Brew Diary Software

[homebrewdave]

Hey all, does anyone know where I could find a simple piece of Brew Diary Software? I currently brew kits but almost ready to go extract and then BIAB so a full-on diary for all-grain is probably a bit OTT for my current needs. :

 

[Good Ed]

why don't you use a notebook and pen, the technology has been proven for thousands of years

 

[calumscott]

Just invest in BeerSmith now...

...it's easy enough to sort of squeeze your kits in as recipes and it'll stand you in good stead for building up recipes either extract, BIAB or 3 vessel when you get there.

It's seriously powerful and IMO great value.

 

[bunkerbrewer]

I use a blog (Blogger.com in my case, but lots of free alternatives).

I keep a record of each brewday, pasting in the recipe I used at the time. Then if I later tweak the recipe I can go back and see how it's changed rather than having lots of different recipe files with incremental changes.

This way I get useful things like tags, search and hyperlinking, so tasting notes a couple of months later can be linked to the brewday. And it's all backed up for me :)

I keep a separate log of the "bare facts" for each brew in Excel - one row for each brew - gravity, volume etc at each stage. This gives an increasingly accurate set of average grain absorption, boil-off rates, efficiencies, boiler and fermenter looses etc to plug back into my recipe software.

 

[homebrewdave]

why don't you use a notebook and pen, the technology has been proven for thousands of years

Ah, good one Good Ed I kind of walked into that one Problem is I started one, the Mrs "tidied up" and now it's gone missing! Having it on the computer would stop this from happening again.

 

[ScottM]

http://www.homebrewbuddy.co.uk

 

[giraffe]

I use Evernote to store my brew notes. In fact I use Evernote for most things. It's free and stores all your notes on their servers and syncs to you tablet and smart phone should you have one. So the wife can never 'tidy' away your precious notes :)

 

[Dronfieldbrewer]

I use brewmate and beer engine...then put notes in microsoft outlook for dates and reminders

 

[choobs]

I have iBrewMaster (on the Mac) and it works very well - really helpful and friendly support too. It's great for keeping everything together and handy for seeing the colour changes that a change in the grainbill will result in. Also very good at automatically doing all those annoying calculations we all hate.

Ultimately, though, on brew day I'm equipped with my little notebook and everything goes in there. 5 gallons of water and a 27 inch iMac don't really mix :)

Choobs