Wheeler's Beer Engine

[bigdave]

I gave up and went for beer alchemy for mac.

That's what I use. Nice that the developer is on this forum too.

Really? Who is it?

[Trefoyl]

Really? Who is it?

steve_flack

[WishboneBrewery]

In case you ever Reformat your PC and think, "Oh Feck... I lost all my added Hop data!"

You can copy/paste this to overwrite everything in \Beer Engine\res\hop_data.txt

Download from google drive: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B89l4ce ... sp=sharing

[IPA]

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

Perhaps if they develope it long enough they will get it to predict EBC correctly. Beer Engine already does!

[keelbolt]

I have a Mac so installed Beer Alchemy Trial, but there's no manual! No idea how to use it.....!!

[DeGarre]

At some stage I started using Beer Engine because BeerSmith seemed unnecessarily complicated ie too much functionality I didn't need. Shortly afterwards I converted all the formulas into excel so am actually using Beer Engine formulas. Everything I do in BS I can replicate in excel/beer Engine EXCEPT colour. It seems to me Beer Engine is showing larger EBC values when dark malts are used. If only lighter colour malts are used then values are almost identical.

The formula I use to calculate EBC is kilos x ebc of malt x 10 x efficiency x brewlength.

Not a problem really but lately my beers have ended up quite pale when in fact I've gone for the coppery "london pride" look. It looks like Beer Smith is somehow adjusting for darker malts in their formula.

[IPA]

At some stage I started using Beer Engine because BeerSmith seemed unnecessarily complicated ie too much functionality I didn't need. Shortly afterwards I converted all the formulas into excel so am actually using Beer Engine formulas. Everything I do in BS I can replicate in excel/beer Engine EXCEPT colour. It seems to me Beer Engine is showing larger EBC values when dark malts are used. If only lighter colour malts are used then values are almost identical.

The formula I use to calculate EBC is kilos x ebc of malt x 10 x efficiency x brewlength.

Not a problem really but lately my beers have ended up quite pale when in fact I've gone for the coppery "london pride" look. It looks like Beer Smith is somehow adjusting for darker malts in their formula.

The way Beer Engine calculates EBC is significantly different to Beer Smith and other programmes. This is Dave Wheelers answer when I posed the same question a while ago on this forum.


The reason that the colour calculation in BeerEngine does not match other software is mainly because most software, particularly American software, is reliant upon a thing called the Morey equation, which is flawed. I have no knowledge of Brewmate, but I suspect that it also uses Morey, even though it is written by an Aussie. The Morey equation perpetuates a misconception that beer colour is not linear; that is, that it assumes that if you double the ingredients you do not get twice the colour. In fact, for all practical purposes, you do get twice the colour.

This misconception goes back to 1991/2 when the late Dr George Fix performed an "experiment" whereby he took a dark American beer and measured its absorbance (colour) as-is and at several dilutions. Fix ended up with a strange-shaped "curve" and from this he concluded that the Beer-Lambert Law, commonly known as Beer's Law, did not apply to beer and that beer colour was non-linear. Beer's Law is a law pertaining to spectrophotometric measurement and, confusingly, Beer is a person in this context. The idea behind George Fix's "experiment" was that home brewers could measure the approximate colour of their beer by diluting a dark commercial beer of known colour until it matched the home brewed beer, and then calculate its colour from the dilution required.

Other people tried to make colour prediction formulae using Fix's data, or at least incorporating Fix's non-linearity assumption, but these were somewhat unsatisfactory. They had obvious limitations and different formula covered different colour ranges. Then another worker, Dan Morey, came along and combined the various formulae into one universal formula. This became known as the Morey equation.

Unfortunately, George Fix did not know how to use a spectrophotometer properly; he was trying to use it outside of its reliable range. His laboratory technique was somewhat school-boyish and his interpretation was flawed. The flaws were noticed at the time and highlighted, but it became quite controversial because George Fix, and some of his followers, doggedly defended his results and methodology to the hilt; despite the fact that people far better qualified pointed out where he went wrong, and despite the fact that several people performed similar experiments using the same reference beer and found no deviation from Beer's Law.

So the Morey equation is wildly wrong because it is based on bad data that has had its errors compounded by other workers who tried to make the data fit the real world. It is unfortunate that these formulae still persist some twenty years later, but I think it persists because has been incorporated into so much software. If it was not for software perpetuating these ideas, they would have been dead, buried and forgotten years ago

[DeGarre]

Thanks a lot IPA. Not a biggie for me but confusing for some others who might be expecting mahogany but get golden orange instead.

[damocles]

Have just found this software.

Just out of interest, does anybody maintain an updated hop_data.txt and grain_data.txt for the community? I found the hop_data file above really useful and wondering if there's similar elsewhere?

[mshergold]

I had Beer Engine installed on my old PC which stopped working. When I got around to transferring all my files to my laptop, I'd forgotten my password to Windows. I'm now using a Linux Live (Mint) to move files, but when I try to move Beer Engine or my recipe files, I get a pop-up with an error message saying there was an error copying. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I could do? I can post a screengrab of the error message if necessary.

[jmls]

Was the beer engine ever released as open source ? I was thinking of creating a node / web browser version of the software, but would like to have a look at the original source

[f00b4r]

Was the beer engine ever released as open source ? I was thinking of creating a node / web browser version of the software, but would like to have a look at the original source

Try sending the member "Graham" on here a pm about it and he might oblige

[John Barleycorn]

I don't know how welcome this information will be, but I want to share someone's work here.
A guy 'jimbob88', I have encountered on the Internet is trying to continue Graham's software legacy. He has produced a very creditable cross-platform version of Graham's Beer Engine, which he has called Wheelers-Wort-Works.
It is still in development and I'm sure he would appreciate comments and suggestions, bearing in mind that he is trying to keep it as straight forward and simple to use as was originally intended.

It is available at:

https://github.com/jimbob88/wheelers-wort-works
https://github.com/jimbob88/wheelers-wort-works/wiki

and is called 'Wheelers-Wort-Works'.

I'm sure Graham would be pleased with his efforts and I hope you too will find it useful and interesting.

I just found this new front page at:

https://jimbob88.github.io/wheelers-wort-works/

as I mentioned above it is still in development

[Trefoyl]

I don't know how welcome this information will be, but I want to share someone's work here.
A guy 'jimbob88', I have encountered on the Internet is trying to continue Graham's software legacy. He has produced a very creditable cross-platform version of Graham's Beer Engine, which he has called Wheelers-Wort-Works.
It is still in development and I'm sure he would appreciate comments and suggestions, bearing in mind that he is trying to keep it as straight forward and simple to use as was originally intended.

It is available at:

https://github.com/jimbob88/wheelers-wort-works

and is called 'Wheelers-Wort-Works'.

I'm sure Graham would be pleased with his efforts and I hope you too will find it useful and interesting.

I just found this new front page at:

https://jimbob88.github.io/wheelers-wort-works/

as I mentioned above it is still in development

Does this mean it will run on Mac? I had to look up Python and I see that it comes preinstalled and runs natively on OS X . That would be great and I’ll try it out. I’ve never been able to use Graham’s Beer Engine because I don’t use Windows.

[John Barleycorn]

Hi Trefoyl,

Hopefully you should be able to use it.

Jimbob needs a tester for Mac so if you would post your results good or bad as a 'New Issue' at:

https://github.com/jimbob88/wheelers-wort-works

I know he would be grateful. I'm sure all feedback would be useful.

If you have questions, ask me or post an issue on the site.