BeerBorg

I wish I knew what all that information was for. I opened the link and a newbie such as myself was trying to read Greek. I'm barely fermenting my second batch in the BrewDemon. I'm certain I'm going to love the hobby, and probably will graduate up to larger batches, but in the meantime I have a LOT to learn. Seems like I'm in the right place though. Lots of knowledge bouncing around here.

Hayzer wrote:I wish I knew what all that information was for. I opened the link and a newbie such as myself was trying to read Greek. Seems like I'm in the right place though. Lots of knowledge bouncing around here.

Ha Ha me too, I am working on water profiles and just starting out on it. Screwy Brewer (Vince) has always been a great help to all of us in home brewing. He has a very good site with good information http://www.thescrewybrewer.com/. QBrew might be a better one to check out and start out with, it's good but easy to use.

This is really an amazing program. I can only imagine the work and time that is involved in creating this free program. Thank you.
I’m a Beersmith and Bru’n Water user but really appreciate the stream lined approach that EZwater has.

I have one question. Can user equipment profiles be setup? I use a Zymatic and have very different hop utilization, mash efficiency and boil off numbers.

Banjo-guy wrote:This is really an amazing program. I can only imagine the work and time that is involved in creating this free program. Thank you.
I’m a Beersmith and Bru’n Water user but really appreciate the stream lined approach that EZwater has.

I have one question. Can user equipment profiles be setup? I use a Zymatic and have very different hop utilization, mash efficiency and boil off numbers.

Thank you @Banjo-guy. The short answer is yes they can, for mash efficiency and boil off numbers. In fact I recommend using ezBIAB mobile, or ezBIAB, to help you dial in the best settings for your system. They are the perfect companion to ezRecipe.

As for your particular hop utilization, if can you provide a little more detail on what the issue is, I will look into it.

Use the 'Recipe Reset' button at the bottom of the page to quickly clear out recipe selections previously entered in ezRecipe.

Clicking the 'Recipe Reset' button can also resolve page formatting issues sometimes encountered when using new versions of ezRecipe.

Just FYI, I use FireFox for my browser and the Recipe Reset was not shown at the bottom so I cleared the cache and things went back to normal.
This is a nifty and very helpful program. I'm very thankful for your hard work Vince.

Beer-lord wrote:Just FYI, I use FireFox for my browser and the Recipe Reset was not shown at the bottom so I cleared the cache and things went back to normal.
This is a nifty and very helpful program. I'm very thankful for your hard work Vince.

Thank you Paul. I test each release in Internet Explorer, Chrome, FireFox, Safari and Opera browsers. You are correct, when all else fails clearing the browser cache will do the trick.

ScrewyBrewer wrote:

Banjo-guy wrote:This is really an amazing program. I can only imagine the work and time that is involved in creating this free program. Thank you.
I’m a Beersmith and Bru’n Water user but really appreciate the stream lined approach that EZwater has.

I have one question. Can user equipment profiles be setup? I use a Zymatic and have very different hop utilization, mash efficiency and boil off numbers.

As for your particular hop utilization, if can you provide a little more detail on what the issue is, I will look into it.

I asked some other Zymatic brewers how they adjust their hops to account for utilization. I didn’t get many responses but the consensus is in line with how I adjust my hops.
Essentially we dial down the early additions and dial up the late additions.
1. The 60 minute addition is dialed back by 25% (this response varied from 40%- 0%)
2. The aroma addition is increased by 20 %
3. Anything less than 10 minutes is moved to 10 minutes.

How the utilization changes between the 60 minutes and 10 minutes extremes is unclear. I assume that utilization is the same as a normal boil at some point and gradually decreases as you approach the end of the boil. I’ve never gotten an official answer from Pico about hop utilization.

On the Zymatic the hops are in 4 baskets and the wort is circulated through them in serial order from 1-4. It takes 10 minutes for the entire volume of wort to contact the hop cages.This means that the entire volume of wort is never in contact with the hop cages at the same time.

I think the only real solution is to learn the Z system through trial and error.

I’m not sure how you would put this into E-Z Brew Screwy, or if it’s worth the effort for a small number of users. If EZ brew allowed the user to input customized values for the various timed hop additions brewers could tweak the program until utilization lined up with what Zymatic brewers were actually experiencing. This would make a lot of Z brewers very happy!

From what I know, as long as your "almost boil" is ~190+ degrees, you will get the same hop utilization as a full boil from an AAU standpoint, as long as the hops are in contact with the wort. If it turns off some of the early addition hop baskets when it activates the later ones and there are still hop bits left in the baskets, now that would muck things up (IE does the 60 minute basket "turn off" when the 10 minute one turns on and is there still some pellets/sludge in there? That would mess with things...).

