I am trying to dive deeper into treating my local water to create appropriate profiles for the styles of beer I brew. Chicago water is pretty great for darker beer, but I would particularly like to dial in better chemistry for bright/hoppy beers. I use a couple of different iOS apps right not for brewing, neither of which has any significant water chemistry component. I need something new for this aspect. It could be Mac OS or iOS (or I could steal my wife's Windows machine if absolutely needed). What I am looking for functionality-wise is this. I would like to input the various chemicals from my local water report into the app. I would then like to be able to choose a desired water profile, input my grain bill, and have the app tell me what chemical additions to my mash/sparge water should be made in order to hit the desired profile. Does anyone know of any program that can do this? I have looked a little bit at paid software and been unable to confirm whether this exact functionality exists. I'll be happy to pay if it does, but don't want to buy something to discover it doesn't have what I need. I have also tried the Bru'n Water spreadsheet and am still trying to get things working with it, though with my less-than-proficient Excel skills, I have not find out entirely intuitive.
Brewcipher is an all-in-one program that uses Excel (I assume your use of Bru'n Water means you can use Excel on the Mac). Brewcipher.
@JackHorzempa suggested I use MpH water calculator since I was using Bru'n Water as it has some flaws the its calculations. I think it was @utahbeerdude who worked in collab with @VikeMan to put together the water calculations on vikeman's brewcipher...but I'm not positive. I'd definitely recommend playing around with brewcipher
The water models in BrewCipher are the same models as in the standalone MpH calculator, and are @utahbeerdude's models. Only the interface/(automatic) grain bill population from the recipe is different in BrewCipher.
Potentially an embarrassing question, but is there any trick to getting the drop-down menus in BrewCipher to work? Nothing happens when I click them in either Excel 2016 or 2008. Ergo, I can't enter my malt bill. I am sure I am a dummy.
I've never run BrewCipher on a Mac, because I don't have one. Off the top of my head though, it seems like it would have to either be a Mac excel configuration issue or a cross platform compatibility issue (i.e. Mac Excel not 100% compatible with windows excel functionality). But to get the ball rolling, and hopefully a Mac Excel user or two can chime in... - Does the dropdown arrow not appear at all, or does it appear but nothing happens when you click on it? - If you go to the Water tab, do you get a Y/N dropdown next to the cell that says "Show % of Distilled Water on Recipe and BrewDay Tabs?" The ingredient dropdowns and that particular water tab dropdown use two different types of lists, so if one works, but not the other, that could be a clue. Anyone else using BrewCipher on a Mac with a Mac version of Excel? Edit: Did you download the .xls or the .xlsm version of BrewCipher? I don't know if that matters for Mac Excel, but it may be worth trying the other. Shot in the dark.
Sounds like a potential macro issue. Did you get anything when you first opened it asking about allowing macros?
Sorry for the hijack but is there any recommendations for a soft water profile? If I used all distilled and added only calcium chloride and gypsum for a 2:1 ratio of 150/75ppm but didn't add any other salts would that be good to use? I haven't don't the calculations yet as I am still two weeks away until I brew. I wanted to crest a soft water profile for my next IPA. I assuming that will give me enough calcium for the yeast. Isn't there anything else I would need to add? I have Mac and use brewchiper. I had some problems but messed around with it enough that now it works. As mentioned above it has to do with the macros, but don't remember exactly what I did.
Three part answer... 1) Enter that and see where the mash pH lands. 2) It's not a particularly soft profile, assuming you mean adding enough CaCl2 and CsSO4 to get you to 150ppm Cl and 75ppm SO4. You could use less salts and adjust mash pH (if needed) with an acid. 3) What do you want the beer to taste like?
Not sure if there is a way to do this @VikeMan but it would be super useful to have a backwards tool on the water, ie., select the salts you want to use and input the ppm for the different contributions and then it calculates it for you. So I would say CaCl, CaS04, NaCl, MgSo4, NaHCO3, and then input my desired Ca, So4, Mg, Na, etc levels and it gives me the grams of each addition to add split between mash and boil. Would make it much easier when scaling up or down.
I've considered doing this before. The only problem (but it's a big one) is that there are many potential profiles that could be requested that are invalid, i.e. can't be made. (Many more impossible ones than possible.) So there would have to be some sort of prioritization order specified for each ion.
When I get home I'll plug the info into brewchiper. I have hard water so i usually do 50/50 with RO, add gypsum, calcium and lactic acid to get my mash ph into target range. I still trying to tweak my water for a "juicy New England" IPA. Based on the BYO article JC says to use a soft water profile and start out with 100:50ppm. I just had my first bottles of trillium and found them to be fantastic. Hoping to create a similar water profile. Previously I have always had a higher sulfate to chloride ratio but want to try something new.
I'm using BrewCipher on a Macbook but I have all the Microsoft office products (got the suite for $10 through work). It works fine for me, though I've never used it on Windows so I'm not sure if I'm missing out on anything. I open it as an xlsm file. Hopefully that's helpful.
This is indeed correct. Vikeman put the MpH Water Calculator model into Brewcipher. I checked his implementation to make sure all was copacetic.
To respond to your edit, I used the .xls version. Haven't tried the other one yet, but I'll give that a shot after messing around with macro settings first.
