48 replies to this topic

[zymot]

I ended up with both promash and beersmith.I like the stand alone calculators in promash and I am used to them. Especially the strike water calculator. what ever that algorithm is to factor in thermal mass, it works for me. The Beersnoth one never got me results I liked.The beersmith recipe calculator makes the most sense to me. So all my recipes are beersmithed. I do not use the inventory tracker or even the brew day print out. I take some notes, run some basic calculations and scribble my brew day on a single sheet of paper.When you do the easy no worries batch sparge, there is not much more to know than strike water volume & temp and to note your hop additions.

[MtnBrewer]

Yes, there is major change in the works for TB, but I have no idea how soon it will happen. There are also some quirks to the recipe calculator there, although ATM I don't recall exactly what the issues are. I'm a confirmed Promash user and lover. For the last 2 years I've been toying with Beersmith, but I just can't get it to make sense for me. It's like it almost tries to do too much stuff fro me when I'd rather have it be a bit more manual.

Me in a nutshell right here. This spring I tried BTP and BS and neither really fits the way I brew so I continue to stick with PM. There are a few features I'd like to see that PM doesn't have but the other programs don't have them either. If I were to switch it would probably be BS because BTP didn't make any sense to me at all.

[BlKtRe]

I find it funny that brewers who started with PM have decided to stick with it. Its that way in my club too. Its not pretty but it works well and even though the program has been abandoned for updates we can still add ingredients to the master list. Which is all the updating really that any software really needs.

Edited by BlKtRe, 15 October 2012 - 07:55 AM.

[SchwanzBrewer]

I used beersmith for a while, but found it cumbersome and clunky. I switched over to Brewersfriend.com and I like it a lot. I can make recipe snapshots for that day if I changed something and leave the original alone. I can scale the batches, do water adjustments, and make notes. They have some calculators, but I don't really need them. All in all it's a great resource that I can take with me wherever I can get internet. If I forget to print out a recipe before going to get the grains, I can look it up on my phone. The interface is nice and pretty user friendly. I migrated all my recipes over there and haven't touched beersmith since.

[SchwanzBrewer]

I just looked at tasty brew and used the keg carbonation tool. It fails where all of these damn things fail. THEY DON"T TELL YOU HOW LONG TO LEAVE THE DAMN KEG AT THAT PRESSURE/TEMP! It matters. You CAN overcarb the keg using lower pressures for longer times. Drives me nuts.

[beach]

I just looked at tasty brew and used the keg carbonation tool. It fails where all of these damn things fail. THEY DON"T TELL YOU HOW LONG TO LEAVE THE DAMN KEG AT THAT PRESSURE/TEMP! It matters. You CAN overcarb the keg using lower pressures for longer times. Drives me nuts.

I don't agree with that one at all. Equaibrium is equalibrium. If the equalibrium that is reached results in overcarbonation you wanted a lower presure to begin with. Whenever I've ended up with an overcarbed beer I find my regulator is set too high. I carb at serving temp and presure with a stone and as long as my reg is set correctly I get the desired carbonation level.Beach

Edited by beach, 15 October 2012 - 09:29 AM.

[SchwanzBrewer]

I don't agree with that one at all. Equaibrium is equalibrium. If the equalibrium that is reached results in overcarbonation you wanted a lower presure to begin with. Whenever I've ended up with an overcarbed beer I find my regulator is set too high. I carb at serving temp and presure with a stone and as long as my reg is set correctly I get the desired carbonation level.Beach

Ug. The tool says for my duss alt, if I set it to 12.XXX psi I will achieve 2.685 volumes. Well that's nice, but I guarantee that it will be overcarbed if you were to leave it at that pressure for a couple weeks. Yes it will reach equilibrium, but it will be more carbonation that you anticipated and you will get foam. So my gripe isn't that it wasn't what I desired so much as the tool isn't complete and someone without experience will end up losing a lot of beer to foam overs. That is all. And this seems to be a problem with most of the carbonation tools is all. I use the Ken method. 25 psi for 2 days. No shaking.I don't want to argue this in this thread.

