory behind what I'm doing rather than developing an empirical "if I add this much grain to this much water and mash/boil for this long I get 1.0XX wort from my system" approach. That's not a criticism of that method, it's just not the one I choose to take.

With this background, I initially relied on the Brewer's Friend recipe builder and brewday logs to attempt to predict my brewing outcomes and calibrate my recipes to my rig. What I found though was that each brew was regularly coming out below the predicted OG and other gravities (in particular the pre-boil gravity) despite re-calibrating with measured data after each brew and lowering the planned efficiency for the next brew each time.

After probably six brews like this I got suspicious and started testing the consistency of the calculators, recipe builder and brew log and was pretty unimpressed with what I found. Aside from the inconsistent and inaccurate efficiency calculations which I have no explanation for, there is also a designed disconnect between the recipe builder and the brewday functions (which wasn't obvious to me but maybe I'm just obtuse) and a bug that seems to be related to deadspace calculations which leads to discrepancies between the two even when accounting for that designed disconnect.

I'm not saying that it's completely detached from reality as the discrepancies are small and plenty of people are happily using it, but there's enough bugs and errors in there that I decided to abandon it and build my own spreadsheet recipe builder using standard brewing calculations and hacking in LC's IBU calculator (thanks @Lyrebird_Cycles :cheers: ). Since doing that, my last six or so brews have been within a point or two of predicted gravities and I now only use BF for the inventory management which is pretty great being cloud-based.

I've certainly made errors in my process at various stages but I'd like to be able to think that a commercial product that is basically a series of simple calculators won't be the culprit when something turns out wrong, unfortunately that hasn't been the case. The other disappointing thing for me is that very few of these tools, including BF, publish the formulae used at each step (they do for some but certainly not all) so it's very difficult to check whether those calculations are functioning as intended. I know that most probably aren't interested in that level of detail but it's when bugs crop up that lack of auditability becomes an issue.

Apologies for the rant - clearly I haven't quite moved on from how pissed-off I was at the time about this and how BF support fobbed me off (while a paid-up subscriber) when I raised these issues despite me providing detailed worked examples of the faults that I'd identified in their system to make it easy for them (I know, I know - I was THAT guy). There were already multiple unresolved threads on their support forums regarding these problems at the time that had just seemingly been abandoned as too hard, and it appears that @Jack of all biers is experiencing it still. A bit too early on a work day to RDWHAHB unfortunately so I'll just blow-off steam here instead... :p

TLDR: BF is probably fine for general recipe guidance but there are enough inaccuracies and inconsistencies that I wouldn't recommend it for detailed analysis, calibration, and recipe adaption against your own rig.
 
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