But since your system is closed, and also not vigorously boiling, many of the hop aroma/flavor compounds that would vaporize into the air in an open pot for the later additions will stay in your system. So that could actually increase the flavor/aroma provided by those late additions. It should have 0 effect on the bittering potential though. Those compounds do not "boil off". But it could change/increase the perceived "hoppyness" of the beer from a flavor/aroma perspective.

What will have affect on the bittering potential of those late additions is contact time before chilling occurs. As in if there is always a good bit of delay before it drops below 160 or so, then you are basically always doing a hop stand of whatever hop particles got out of those baskets and into your wort, and until you go below 160 or so you are still actually getting some AAU contribution, just not as effective.

Using leaf hops, now that would really change things vs. pellets in such a system, as they would not fall apart and stay in contact with the wort during that time.

I think to account for all the possible variables like this Screwy would have to add a % utilization type of adjustment (defaults to 100%) for each hop addition, and it would be up to you to tweak those numbers.

Or at least some sort of adjustment that tweaks utilization automatically for anything say (just throwing out numbers) 60-40, 40-20, 20-10, 10-1, and 0 by some factor and that can be saved with your equipment vs. the recipe. But it won't be as accurate as tweaking the actual adjustments. Because 45 minute be more like 60, but 40 might be more like 30, depending on your setup, how fast you chill, etc. And leaf vs. pellet in your case is actually going to be a bigger difference then leaf vs. pellet in a regular "pot" boil.

Not sure there is a "great" way to handle it.

I don’t think it’s the lower “boiling” temperature that affects the hop utilization in the Zymatic. You are correct when you say the Z doesn’t actually reach boiling temperature.
I think the lower utilization of hops happens because the wort circulates through the hop baskets and doesn’t have as much contact with the hops as in a regular boil.

Here is how the Z works.
Let’s assume 4 additions 60, 30, 15,and 10. Anything less than 10 minutes won’t get full contact with the wort because it takes 10 minutes to circulate 100 % of the wort through the machine. This assumes a 2.5 gallon final batch size.

After boiling temperature is reached the wort flows through cage 1 ( 60 minute addition.) The wort will flow through that cage until the end of the boil. It is never bypassed. Cage 2 has the 30 minute addition. The wort first goes through cage 1 at 60 minutes and then into cage 1 and cage 2 at 30 minutes. The wort flows from 1 into 2 into 3 into 4.
Some brewers use an overnight wort cool down. That means the hops are in contact for a long time until the temperature drops below 160 degrees. I think that’s why some people dial up there bittering addition and some dial it down. Not everyone overnight chills.

If the hop additions could be adjusted by percentage that would enable Z brewers to tweak the program to match their individual brewing styles.
I don’t think any of the recipe creation programs have this percentage adjustment.

I think the % per hop addition is probably the best way to go too. You could of course just multiply the hop AA%'s by a % yourself when formulating the recipe.

There is already a way for you to SORT of do this in the software. If you expand the "hops" section at the bottom there is an "sFactor" you can adjust. Unfortunately you can't just type in a number and it's tied also to the "days" field, so it would be tricky to get it right, because the hop storage factor varies per type of hops and it's a limited drop down.

But say if Screwy could allow you to plug in a special value for days (IE 0) add a way to just plug in a direct %age (IE .08) into the sFactor field, he could then adjust the hop utilization directly by that %age without changing the UI.

IE pseudocode:

if (days == 0) {
hopAAU = hopAAU * sFactor
}
else {
// do whatever it does now with days and sFactor
}

Banjo-guy wrote:Anything less than 10 minutes won’t get full contact with the wort because it takes 10 minutes to circulate 100 % of the wort through the machine. This assumes a 2.5 gallon final batch size.

I actually don't think this matters (full contact with all the wort). The amounts of the various compounds being extracted are by "time, temperature, and ph", and are not extracted in such a volume that the solution (wort) becomes saturated to the point where extraction would slow down at any point. As long as there is wort contact, it matters not what wort it is, just amount of time in contact with the wort. Which is the same as if you threw them in a pot.

mashani wrote:I actually don't think this matters (full contact with all the wort). The amounts of the various compounds being extracted are by "time, temperature, and ph", and are not extracted in such a volume that the solution (wort) becomes saturated to the point where extraction would slow down at any point. As long as there is wort contact, it matters not what wort it is, just amount of time in contact with the wort. Which is the same as if you threw them in a pot.

That’s interesting. PicoBrew’s Annie Johnson, who has brewed probably a thousand brews on the system says that any addition less than ten minutes should be pushed back to 10 minutes because it takes 10 minutes for the wort to cycle through the machine. Her reasoning may be incorrect but the outcome is that anything less than 10 minutes has less hop utilization. I trust what you say but it doesn’t explain the differences in hop utilization.

