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Set DefaultsThe Set Defaults pop-up can be accessed from the 'Editors' menu on the menu bar. It enables the user to adjust some of the variable parameters that are normally fixed from brewer to brewer. All the settings here will remain valid only for the current session if the changes are not saved as defaults. If you want the changes to 'stick' for future sessions, then remember to hit the 'Save All As Defaults' button.
Target VolumeAn easy one really. This represents your brew length; the amount of beer you want to end up with. Most brewers brew the same brew length every time they brew, a parameter governed mostly by equipment size. Your usual brew length can be set here.
Mash EfficiencyThis is the efficiency applied to everything in the mash tun. The 'factory default' is 75%.
Grist To Liquor RatioThis is used to calculate the amount of mash liquor required. Between two and three litres per kilogram of grist is a typical value used by home brewers, but four or five litres per kilogram is not uncommon. The 'factory default' is 2.5.
EvaporationThe amount of water lost to evaporation during the boil. This should really be a fixed volume per hour, but this would require that the software needs to know boil time in advance, so at the moment it is a percentage, but may change to an hourly rate in future versions. It is only required to calculate the total liquor needed, so it is not a critical parameter.
Wort LossThis is a catch-all figure to account for other losses, such as wort absorbed by the hops and the like. This again is only used to calculate total liquor, but it will almost certainly be enhanced in future versions to calculate the wort loss based upon quantity of hops employed.
BrowserThe browser is fired up to print out recipes and journal pages. This selection determines which browser is fired up. You can select either the standard browser (Internet Explorer) or the default browser. The reason for the choice is that this programme has only been tested in I.E. and Firefox. It may not work with other browsers, such as Opera, so the user will have to fall back onto Internet Exporer in that event.
Colour SchemeThis was added for a bit of fun and may be removed in later versions. It merely sets Beer Engine's window colour scheme. An intermediate screen pops up, before the colour picker, whose buttons remain visible no matter what colour you have set. This is so that you can recover from doing something silly, like setting it to all black (which means that you will not be able to read the buttons or anything else), and enables you to return to the windoze system colours.
Hop UtilisationThe hop utilisation panel is a bit daunting because it is designed to be extremely flexible, and the whole issue of hop utilisation has become quite complex due to a lack of sensible standards within home brewing and the popular adoption of some practices that are questionable to say the least.If you are in a hurry, then simply set the thing to Tinseth, using the 'Set To Tinseth' button, and Beer Engine will be set to use one of the most popular methods.
Otherwise the issue of hop utilisation in Beer Engine demands a whole chapter to itself, which you can find here.
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