understanding bru n water

[paulg]

I am trying to understand bru n water
I have input my figures from the murphy report into the first page,when I go to page 2 and set my desired sparge water ph to 5.6 and choose my acid type I get n/a in all the ouput boxes.
similarly on the water adjustment pages I get n/a in all the boxes for water profile adjustment calculator having selected my desired profile eg brown bitter.also for water additions I select volume of mash water but all boxes show 0.0 additions
what am I doing wrong

paul

[WallyBrew]

I am trying to understand bru n water

3 hours and no response from the Bru'n Water collective. Perhaps they don't understand it either

I have input my figures from the murphy report into the first page

It might help if you supplied the figures you obtained from Murphy (although it will be minus the sodium and potassium) so that others may try it on their spreadsheet

Also, have a look at this LINK to see if this may be part of your problem

[paulg]

sorry should have added it,I have updated open office to version 4.0.1 and deleted and downloaded again bru n water ,still the same
taking the sparge acidifaction page I input water alcalinity,starting ph,desired ph of 6 and 1 litre volume and left acid as hydrocloric 88%.
The output shows only final water alcalinity unchanged at 220 all the other boxes n/a.
sorry dont know how to post snap shot of bru n water page

Ph 7.28
nitrate 4.1
calcium 78
magnesium 9
chloride 18.18
sulphate 5.87
alcalinity (CaCO3) 220

murphys test 21 dec 2012


recommended for bitter and pale ales
26 ml per 25 litres CRS all liquor
15 grams per 25 litres beer made DLS

[AnthonyUK]

Have you read through the instructions on tab 0?
I know it's not easy to start with and as it uses macros I don't know if Open Office will work.

[WallyBrew]

If you go back to the website of Mr. Brungard's Bru'n Water I think you will find that it says that Bru'n Water does not work properly with open office (I have open office on a Mac and bits of it work - bear in mind I do not use Bru'n Water). You need to download Libre Office and I think you need version 3.6.6.2 and no higher.

Hopefully Mr. Brungard will be along shortly to explain why

[WallyBrew]

Further to the above:

If you do get it to work in Libre Office enter your alkalinity as 268 in the HCO3 cell and leave the CO3 as 0.

Enter sodium as 12 as this will balance the chloride. This should result in a balanced water.

[boingy]

Libre Office is a fork of Open Office so not sure it will be any better. Does the spreadsheet really only work properly with Excel? Maybe it's time for a rewrite in something more universal and more cross-platform. Perhaps something beginning with J...

[WallyBrew]

Libre Office is a fork of Open Office so not sure it will be any better. Does the spreadsheet really only work properly with Excel? Maybe it's time for a rewrite in something more universal and more cross-platform. Perhaps something beginning with J...

It works in Libre Office 3.6.6.2 whereas it does not work in Open Office 3 ish. 4 ish appeared to have spreadsheet problems on my old Mac so have not updated.

No idea if it works in Excel because I don't want to pay for something that doesn't do what it its name implies.

[boingy]

No idea if it works in Excel because I don't want to pay....

I suspect it may often be used with copies of Excel that have, um, not been paid for...

[mabrungard]

I recently tried out Bru'n Water with the latest version of OpenOffice and found it to work well now. So that shouldn't be a problem. I haven't tested the latest version of LibreOffice to see if they fixed its problems.

I'm not sure why you are seeing NA displays. I can't make the program produce that result when using OpenOffice 4.0.0. Sorry for your troubles.

PS: I didn't enable the Macros on the security setting while I was testing for your problem, so I should be getting some sort of errors with the dropdown boxes, but even those are working.

[orlando]

No idea if it works in Excel because I don't want to pay....

I suspect it may often be used with copies of Excel that have, um, not been paid for...

I only have the Office Starter 2010 version which comes free with Windows 7 (so um, I didn't directly pay for it) I haven't upgraded to the paid for version, this works fine.

[AnthonyUK]

Offtopic - If you work for a company that uses MS Office then you may be able to buy a Home use program (HUP) license.
I have this from the company I work for. It costs approx. £9 for a license which can be installed on two PCs.
It is open to Mac owners too

[paulg]

right I appear to be getting somewhere .I have just tried my copy of bru n water on another pc that has ms office on it and the program said errors found and repaired.It then ran perfectly on that pc.I then transfered it back to my laptop running win7 and open office 4 and it ran perfectly again.
So my download appears to have got corrupted (twice).
my next question
having input my water profile and recipe(5 kilo pale malt 2 lovibond, & 0.5 kilo crystal 57.1 lovibond) and selected amber malty as type, the program produces red boxes as follows
calcium -23
magnesium -4
sodium -2
and bicarbonate -233.4

I do biab with a mash size of typically 42 litres to produce 25 litres wort
what do i need to add to reduce the figures above,up to now I have used crs and dls I now want to play around with individual salts but am not sure where to go next

[paulg]

I now think I am getting my head round it ,if the minerals are to high like in my example above I must dilute with distilled water to lower the number until an addition is needed them add acid to bring down the bicarbonates and play with minerals to try to achieve the target values.having played with the program I got it to a predicted mash ph of 5.6 (that was after remembering to change the parameter from existing to treated water)on the mash acidification page.

one last question as I do full volume BIAB I assume you put all additions in with mash or do you hold back some until the boil.It looks like I only need to add gypsum,epsom salt and table salt for most beer types I brew .I also assume you set the mash volume at your full liquor volume and totally ignore the sparge water acidification page
is that correct?
thank for all your help
Paul

[AnthonyUK]

as I do full volume BIAB I assume you put all additions in with mash or do you hold back some until the boil.It looks like I only need to add gypsum,epsom salt and table salt for most beer types I brew .I also assume you set the mash volume at your full liquor volume and totally ignore the sparge water acidification page
is that correct?
thank for all your help
Paul

For BIAB I put all additions in before the grain goes in e.g when the water is coming up to strike temp.
I also add a touch of campden at this point.
I also have only ever needed an acid to reduce alkalinity and gypsum, epsom salt or table salt.

The red cells, are they in the target water adjustment field?
If so this is how much you need to reduce it by.
Apart from the bicarbonate those level are not worth dilution.
On the finished water profile row the cells have comments which show ideal ranges.