Wheeler's Beer Engine

If you use Beersmith, Promash, Beer Engine, or whatever, this is the place to discuss pros, cons, tips and tricks
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mrwalsh

Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine

Post by mrwalsh » Fri Jun 22, 2012 7:39 pm

bigdave wrote:This may have been asked before, but is there a beer engine for Mac?
I have got it working on a Mac using http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/
I had to read up a bit about it, and it seemed a bit fiddly to get it going (don't ask me how to do it though...I can't remember what I did!!)

But now it works flawlessly on my Macbook Pro late 2011 on OS X Lion 10.7.4
I imported my recipes from Windoze, and again..they work fine to.

Happy days.

Steve...

critch

Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine

Post by critch » Sat Jun 23, 2012 11:19 am

garwatts wrote:
critch wrote:any news on the steep hops calculation graham?

many thanks for the app by the way its reet good =D>
Has Graham brought an app out then?
program app whatever you cool kids call it!

im a fekkin luddite ok? :lol:

garwatts

Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine

Post by garwatts » Sat Jun 23, 2012 11:52 am

mrwalsh wrote:
bigdave wrote:This may have been asked before, but is there a beer engine for Mac?
I have got it working on a Mac using http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/
I had to read up a bit about it, and it seemed a bit fiddly to get it going (don't ask me how to do it though...I can't remember what I did!!)

But now it works flawlessly on my Macbook Pro late 2011 on OS X Lion 10.7.4
I imported my recipes from Windoze, and again..they work fine to.

Happy days.

Steve...
Hi Steve
Thanks - I've installed beer engine.exe using wine bottler but can't get it to run? Can you recall if there were any other bits you had to add to it at all?
Cheers

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Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine

Post by WallyBrew » Sat Jun 23, 2012 1:31 pm

Hope this is of use

The following works on MBP 17 running snow leopard 10.6.8 and it does not require any additions to run

install both wine and winebottler

open winebottler
go to existing prefixes
delete everything
go to create custom prefixes
select beerenginesetup.exe as the install file
ignore all the advanced features and click install

change My Wine App.app to beer engine.app (or whatever you want to call it)
choose applications for where
click save

and follow the beer engine installation to finish by just clicking on next etc etc

In window with select start file press on the arrows

select (hopefully) program files/beer engine/bin/beerengine.exe
and click ok

prefix created successfully should appear in box - click OK

If you now click on existing prefixes you should have a beer engine (template)

Beer Engine.app should appear in your applications folder and should run from here

It will also install as a self contained file but occupies 5 time as much space

Graham

Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine

Post by Graham » Wed Sep 05, 2012 1:39 pm

A bit late for me to pop my head up, but I had not realised that there had been any activity on here.
critch wrote:any news on the steep hops calculation graham?
Not quite sure what you mean. Is this a requested addition to BeerEngine, or do you want a mathematical method of approximating the alpha-acid contribution of steeped hops?

The subject of hops and their utilisation is somewhat of a bugbear to me. I have made no secret of the fact that I have always regarded the Tinseth formula (and the others) to be pure fantasy - I am even more convinced now, after some more recent study that I have done on the subject, that it is over-optimistic pie-in-the-sky. It is the major reason for me not releasing a new version of BeerEngine and was instrumental in me shelving the next book. For me to "dis" the formula completely, not only will I have one hell of a storm to weather, but I have to have something of proven utility to put in its place. I don't have that.

Anyway, let me know what you are after I will see if I have any pointers that might help you.

BeerEngine
For a long time I have intended to withdraw BeerEngine, but every time I go onto the server to take it down I look at the stats and discover that people are still downloading it; 297 downloads last month and 38 so far this month. Not bad, considering that the only place that it is "advertised" as such is in the members only area of JBK. So I keep putting off taking it down. I was hoping that the downloads would drop to a trickle and it could then it could silently disappear without comment.

I have done quite a lot of work on a new version with many of the requested features added, like notes and additional ingredients. It seems a shame to let that work go to waste just because I'm bored with it. So it would not be a bad idea for me to give one final release. But there are issues and still work to be done.

Firstly I have to decide what to do about hop utilisation.

