Feedback on New Water Spreadsheet

I’m going to be working on breaking out the water section of our Low Oxygen spreadsheet into its own spreadsheet and I want to solicit some group feedback/content requests.

We have had good luck getting very consistent and accurate pH actuals versus pH estimates with our sheet. The issue is that some people may be using other brewing software such as BeerSmith, Brewers friend, etc and may want to take advantage of the water section without the rest of our sheet.

I still plan on keeping some aspects of the main sheet, like the Low Oxygen color reduction, etc. and in fact, most of the Low Oxygen specific stuff in the main sheet is water specific, i.e. Meta, so that stuff will be present.

We currently have capabilities for Lactic, Phosphoric, Sauergut, Antioxin SBT (trifecta), NaMeta, etc.

We currently have it setup for No Sparge but part of the release and subsequent troubleshooting/adaptation would be to solicit feedback and incorporate sparging into the mix.

One of the most recent implementations was the ability to enter DI pH of base Malts and calculate off of that instead of color. Specialty Malts will still use the color based calcs.

In order to prevent any confusion concerning the accuracy of the sheet, as well as not misrepresent our findings, I’ll say that we have found our calculations to be very consistent and very accurate. This is using an Extech pH110, with 0.01 resolution and advertised 0.01 accuracy. We have seen estimates within +- 0.01 of actual in repeated trials. We have not taken into account any additional tolerances from buffer solutions, etc. I’m hoping to solicit data from those who use these calcs as well to build up a data set.

So I’ll open it up while I start re-writing this as a solo spreadsheet and hopefully you guys have comments, requests, etc.

Glad to hear you’re make some UI adjustments. The amount of information is too much for one sheet.

It will definitely be a single, small page with a tab for background calcs.

Will it use sticks, spoons and pinches as units?

You know what? Just because you’re such a peach, I’ll make a metric version for you. In fact, I should shoot you a copy of my custom BLAM Low Oxygen spreadsheet.

Put in some work today and formatting and getting the sheet ready to receive calculations.

Going to try and keep it simple. It’s a good solid set of calculations with some interesting new stuff in there as well.

I saw that you have a way to put “trifecta” additions in there, but how about…uh…bifecta?  For those of us without brewtan B, will the sheet be able to do meta+AA ?  The last couple batches I have been doing that combination…

Sure! We already currently have a table that receives percentages of the 3 as user inputs and calculates their contributions. I can either adapt that to the g/gal and g total convention or keep the table and you can customize the percentages.

So long as the knobs are in there, that is all I would want.

Awesome. One of the things I changed today that’s new is distilled water pH input for base Malts. Essentially you do away with color based estimation and enter the malt pH directly.

What are the best practices for the base malt ph test? Mash at 151 and wait 15? Crush fine in a blender ok? Getting my mill situated for a small amount of grain would be a PIA.

The easiest thing would be to get the malt analysis sheet from the bag. Then you could just enter that value. Short of that what you describe would work. Maybe wait 20-30 minutes.

Not all sacks have compete info. My sack of red x and best pilz both lack ph.

50g finely crushed malt to 200ml distilled water.  65c rest for 15 should be fine. Give it some shakes/stirs.

Thanks

Any content suggestions while you’re here? Something you like to see in the sheet?

Let me look at the updated version a bit more. My biggest gripe with the OG sheet is usability. I’m of the opinion that a user shouldn’t need to scroll around.

I haven’t issued the revised sheet yet. It’s going to be strictly a water sheet.

The full sheet was originally designed for Bryan to replace both BeerSmith and Brun Water. As such, and owing to Bryan having a big screen in the brewery, it is a big sheet with a lot of stuff on it. It was purpose built and has served that function wonderfully.

For most Brewers however, it’s a lot of information. It is actually very user friendly. There is a learning curve but it is user friendly.

The goal here is to break out the water section into a single, more succinct sheet. Most people aren’t about to give up their  current brewing software, but many can likely benefit from the water portion, which contains many of the Low Oxygen heavy hitters. Given the results we have seen with pH estimates, I am confident it will be the most accurate sheet out there.

My mistake. With the current sheet, consider splitting it up into common tasks. Think of it like the checkout workflow of most web pages. Enter address → choose shipping → enter credit → confirm.

Maybe split ingredients, process/equipment (settings), water, summary.

I dig your checklist. It’s more useful than the Brewers Friend version which IMO is too granular.

ETA - written while drinking a six week old 500ml can of Bitburger. I think I paid $5 for 4 at TJ’s

All great feedback on the main sheet. If you have any requests or interests in the water only sheet, let me know. I am currently revising it and hoping to release sometime next week the β version.