I know it is always a mistake to allow unfinished software to get away from you, but I have not been able to spend much time on my infamous Beer Engine software lately, because I've been bogged down with other things.
However, if anyone wishes to play with the story so far, it can be downloaded here:
http://www.practicalbrewing.co.uk/main/ ... eerengine/
It is an exe, so you will have to trust me, and there is 4 megabyte of it. It will bring up a standard installation screen. It does not mess unnecessarily with the registry and it uninstalls cleanly.
It has only been tested on XP with a FAT32 file system. There might be some minor file permission issues on NT file systems, but I am unable to check that. It should work on anything later than (but not including) win98.
Like I said: it is unfinished. There is no help, yet, but I do have the beginnings of an instruction manual which I'll tidy up and upload later if necessary. There is no way of saving and reloading recipes at the moment, except by saving as html. To print you will need to print from html in your browser too. The water treatment bit is not there, but it will not be much different to the one already on Jims.
Importantly, there are no ingredient editors yet, although this could be done, with care, in a text editor.
That's about it! Oh! it doesn't do any of the flashy stuff, like inventory management. You'll have to go to the professionals for that.
Hopefully any feedback I receive will help when I get time to go back to it. Thanks in advance.
Graham
Wheeler's Beer Engine
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prolix
Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine
Graham changing the boil time for the hops is not reducing the utilisation.
the EBU are uneffected by the boil time is what I really wanted to say.
great gadget clear and simple, perfer it with fixed's unchecked, just the way my brews are constructed.
the EBU are uneffected by the boil time is what I really wanted to say.
great gadget clear and simple, perfer it with fixed's unchecked, just the way my brews are constructed.
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Graham
Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine
Go to Editors -> Defaults and click the boil-time compensation "exponential" box.prolix wrote:Graham changing the boil time for the hops is not reducing the utilisation.
the EBU are uneffected by the boil time is what I really wanted to say.
great gadget clear and simple, perfer it with fixed's unchecked, just the way my brews are constructed.
If you prefer Tinseth, click the Tinseth button and it will set it up accordingly.
Glad to see that it does actually run on someone else's machine.
EDIT
This is where you might get permission problems if on NT file system.
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Graham
Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine
Cheers.Andy wrote:Runs fine here on XP Pro SP3, NTFS filesystem.
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sparky Paul
Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine
Ditto!Andy wrote:Runs fine here on XP Pro SP3, NTFS filesystem.
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Aleman
- It's definitely Lock In Time
- Posts: 6132
- Joined: Sun Jun 03, 2007 11:56 am
- Location: Mashing In Blackpool, Lancashire, UK
Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine
The alpha release ran fine for me . . . time to upgrade to the Beta I guess 
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Graham
Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine
Just a few extras. You can change the colours too now, as a result of your feedback.Aleman wrote:The alpha release ran fine for me . . . time to upgrade to the Beta I guess
Just one little gotcha: To use the 'doze default colours you have to select "Machine Default" in the drop-down box in Defaults. Save Defaults and then restart the software (not the machine), coz it only reads the machine colours on startup.
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Graham
Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine
I had not done as much of an instruction manual as I though that I had. However, here is a brief getting started guide.
Getting Started
The easiest way to get started is to enter a sample recipe.
1) Open up Beer Engine.
2) In the "Original Gravity" box, top right, enter an original gravity of 1.040 (Don't forget the decimal point). Leave the "fixed" box ticked for now.
3) Click the "Add New" button and an ingredients menu will pop up.
4) Scroll down, using either your mouse wheel or the scroll-bar, and double-click on Pale Malt. Then scroll up to Crystal Malt and double-click on that. Both items will now have been added to the ingredients list. Alternatives to double clicking are to use the "Add It" button, or to hit the space bar. Hitting the return key will add the ingredient and close the pop-up.
5) Close the Fermentable Ingredient Additions pop-up.
6) Click on pale malt in the ingredients list such that it is highlighted in blue. Move to the "Adjust Percent" buttons adjacent to the ingredients list and adjust such that the "%" column for pale malt reads 95%. Observe that the ingredients column changes accordingly.
7) Click on crystal malt in the ingredients list such that it is highlighted in blue. Move to the "Adjust Percent" buttons and adjust such that the "%" column for crystal malt reads 5%.
8.) Move to the "Bitterness EBU" box and set it to 30.
9) Click on the "Add Hop" button and a hop menu will pop up.
10) Double click on Fuggle.
11) Close the Hop Additions pop-up.
