[A lot of this post is for advanced BIABacus users so don't be worried if it makes no sense to you. I will put a conclusion at the end that will note whether we have been able to 'crack' this recipe or not.]
Firstly, thanks guys for following on from my last post here. Not sure if I was tired, drunk or both. Seeing as I slept for 12 hrs straight after work yesterday, probably both
. I hope I made some sense in that post
.
mally, yep, there are a lot more than three problems
. Great to see you guys were able to quickly find some the big crackers
. Now I'm wondering...
Can we still help skink?
I know from skink's posts/PM's that he would really like to make sense of the recipes in this book. Now that we have some more info on the hop side of things, maybe we can create some order here?
One of the best things about the BIABAcus is that the design allows it to act as a brilliant 'recipe detective'. We'll be able to do some things here in less than a minute that would be impossible in other programs or would take pen and paper, at least 15 minutes probably and high concentration levels.
The most important number we need in any recipe is...
The End of Boil Volume at Ambient (EOBV-A)
Assuming no water dilutions or fermentable additions are made post-boil, the EOBV-A figure is the first point at which the brew becomes stabilised. The gravity willnot change until pitching and the
theoretical hop bitterness estimate will also not change.
The only volume figure the author gives us is a "batch" size of 5 gallons. As mally and skink mentioned, this could mean EOBV-A, Volume into Fermentor (VIF) or Volume into Packaging (VIP). Can the BIABacus help us make a good guess at the EOBV-A?
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Detecting EOBV-A (Advanced BIABacus Use)[/center]
Once you become aware of the problems with most published recipes you will probably also begin to see some of the ways in which the BIABacus can help you make accurate or good guesses where information is lacking. The BIABAcus can also help you make the decision to abandon a recipe.
As mentioned above, the first number we need for recipe integrity is EOBV-A. There are two main ways we can use the BIABacus to investigate EOBV-A when it is lacking...
Working with Section C - The Grain Bill
Three numbers are needed to determine EOBV-A from a grain bill. We need the grain bill weight, the original gravity and preferably the 'Efficiency into Kettle (EIK)' or 'End of Boil Efficiency (EOBE)'. Unfortunately, we only have two of these things.
When an efficiency figure is missing, we can still often make some sense ot the recipe. For example, we can reasonable expect EIK and EOBE to be somewhere between 70 and 80%. Let's investigate this...
Recipe detective work using the grain bill essentially involves making the left hand weights in Section C equal the right hand weights in Section C. Notice how I have 2495 grams on the left and 2428 grams on the right? That's close enough for our purposes.
The next thing to note is that I have juggled VIF in Section B so that EOBV-A in Section K reads 5.00 Gal. But...
...here's the cracker...
Go to Section X and you'll see that I have had to use a 100% EIK to get the left and tight hand sides balancing
.
This tells me straight away that there is a big integrity problem on the grain bill side. If I juggle the numbers so that say, VIP was 5.00 Gal then the problem becomes even worse.
Something is very wrong here.
Working with Section D - The Hop Bill
To determine EOBV-A from the hop bill requires. We need the weights, times and AA% of the hop additions as well as the total IBU's using the correct Tinseth formula. It is extremely rare to know what IBU formula has been used and whether it was written correctly. We don't have much info to go on in this recipe but let's see if the BIABacus can tell us anything...
The first thing I've done is guessed that the bittering hops were added at 60 minutes (a lot of books do this) and the finishing hops were added at 15 mins.
There are a few things I can do now. I can type in a few different numbers into the EOBV-A field on the first line of Section D until the estimated IBU's at the bottom read 31. 27.1 L gets this to happen.
The other thing I can do is type 18.92 into that field (the EOBV-A that shows in Section K and then type 31 into the second line of Section D. Doing this, you'll see that the weights on the left and right hand side do not balance - they are not even close.
Either something is also very wrong here or the Tinseth hop formula has not been used in the book.
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Conclusion [/center]
Our further investigation into this recipe using the 'recipe detective' capabilities of the BIABacus show us that the recipe lacks integrity in even more ways than we thought.
I read somewhere that this author also recommended using your mouth to start a syphon. I think given the above skink, you'll just have to accept that this particular book may have given you all the value it can and it's now time for it to go to the back of the shelf or maybe even the bin.
What to Do Now
My highest recommendation for y ou and anyone else who wants a sound recipe book is to invest in "Brewing Classic Styles," by John Palmer and Zamil Zainasheff. These recipes are sound, solid, award-winning recipes that can be put into the BIABacus by simply typing 22.7 L into the EOBV-A field on the first line of Section D. Simple
.
The other thing to do is start a thread here called, "Standard/Ordinary Bitter Recipe Required". There's some great guys here to help you with this. Maybe there are een some recipes already here
.
Once again, a great question skink. Sorry there was no happy ending but I think your question would have been educational for lots of others here so good on you.
PP
P.S. Won't be able to grammar and spell check the above until later. Hopefully there is nothing glaring.
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. (Thanks Jamil and John for the above recipe 
)
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. On another day, you might have scored a brewer who gets the same message across in a tenth of the time 
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