I really should migrate the GUI from Perl/Tk to WxPerl. WxPerl seems to be flavour of the month and the packager that I am using is meant for WxPerl although Perl/Tk does work as well. Unfortunately, WxPerl is object oriented, which frightens the life out of me - seems to require three times as much code to do the same job, and as "OO" is involved it will doubtless be 100 times slower. Wx looks extremely complicated; documentation, tutorials and examples are almost non-existent, and it will be a major job to migrate. The majority of the work involved in BeerEngine was the GUI, not the underlying code, because there is no "pick-and-place" type of front end for Wx or Perl/Tk. Every window, box, button and legend had to be positioned in code by trial and error using pixel co-ordinates. Very time consuming; it takes ages, and if I have to modify the layout of the window for any reason, like adding a new feature, I have to go through all again - and again - and again.

The major advantages to Wx is that it is apparently true cross-platform. It uses the native windowing system on the target machine, rather than drawing its own windows, so accusations of BeerEngine being "clunky" should go away. There are WxWidgets that gives cross-platform access to things like the printer, so that I do not have to cheat and fire up the browser to enable printing.

So:
1). Finish off the latest version of BeerEngine
2). Convert to WxPerl if I have the stomach for it
3). Restore it to native Linux as the base model.
4). Make it universal and use switches to enable it include or exclude platform specific stuff for Windows and Mac, so that there is just one programme which packaged according to platform.

And yes, the packager will package it as a standalone for the MAC, but you need a MAC to do it on, and I haven't got one.

kebabman
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Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine

Post by kebabman » Wed Sep 05, 2012 2:02 pm

"a mathematical method of approximating the alpha-acid contribution of steeped hops?"

Yes please this would be really useful, I would be really interested in this as would many others I'm sure.

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simple one
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Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine

Post by simple one » Wed Sep 05, 2012 9:24 pm

Graham wrote:...Finish off the latest version of BeerEngine....
Brilliant. Looking forward to seeing what's new. It's been a valued tool for my brewing.

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Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine

Post by WishboneBrewery » Sun Sep 09, 2012 9:40 am

I'm sure I've mentioned it before, OpenSource, there are others on here that do code stuff (not me)... why not lighten the load and release it to the wild with you as project guidance.

As far as hop utilisation goes, I have Base utilisation set to '25%' and Gravity Compensation set to 'None' and I'm getting pretty close to what i perceive to be real world bitterness rather than the fictitious Tinseth which always under-bitters.

btw, its great news that you are thinking about updating.

bigdave

Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine

Post by bigdave » Mon Dec 31, 2012 6:05 pm

Would it surprise anyone to know that I've installed VM Fusion and Windows XP on my iMac specifically for Beer Engine. (I was running it through crossover but its stopped working).

bigdave

Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine

Post by bigdave » Mon Jan 21, 2013 5:08 pm

Can anyone clear something up for me please.

I input a recipe into beer engine with a grain bill of 5kg & a brew length of 20ltrs. In return BE tells me that my total liquor is 30ltrs and OG is 1.050.

If I go into the calculators section and adjust my wort losses to account for hops, dead space etc, BE adjusts the total liquor figure accordingly but the OG remains the same. Even if I enter losses of 100ltrs, the OG figure remains the same as if the losses were nil.

How do I compensate for this on a 60min boil because ignoring it doesn't seem to be a reasonable solution.

Uncle Joshua

Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine

Post by Uncle Joshua » Wed Jan 30, 2013 11:57 am

I also wondered about changing the settings for a 60 minute boil?

Also, does the engine work on an android tablet?

bigdave

Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine

Post by bigdave » Wed Jan 30, 2013 3:30 pm

I gave up and went for beer alchemy for mac. :)

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orlando
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Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine

Post by orlando » Wed Jan 30, 2013 7:04 pm

I bought BeerSmith as it will continue to be developed, Beer Engine doesn't look like it will.
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Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine

Post by WishboneBrewery » Wed Jan 30, 2013 7:28 pm

orlando wrote:I bought BeerSmith as it will continue to be developed, Beer Engine doesn't look like it will.
Bit of a shame its not been put out there into Open Source, its the fastest software I know for bashing a recipe idea out.

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Trefoyl
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Re: Wheeler's Beer Engine

Post by Trefoyl » Thu Feb 07, 2013 7:54 pm

bigdave wrote:I gave up and went for beer alchemy for mac. :)
That's what I use. Nice that the developer is on this forum too.
Sommeliers recommend that you swirl a glass of wine and inhale its bouquet before throwing it in the face of your enemy.

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