Wheeler's Beer Engine

[Jim]

Welcome jimbob88.

You should have a private message from me.

[Dave S]

Initial thoughts: it needs a lot more work.

1. I don't seem to be able to change the defaults, even after pressing 'save all as defaults'.
2. In defaults editor what does 'boil volume scale' mean?
3. In defaults editor there is no provision for wort losses.
4. There is a yeast editor but no provision for adding yeast to a recipe.

I got fed up at this point.

I appreciate this is a work in progress and look forward to seeing it working properly. I'm assuming I have the most up-to-date issue - exe.win-amd64-3.6

[Jim]

Just for information, a copy of the programme for Windows is available for download from the JBK server here (first option in the list):-

https://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/extras.htm

Thanks to Jimbob88 for allowing us to host it.

DaveS - once you have it running it will check for updates each time you run it, so you will always have the latest version.

[jimbob88]

Initial thoughts: it needs a lot more work.

1. I don't seem to be able to change the defaults, even after pressing 'save all as defaults'.
2. In defaults editor what does 'boil volume scale' mean?
3. In defaults editor there is no provision for wort losses.
4. There is a yeast editor but no provision for adding yeast to a recipe.

I got fed up at this point.

I appreciate this is a work in progress and look forward to seeing it working properly. I'm assuming I have the most up-to-date issue - exe.win-amd64-3.6

I'll tackle each but if this one at a time - also I thought it should be mentioned a few sections of Wheeler's Wort Works are not obvious to know the location of.

1) You need to press the done button before saving - this will be fixed soon but at the moment allows a user to save after making a change they realized is a mistake.

2) Boil Volume Scale is the change in Boil Volume when you input a change in the volume entry. By default is 110%, so if I were to input 10 into the volume area, it would put 11 into the boil volume section (litres)

3) Yeah the program is still work-in-progress and I can implement it, I just don't use it personally so never thought about it - I am not sure how to implement it at this point in time, anybody got any ideas/formulas?

4) Yeasts are added via the Experimental Attenuation Tab where you can add Water Chemistry Additions and Yeasts. You may ask, why there?, and to be honest the only reason is due to the fact I wished to keep to the ideology of Graham Wheeler's Beer Engine for the Engine Room and keep it with as little clutter as possible.

[Dave S]

Just for information, a copy of the programme for Windows is available for download from the JBK server here (first option in the list):-

https://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/extras.htm

Thanks to Jimbob88 for allowing us to host it.

DaveS - once you have it running it will check for updates each time you run it, so you will always have the latest version.

Yes, the one I have running appears to be the same version, Jim, thanks.

[Dave S]

thanks, jimbob, look forward to seeing it develop, and well done for taking it on.

[jimbob88]

Hi everybody, I am the creator of Wheeler's Wort Works and as well as the current version have been developing a web-based edition , and I was thinking of choosing how to host it but to know if it is worth investing in hosting it I have created a poll, I would be thankful if you replied so I can know whether or not to start hosting it!
The Poll: http://www.strawpoll.me/embed_1/17933765
A sneak peek of the online edition: http://i.imgur.com/23GwCTL.png

Development is slowly but steadily coming along!

Here is a preview of the current version: http://i.imgur.com/NpdfATy.png

At this moment in time I plan to release it without a Hop/Grist/Yeast Editor and maybe add these features later on down the road.

Hope you are all doing well,
Jim

[wmfd]

3. In defaults editor there is no provision for wort losses.

3) Yeah the program is still work-in-progress and I can implement it, I just don't use it personally so never thought about it - I am not sure how to implement it at this point in time, anybody got any ideas/formulas?

Thanks Jim, it does look really good, continuing the beer engine and keeping it up to date.

I work on a few reasons for losses, which is in an ever growing brewing spreadsheet!

1. Boil losses - I've assumed 5.3kg from a 90 minute boil using a 2.2kw element (which is a bit toppy as it assumes this all goes into vaporising the water)
2. Hops - I assume that they soak up, or otherwise stop, 15ml per gram of hops (not sure where that came from)
3. Boiler dead space - I measured 1.5 litres when I set up initially
4. I also assume 1.5 litres is lost in the mash tun and that the grain soaks up an equivalent weight of water

Assuming by wort losses we are talking after the mash tun, then I can work out how much wort should go into the boiler (ignoring the mash tun losses, deadspace and grain)

I work from what I want to have at the end and then add all of the wort losses to get to my amount of wort into the boiler, so for example I want 20 litres:

1. Lose 1.5l from boiler deadspace
2. Lose c2 litres for 134g of hops
3. 5 litres to the boil
4. So I need to start with 28.5 litres of wort

I then add the mash tun losses to get to my initial liquor - so in the case above that would be a further 1.5l plus the grain bill.

