Graham Wheeler's water calculator

[Fuggled Mind]

Just noticed that there are new water profiles added to Graham's water calculator. When did this happen? I'm not complaining of course as it's nice to see some new regions - Dortmund, Pilsen, Dublin and two London profiles (tap and well) and an extra profile for Burton. What's the idea behind London tap?

Cheers

Jason

[Eric]

Presumably Graham himself. It must be a work in progress as the new profiles are not working at present.

[Fuggled Mind]

Hi Eric

It didn't cross my mind to take a look as to whether its functioning. I should have checked that before posting. Still, it's certainly something to look forward to. For someone who finds understanding water and its contribution to brewing difficult, the calculator has been great. I was gutted that my porters were really harsh when I went from extract to AG. Once I took the time to understand the calculator, my porters have turned out really smooth.

Have never done a lager but have always fancied a go at a Dortmunder export.

Cheers

Jason

[Eric]

Yes, agree it will be something to look forward to seeing. Can't wait for the debate to begin.
Cheers.

[jessykarret]

The idea lies beneath Graham himself, couldn't wait till the debate begin

[Rubbery]

Since the last site upgrade this has not been working properly. The html does not match with the javascript - it looks like a mix of versions.

Is there any chance of getting this fixed as this is a valuable resource and I would hate to see it go.

[Rubbery]

Problem is current version of water.html is 1.03, but I have found 1.04 in the web archive for 18 Aug 2014.

Jim, can I help you sort this out?

[Jim]

The water calculator hasn't changed since it was first made available via JBK, so those non-functional bits have been there all along. The only difference is that you've discovered them.

I'm unsure as to whether Graham has made any changes to it since he provided us with the code - maybe he can let us know via this thread?

[Rubbery]

It was version 1.04, but now is v1.03.

[Jim]

It was version 1.04, but now is v1.03.

Unless Andy has changed it back to a previous version (seems doubtful!) it's the same one that's always been hosted on JBK....

[Graham]

The water calculator hasn't changed since it was first made available via JBK, so those non-functional bits have been there all along. The only difference is that you've discovered them.

I'm unsure as to whether Graham has made any changes to it since he provided us with the code - maybe he can let us know via this thread?

Not guilty M'lord, I've not changed anything on it for years, and I have not made it available anywhere other than JBK. I do not know of any profiles that simply do not work. There are some profiles that are not solvable with certain base water compositions, but none that do not work outright. I seem to recall that there was both an original version and an upgraded version hosted on JBK, I think that the upgraded version did attempt to address some of the profiles that were most difficult to achieve with certain common base waters. Perhaps either the HTML or the JavaScript for the two different versions has become swapped at some time recently.

I am stunned. I thought that it had long fallen into disuse, under the weight of recent competitive stuff, such as spreadsheets and the like. Are people still using it?

[Sadfield]

Yes Sir, having very recently started to address water treatment, I find it very a useful, intuitive and easy to understand, tool. Would be great if was avaliable as a stand alone tool or spreadsheet that retains my water data.

[simple one]

Would be good if it was added in to beer engine!

[Graham]

I have just looked at my notes that accompany version 1.04 and, indeed, one of the differences between that and 1.03 is that I removed certain geographical water profiles such as Burton, Munich, etc, because people were complaining that my profiles didn't match the profiles given elsewhere on the web. However people fail to realise that these geographical profiles are not necessarily the water that the brewers actually brewed with; indeed, some of them would not produce decent beer at all as they stand, and certainly they do not match modern sensibilities as to what constitutes good brewing water. Most breweries boiled their water before use and this would make a big difference to the result and there were things like sour mashes and acid malt to lower the pH of the mash. I possibly modified those regional profiles so that they gave good results with a typical range of base water types available in Britain. It was easier to remove them than to explain or argue the toss and leave people to enter those profiles manually if they wanted to use them.

I did indeed start work on a new water treatment calculator intended for incorporation into BeerEngine; easier to use, more intuitive, less fussy, and incorporating some clever maths (even if I do say so myself). It uses slider controls to adjust the calcium level and the sulphate / chloride ratio, which makes it very easy to jiggle the water composition to get it as close as you are going to get to the target profile with your base water. It is written in PERL rather than JavaScript, so it is possible to separate it out as a stand-alone application. It does save the base water values too. I got it into a high state of functionality, almost ready, but like many other things, it got shelved after my stroke, and I never picked it up again. I have only just resumed the writing of my next book.

It is a shame that there is not a native slider control in JavaScript otherwise the html version could be made to almost mimic the new calculator. Sliders are possible in JavaScript using a combination of CSS and HTML5, but attaching objects and things like that are beyond my capabilities and I am too old now to learn new things. The CSS slider examples out there on the web either do not do what I want, look fairly ugly and clumsy, or are someone else's copyright and cost money to use.

Anyway, it does look like something got swapped on JBK.

[Jim]

Graham, thanks answering that query. You will have a pm very soon!