The primary purpose of the recipe software is to provide input to the control software. The recipe software provides basic brewing calculations in the following areas.
The recipe software calculates the total weight of the grain bill which is, in turn, used to calculate the base water volumes.
Each water parameter can be adjusted with a "delta". For example, the dough-in water volume is increased by two gallons to compensate for the water/wort under the mash screen. I typically adjust the parameters to target a 1 - 1.5 hour boil, assuming a nominal evaporation rate of 38 minutes per gallon. I adjust the final volumes to accommodate losses in racking/sediment.
Simple HBU (Homebrew Bittering Units) calculations are performed on the specified hop quantities, times and bitterness (alpha acid). The time information is ultimately used by the control software to notify the user when to drop the hops.
The temperature profile identifies the times and temperatures of the infusion mash schedule for up to six mash steps. Mashout is simply treated as the final mash step.
O.G. (Original Gravity), F.G. (Final Gravity), alcohol, IBU (International Bitterness Units) and color parameters are programmed for a wide range of brewing styles. The user can enter "typical" O.G., F.G. and color values for the recipe.
The Choice key, F5, provides help for the Grain, Yeast, Additive, Hops, Unit and Type fields.
All of the recipe information is written to a text file.