The temperature does affect hop utilization. I know this because I live at an elevation, so water boils at a lower temperature and my hop utilization suffers as a result. There's actually a complicated formula that I could use to adjust the IBU calculation, but what I generally do is just keep in mind that the IBUs that the software calculates are lower than what my IBUs will be, and adjust accordingly.

I like mashani's suggestion. That would address the differences you see as well as the ones I see. And it would be a lot easier for him to put in place than trying to plug in the formulas that would be needed for a small percentage of brewers. That would still be better than my "I want 60 IBUs so I should aim for about 70 or 80" approach.

PicoBrew’s Annie Johnson, who has brewed probably a thousand brews on the system says that any addition less than ten minutes should be pushed back to 10 minutes because it takes 10 minutes for the wort to cycle through the machine.

That makes no actual sense to me, but maybe there is some mysterious chemistry I don't understand at play. As far as I know, as long as some wort is contacting the hops for 10 minutes, you should get 10 minutes of utilization (whatever that utilization is) same as any other addition. The wort isn't a solution so concentrated with "hop compounds" that the levels of concentration should slow utilization due to concentration levels. Only time/temp/ph should matter.

EDIT: I think maybe where it actually would matter (and I mentioned this above in the other post) is if the pellet hops from the late additions don't dissolve into bits and end up in the wort and you are left with a very large amount of hop sludge in that container vs. the longer boil additions. Do you see very different amounts of hop sludge in say the 60 and 30 boxes (as in less) vs. the 20 or 10 or 5 or whatever boxes with the 10 or < minute ones being especially "full" still compared to the rest? If so, then the difference is because the hops left in the box are not in contact with the wort between the time you finish the boil and the time you cool. THAT would make sense to me. Because until you cool below 160 or so, anything that's actually in the wort is still providing a pretty good amount of utilization. That's the same reason I say leaf hops (especially later in the boil) should be a lot different in your system then pellet hops would be.

@BP, I know high altitude formulas exist, but really as far as I know if you are at 190 or > you get more or less the same (at least so close that it is insignificant from a taste perspective) utilization as a regular boil for typical beers. Temperature would have to vary by a lot more then that for it to make a huge difference. That's because taste threshold for AAU's is about 7 for most people, so if final result doesn't change by that much in an increment, most people won't notice the difference in "real life".

That's why people who just follow the recipe for on-line kits don't notice that the recipe tastes radically different or is more or less bitter seeming even though the 1oz packs of hops that came with the first one were 5.7% and the ones that came with the second one were 6.4% or whatever.

I know we all like to be statistic weenies and try to dial in some exact AA number but the reality is that never happens no matter how hard we try. But we just can't actually tell the difference when it comes to small discrepancies, so it generally matters not. I suppose there is someone out there who is an AAU super taster like I am an acetaldehyde super taster, or some people are cat-pee smellers, but I think it is likely much more rare, and those people probably think that all beer is too bitter to drink anyways.

So it's really not the kind of thing I'd stress about personally for most beers. Now if a 7 AAU difference might totally ruin a beer, then it would matter. The only beer I can think of where that would be the case is a sour.

Now, as a foil to that, I will say again that in the closed system or even an open one with temperature differences of that amount the more volatile hop oils may very well blow off at a different rate. This is not AAUs (technically what we call "utilization"), this is flavor/aroma stuff. But flavor/aroma stuff has a pretty big impact on the taste perception of a beer. So from that perspective there might be a bigger difference for sure but I have no way of quantifying it, especially because it would vary greatly by hop variety (not AAUs of the hops, but the actual types of other oils found in the hop variety and the % of total oil content of that makeup). For this type of thing, it would have to be just "experience with your equipment" and the type of beer your brewing.

"Utilization numbers are really an approximation. Each brew is unique; the variables for individual conditions, i.e. vigor of the boil, wort chemistry, or for losses during fermentation, are just too hard to get a handle on from the meager amount of published data available. Then why do we bother, you ask? Because if we are all working from the same model and using roughly the same numbers, then we will all be in the same ballpark and can compare our beers without too much error. Plus, when the actual IBUs are measured in the lab, these models are shown to be pretty close." ~John Palmer (How To Brew)

I spent about 10 minutes catching up on the most recent, and detailed, updates about Zymatic brewing. ezRecipe uses the Tinseth formula for calculating IBUs and hop utilization. Utilization is based on the AAUs of the hops used, their length of contact with the wort, and the average specific gravity of the wort. The utilization number is a prediction of the efficiency of alpha acid isomerization for each hop addition.

ezRecipe currently calculates all the utilization values needed. All I know about Zymatic brewing is what I have read n this thread. Based on what I learned here today it may be easier for Zymatic brewers to just adjust the 'length of time' values for each hop addition accordingly.