[beach]

Ug. The tool says for my duss alt, if I set it to 12.XXX psi I will achieve 2.685 volumes. Well that's nice, but I guarantee that it will be overcarbed if you were to leave it at that pressure for a couple weeks. Yes it will reach equilibrium, but it will be more carbonation that you anticipated and you will get foam. So my gripe isn't that it wasn't what I desired so much as the tool isn't complete and someone without experience will end up losing a lot of beer to foam overs. That is all. And this seems to be a problem with most of the carbonation tools is all.I use the Ken method. 25 psi for 2 days. No shaking.I don't want to argue this in this thread.

Then you should start another thread, you posted here and I responded to it here. If you're having foaming problems then you need to look at your serving set up. That needs to be balanced as well. In addition to that, there is temperature stratification in kegarators unless there is a fan in there circulating the air to eliminate stratification. Don't blame the charts and calculators. Balance your system correcting and insure that the kegerator temps are consistant top to bottom.Beach

[SchwanzBrewer]

Then you should start another thread, you posted here and I responded to it here. If you're having foaming problems then you need to look at your serving set up. That needs to be balanced as well. In addition to that, there is temperature stratification in kegarators unless there is a fan in there circulating the air to eliminate stratification. Don't blame the charts and calculators. Balance your system correcting and insure that the kegerator temps are consistant top to bottom.Beach

FWIW I don't have problems. I get asked about kegging a lot and asked about the calculators online a lot at my LHBC meetings. Over and over, they all want to know, how long? I explain to them that theoretically it should be like you said, but practically, it's not. What would be helpful (on topic here) is if the tools in beersmith, promaash, tasty brew, ect gave us an estimate for how it it took to reach equilibrium. So if you need to carb up quicker you can gauge how you need to do it. For example, lets say you brewed last minute for a wedding and you need to carbonate overnight. It would helpful if the tools let you choose time as an input. So if you want to reach 2.5 volumes of CO2 in 18 hours you have to set the pressure to X and the temp to Y. Otherwise most everyone is just guessing, and it's a pain in the ass for the brewer to have to explain why the beer is so foamy or flat the next day at the wedding.Most likely the uninitiated will see those tables, or use the calculator and the next day the beer is too flat. Otherwise the tables and such are really only useful for best case scenarios where unlimited time is assumed, ya dig?

[al_bob]

I use Beer Tools Pro and have for years. I had a Mac in the old days and there wasn't anything else. It's a little weird to get used to, but it works well. They have a forum and pinned threads by the guys who beta tested it (I was one of them)and a full set of detailed instructions.

I do hear people saying that they are used to one product and have difficulty trying to work with another. It may just be what you're used to. Right now I use the Tastybrew calculator and get my recipe to look like I want and then I use a combination (sometimes) of EZ_Water and Bru'N'Water for the water part of it. It's not complicated and it's what I'm used to. It would be nice for an application to have an inventory, a recipe calculator and a water section where everything was in the same place and my guess is that all of the latest versions of these products do this. Denny, if you hear of a timetable for the TB update, please let me know. I occasionally go ob there expecting an "extreme makeover", but it never comes. Cheers gang... enjoy your Sunday, your football [or baseball] and your homebrew.

BTP does all of this. It has a lot of power if you are willing to set up your brewery and parameters on the software. I had a good handle on it when I was helping them test it, but got away for a while and mostly use it for basic recipes and predictions. Soon, I'm going to do the work and set up all of my brewing vessels, and water profiles in the program and go from there.You can create your own inventory database and add/edit anything not already in their database. It also has nice email and html sharing/copying options. It's PC and Mac now.

[Big Nake]

I use the Ken method. 25 psi for 2 days. No shaking.

It does work nicely for me. I just make sure that the beer in the keg is cold first and go from there. If I make something I would like less carbed, I let it go for less time and I would like something livlier, I let it go longer. I have accidentally left beers for quite a few hours longer than they should have gone and they still come out okay. Volumes of CO2 is something that I do not look into very deeply. I have a system that works and that can be modified for the style and that's as simple and as complicated as I would like to make it.