It keeps me feel in control, even when I am not

[jimbob88]

Hi everyone,
It's me again here to talk about Wheeler's Wort Works Online, after the poll I took it seemed rather obvious that people wished to see a version of Wheeler's Wort Works available online. So I have spent, amongst school and other hobbies, a few months attempting to build this for everyone; however, I have encountered an issue and I am not truly sure how to get around it...

The technical explanation:
- I chose to use a piece of web development software called Remi (https://github.com/dddomodossola/remi) and honestly it was great for me at the time as I was able to write code in the language I love, Python, and as seen as the original Wheeler's Wort Works was written in Python I could write my code using the same Formulae and other such things.
- I encountered many issues across the time, yet the developer for Remi always was able to help me whenever I got stuck with implementing things not included in the base version of Remi, like a full login system. This was honestly great, as I was able to work alongside the developer to make sure my code worked properly... A primitive version of Wheeler's Wort Works is on my GitHub (https://github.com/jimbob88/wheelers-wort-works-online). Yet in development, many more features were added.
- This resulted in what I thought was a perfect system, and I couldn't be happier with the way the project was getting along...

The issues:

• The original concept of Wheeler's Beer Engine, was never designed to be released onto a website, this means that the current version is built with a legacy design system called "place", modern systems use a flex system where everything fits into rectangles that resize to a certain percentage of your screen. An example of this is Jim's Beer Kit. This means one cannot choose any old web development framework, so I chose Remi, as it was easy to develop for, looked really nice, and the maker of it seemed rather active

• In writing the program along with a rolling framework, I encountered many changes to the code and as seen it is ~2000-3000 lines of code it was difficult to keep it all working with the massive changes made.

• There is a fundamental issue with Remi, when one opens two tabs of Jim's Beer Kit. they can have two different threads open in each tab, the way Remi works is by showing the exact same web page across both of those tabs. This would result in a much worse management system and it would be really unclean and not much use to anybody...

• I have not yet made a decision of whether or not to scrap the current version I have and rebuild it in a more static, yet difficult to develop for like Django.

• In relation to the latter issue, I have attempted to explain the issue to the developer; however, he didn't understand what I meant when I asked him... Recently, I have attempted to direct message him on Reddit as we used to; however, he hasn't yet replied so I am waiting to see if my rephrasing of the issue has proved to help bring light to my problems...

What am I going to do now?

• To be completely honest with you all, I have absolutely no clue of how to continue as I have been put in a difficult position of "scrap the nearly complete version that has dire issues" or "continue and hope for an update to come out and fix my issues or at least for him to reply"...

• The current plan is to update the GitHub page so it is finally accurate with the latest build and other programmers can rip code from it.

So this here is designed just as an explanation for why I have not been updating the current version of Wheeler's Wort Works.
Thanks to you all for supporting this idea & I would love to hear your ideas,
James

P.S Thanks to Jim for uploading the desktop version to this site for everybody to access and download

[Jim]

Thanks for the update James.

[Binkie Huckaback]

I've been using Beer Engine for years with a 90 minute mash and a 90 minute boil never giving it a second thought as all the recipes in Graham's BYOBRA use the same. However, I have a recipe that I'd like to try that has a 60 minute mash and boil. How do I change the mash and boil times in Beer Engine? It's driving me mad that I can't find something I feel must be there.

[guypettigrew]

I don't think there is a mash time in Graham's BE. You mash for as long as you want, then BE can calculate the efficiency of the mash. This will tell you if a longer or shorter mash time makes a difference to the efficiency.

You can alter the boil time using the buttons under the hop additions box. These buttons also allow you to change the alpha acid content of the hop you are using if it's different to the amount in the hop 'library' in BE.

Guy

[Binkie Huckaback]

Thanks Guy. It's a relief to know I haven't missed something.

[IPA]

Have just discovered that Graham's Beer Engine appears to have a fault !
The formular that I use to calculate alcohol content is this.
OG-FG ÷7.36
1048-1011=37÷7.36=5.02%
When applied to recipes in BYOBRA and BCEBAT the results agree with Graham.
But when applied to the recipes generated in Beer Engine the forecast strengths in it are generally 0.2% lower
than my calculation.
So was Graham using a different formular when wrote the books to when created Beer Engine ?

[thepatchworkdoll]

Hi IPA
Ive always used this formulae
1.048 - 1.011 = 0.037 X 130 = 4.81%
Dont know if its any better or worse than the formulae youve used.
Regards
Pete