Beer Smith ?

[Martin the fish]

I've just checked again. There is no way you can put in 5003g's for grain if you have set the units to KG's.

So tell me how you do it please.

[Andy]

It rounds to two decimal places. 5003g is rounded down to 5.00kg

Enter 5006g and it rounds to 5.01kg.

Do you really need it to be precise to three decimal places ?

(As Daab often says, we're making beer, not clocks )

[Martin the fish]

Yes i do. So how do you do hops then Mr clever clogs? Just bung in 10grams when it says 1g?
Whats the point of having recipe's when you can just bung in any amount you like, give or take ten grams? If your only doing a 1 gallon recipe then the difference between 1g and 10g WILL make a difference. If it doesn't, as your saying, then all recipe's are utter rubbish.

As i said it will not do grams when you put in kilo's. Argue all you like but you've just proved my point. It doesn't do what i said it didn't do at the beginning.

[Martin the fish]

Don't mean to sound obnoxious but i did try to point this out and all i got was-'your wrong' we are right.

Same thing goes with trying to put correct monetary values in. You can't.

So although Beersmith is an interesting 'toy' it's not really of any use apart from a toy to play with.
DaaB is right, learn how to work it all out on paper. At least you can add whatever you bloody well like in whatever increments you bloody well like. Rather than some stupid computer program telling you you can't.

[Andy]

It lets you choose different units for hops, so set those to grams.

(and chill out a bit, we're trying to help).

[Vossy1]

What's relly going to mess you up MTF is when you see how many extra grams of grain you can add to a recipe, without it making one iota of difference to the expected OG

Go on try it....I dare ya

So an extra decimal place really doesn't matter anyway

[MightyMouth]

I use less than 10g for hops, so yes. And grain bills don't always end in a 0 so yes again.

Yes but hops are priced in cg not kg and allow single gram entries in recipes. When you are dealing with the variations in efficiency you are likely to get in home brewing you might as well round your grain bill up or down to the nearest 0 as it will make no difference to the end product.

If it really is something that you would use though it might be an idea to Make a Suggestion at the beer smith forums if you haven't already.

[Martin the fish]

It does if you are only brewing 4.5 ltr's. I have just done it. It does make a difference. If the grain bill has four types and they should all be something ending in one gram and you up that to ten then it's 40 grams more and that does make a difference on a 4.5ltr batch. GO on try it
My point here is that it does not do everything i want it do. It actually does little along the lines of what I want it to do.

And i haven't even started on setting costs into it. Which you can't do effectively. So i'm just pointing out that it is a toy NOT a tool.

If a few grams doesn't make an iota of difference why do people post recipe's with exact weights? If it didn't make any difference recipe's would be
Bung in about 5kg of MO
Throw in about a handfull of crystal
put in some choc
Mash for whatever time you want at about 66C for 90mins but 68C for 3 hours is ok too
add any old hop you like.
boil for 60-90 mins. Up to you.
Yeast-whatever.

Best bitter/lager/stout/porter/IPA
All the same as it don't matter what you add.

Chill out? Why? I get told you gotta add this, add that, do it this way, that way, you can't do that, can't do this. Yet when i point out that BS isn't all it's cracked up to be i get accused of being too accurate and you don't need to be? Make your mind up. You've gotta mash for 90 mins at 66C but you can throw grain in thats near enough, or not? You've gotta sparge at 77C and your PH must be 5.3. But you can just bung in an amount of grain thats near enough, or not. Doing a DP historic IPA. You've gotta use fuggles or goldings or it won't be as it should. Why does that matter if the grain bill doesn't?
Jeez, lets get some continuity here or simply don't bother.

[Martin the fish]

Yes but hops are priced in cg not kg

another point-whats cg?

[mysterio]

You can set the grain weights to grams without it rounding. You can have 0.1 grams of of grain if you want.

My point here is that it does not do everything i want it do. It actually does little along the lines of what I want it to do.

Don't use it then.

Brewing is inherently inexact... I could post a recipe and even send you the same ingredients I use and you'd still probably make a completely different beer. Maybe your thermometer is calibrated differently, you boil the wort at a different rate getting different hop utilisation, oxygenate the wort more/less, make your starters in a different way, different water, so on and so on. All or any of these factors will make much more of a difference than +/- 5g of crystal malt.

I don't seem to have any problems setting precise grain amounts and precise prices for ingredients... I dont quite see the problem. I dont use the latter feature, it's only been introduced to the software in the last couple of months, maybe theres some teething problems. Try asking the writer of the software.

[steve_flack]

Just to pour fuel on the fire. I nearly always round my grists to the nearest 10g. One commercial brewery I've been round has it's recipes written in sacks and half sacks.

[Aleman]

The Fullers ledger I've seen had Grain in Quarters, and Hops in lbs per Barrel

[Andy]

They'd be snookered with Beersmith then Perhaps they should lodge a support issue on the beersmith forum

[MightyMouth]

I think the reason recipes are exact is it is actually easier to write them that way. If your recipe calls for 5005 grams of Pale malt then it would make no real difference to the beer if you used 5010grams or 5000grams. There is obviously a point where it will make a difference but its not 10 grams either way on a 23lt brew. By the way I think I am going to use your Bung it in recipe as my next brew.

OK, if you are doing mini brews like 4.5lt and your recipe calls for 1001g then you wouldn't round up to 1010g you would round down to 1000g so with 4 grains all ending in 1g then you would be just 4g short still I can see that if it was 5grams rather than 1 then you could conceivably be 20grams out on a brew that has just 1250g or so that might make a difference but not a lot. If it does then Kg should not be your measurement of choice, you should go into the the option and change to grams. Still I can see the benefit of going to 3 decimal places. I am sure the guys at Beersmith would make that an option if requested.

another point-whats cg?

cg=centigram=100g

[Martin the fish]

By the way I think I am going to use your Bung it in recipe as my next brew.

Think i might try that as well.