12) Click on Fuggle in the hop list such that it is highlighted in blue. Move to the "Adjust Percent" buttons adjacent to the hops list and adjust such that the "%" column reads 100%.
That is it. You have just developed 23 litres of a bog-standard, 1040 bitter with about 3.8% alcohol.
Unticking the "fixed" tick-box will change the adjustment buttons from percent to weight. You can then adjust the weight of each ingredient. The original gravity (and the percentage column) will change to reflect the new weight. The "% Weight" and "% Extract" switches are self-explanatory and alter the way that percentage is expressed.
The hop section behaves similarly.
Clicking on the legends above the ingredients columns: "Fermentable Ingredient, EBC, Grams, %, will cause the columns to be sorted in either ascending or descending order. Clicking on the legend again will cause the columns to be assorted in the opposite order.
Getting Started
The easiest way to get started is to enter a sample recipe.
1) Open up Beer Engine.
2) In the "Original Gravity" box, top right, enter an original gravity of 1.040 (Don't forget the decimal point). Leave the "fixed" box ticked for now.
3) Click the "Add New" button and an ingredients menu will pop up.
4) Scroll down, using either your mouse wheel or the scroll-bar, and double-click on Pale Malt. Then scroll up to Crystal Malt and double-click on that. Both items will now have been added to the ingredients list. Alternatives to double clicking are to use the "Add It" button, or to hit the space bar. Hitting the return key will add the ingredient and close the pop-up.
5) Close the Fermentable Ingredient Additions pop-up.
6) Click on pale malt in the ingredients list such that it is highlighted in blue. Move to the "Adjust Percent" buttons adjacent to the ingredients list and adjust such that the "%" column for pale malt reads 95%. Observe that the ingredients column changes accordingly.
7) Click on crystal malt in the ingredients list such that it is highlighted in blue. Move to the "Adjust Percent" buttons and adjust such that the "%" column for crystal malt reads 5%.
8.) Move to the "Bitterness EBU" box and set it to 30.
9) Click on the "Add Hop" button and a hop menu will pop up.
10) Double click on Fuggle.
11) Close the Hop Additions pop-up.
12) Click on Fuggle in the hop list such that it is highlighted in blue. Move to the "Adjust Percent" buttons adjacent to the hops list and adjust such that the "%" column reads 100%.
That is it. You have just developed 23 litres of a bog-standard, 1040 bitter with about 3.8% alcohol.
Unticking the "fixed" tick-box will change the adjustment buttons from percent to weight. You can then adjust the weight of each ingredient. The original gravity (and the percentage column) will change to reflect the new weight. The "% Weight" and "% Extract" switches are self-explanatory and alter the way that percentage is expressed.
The hop section behaves similarly.
Clicking on the legends above the ingredients columns: "Fermentable Ingredient, EBC, Grams, %, will cause the columns to be sorted in either ascending or descending order. Clicking on the legend again will cause the columns to be assorted in the opposite order.
Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine
Great stuff, Graham! 
Are you going to add a save function for each recipe (or is it there and I can't see it)?
EDIT: Doh! Read the original post Jim!
Are you going to add a save function for each recipe (or is it there and I can't see it)?
EDIT: Doh! Read the original post Jim!
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Graham
Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine
Yes, that is the intention, as you have found out for yourself. Unfortunately the water treatment calculator should really be implemented beforehand, because that stuff would need to be saved too. The water treatment calculator isn't trivial, so I'd need to muster up some will-power to tackle it. There is still a little bit to do on the hop utilisation functions.Jim wrote:Great stuff, Graham!
Are you going to add a save function for each recipe (or is it there and I can't see it)?
EDIT: Doh! Read the original post Jim!
The most important thing on the to-do list is the ingredient editors. It's not a busting lot of use to people if they can't add to the ingredients list or change the parameters.
Next would be water treatment; then saving and restoring recipes; then a load of default recipes (probably all the stuff in the European book, because I doubt if that'll ever be re-published); then a few more useful utilities.
It'll probably also play "Happy Birthday Graham" on a certain date each year.
Of course, if everybody prefers Promash anyway, there will not be a lot of point.
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MartialAnt
Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine
If my computer goes tits up i'll never buy future books of yours..... so there!
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Graham
Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine
I don't think there will be many "future books".MartialAnt wrote:If my computer goes tits up i'll never buy future books of yours..... so there!
It hasn't bounced anybody's machine yet - I'd be sure to have heard about it by now if it had. That's tempting fate