[bigdaddyale]

https://gnipsel.com/...MashWater33.exe

[matt6150]

FWIW I don't have problems. I get asked about kegging a lot and asked about the calculators online a lot at my LHBC meetings. Over and over, they all want to know, how long? I explain to them that theoretically it should be like you said, but practically, it's not. What would be helpful (on topic here) is if the tools in beersmith, promaash, tasty brew, ect gave us an estimate for how it it took to reach equilibrium. So if you need to carb up quicker you can gauge how you need to do it.For example, lets say you brewed last minute for a wedding and you need to carbonate overnight. It would helpful if the tools let you choose time as an input. So if you want to reach 2.5 volumes of CO2 in 18 hours you have to set the pressure to X and the temp to Y. Otherwise most everyone is just guessing, and it's a pain in the ass for the brewer to have to explain why the beer is so foamy or flat the next day at the wedding.Most likely the uninitiated will see those tables, or use the calculator and the next day the beer is too flat. Otherwise the tables and such are really only useful for best case scenarios where unlimited time is assumed, ya dig?

Your smart you should make one, you could make millions and rule the world!

[bigdaddyale]

Your smart you should make one, you could make millions and rule the world!

make it out of SS

[SchwanzBrewer]

Your smart you should make one, you could make millions and rule the world!

make it out of SS

You two made the list.If I had the time and money to do the experimentation I would try. That would be a long and tedious experiment. You would have to have perfect control on volume, temperature and pressure. Also a good scale to measure the mass of the CO2 that has been absorbed. If I were still in college I would try and make it a thesis and add in alcohol percentage.

[Breakpoint]

You two made the list.If I had the time and money to do the experimentation I would try. That would be a long and tedious experiment. You would have to have perfect control on volume, temperature and pressure. Also a good scale to measure the mass of the CO2 that has been absorbed. If I were still in college I would try and make it a thesis and add in alcohol percentage.

PV=nRT

[SchwanzBrewer]

PV=nRT

Yes. You still have to run the experiment for time and then come up with an equation that statistically fits a decent range of CO2 volume.

[No Party JKor]

Ug. The tool says for my duss alt, if I set it to 12.XXX psi I will achieve 2.685 volumes. Well that's nice, but I guarantee that it will be overcarbed if you were to leave it at that pressure for a couple weeks. Yes it will reach equilibrium, but it will be more carbonation that you anticipated and you will get foam. So my gripe isn't that it wasn't what I desired so much as the tool isn't complete and someone without experience will end up losing a lot of beer to foam overs. That is all. And this seems to be a problem with most of the carbonation tools is all.I use the Ken method. 25 psi for 2 days. No shaking.I don't want to argue this in this thread.

2.7 volumes is a little high, that might cause a lot of foaming if you don't have your draft system set up properly. Assuming you ave it set up right and you actually WANT 2.7 volumes, the calculators will tell you what to set it at. It won't be overcarbed whether you leave it there for 2 weeks or two years.If you think its overcarbed after two weeks, chances are that 2.7 volumes is more carbonation than you wanted.but, back to our originally scheduled programming...

Me in a nutshell right here. This spring I tried BTP and BS and neither really fits the way I brew so I continue to stick with PM. There are a few features I'd like to see that PM doesn't have but the other programs don't have them either. If I were to switch it would probably be BS because BTP didn't make any sense to me at all.

Add me to the list of people who have been using PM for a LONG time and couldn't get used to BTP or BS. It's been a while since I tried the free trials, but IIRC I felt both were missing some things that PM has and that I use (can't remember what those are, sorry).PM doesn't have everything I want, either, but it's relatively easy to use and the things I want would likely never be included in brewing software selling for $30. I've been thinking about trying one of the other programs again, but I doubt I'll stick with it unless there are some major changes. I might do what chuck_d did and develop my own spreadsheet based calculator, but it'll be a while before I have time to put that together. Prolly'll just use ProMash for another 10 years.

[No Party JKor]

Yes. You still have to run the experiment for time and then come up with an equation that statistically fits a decent range of CO2 volume.

You could calculate it to get you in the ballpark. The time required to calculate it depends how versed you are in mass transfer theory. I've considered doing the calcs several times, but it hasn't made it to the top of my priority list yet.

[SchwanzBrewer]

You could calculate it to get you in the ballpark. The time required to calculate it depends how versed you are in mass transfer theory. I've considered doing the calcs several times, but it hasn't made it to the top of my priority list yet.

Exactly.