How do you keep your notes? Logs?

I've been trying to get all of my stuff organized in one spot, and I'm curious what methods you guys use.

How much do you just leave alone to your grey matter?

I don't leave any recipes to memory, but almost all my methods I do.

i use beersmith.. before i had that, i just had an excel file with my recipes.

I too use Beersmith. Prior to that it was all hand written notes in a little black journal. I still save the journal for making notes that are not specific to one beer. Such as when I calculate how many quarts per inch my boil kettle holds, that gets jotted in the journal. Everything else; Beersmith.

(To clarify)
I know there is a notes feature to Beersmith, but I prefer being able to physically leaf through information sometimes. I may have grew up in the 90's, but I still like me some paper-books; you know? So that's the only reason my journal still exists.

Prior to Beersmith I would use Google Calendar and GMail. In fact for about a year or two I still used both. I would record the brew day on my calendar and then put the recipe and any relevant notes in the entry. Then I would schedule related stuff (e.g. "Pale Ale: Rack to Secondary") and record tasting notes or gravity readings and whatnot that I took doing those tasks.

This was before they had the spreadsheet online. I think if I were to do it now, I'd do essentially the same thing, but also put links to the calendar entries in a spreadsheet that was more like the line item entries in Beersmith's Brew Log.

I have about a hundred loose pieces of paper in a small folder. No order. All Chaos. Works great.

I have a brewing journal and keep all of my recipes and notes in there. I also have all of my recipes stored in BrewPal on my phone. BrewPal is used for creating and experimenting with recipes, only the ones that actually get brewed make it to the journal.

I just print out my recipe and write notes on the back as the brew day goes on. Its pretty unorganized at the moment but when I want to brew something again I have my chicken scratch to look back on. I really need to get a binder to put them in.

I have just started my brew log. My sister-in-law is a librarian and LOVES giving books as gifts, oddly none that are asked for, just really odd ones. Well she gave me a 3-ring binder with dividers, along with the log sheets that she hole punched to to fit the binder. There are also some full page "sleeves" in case of a spill.

brew log sheet from here:

http://www.brew-dudes.com/brewing-log-sheet/109

If you click on the link in the middle of the page called: Brewing Logsheet you can DL a copy.

I'll print out a sheet with the recipe note mash times & temps, efficiency, hop additions, boil length, OG and FG and soon PH readings all over the margins of the page. I sometimes add tasting notes later. I just spend enough time on the computer during the week. I just can't do much more computer time on the weekend brew day (except for here and some brew calc sites).

Here's my log. Well, it's an old picture of my system anyway. The stickers match the sticker I put on the cap to label my bottles. This way, the bottles are labelled and I have no cleanup.

I started using a three ring binder. First page is a brew log with date, type of beer etc.


I print out the recipe from my calculator, I also have a brew day checkist that I write down everything on. Put both the recipe and the brew checklist in a clear sheet protector and into the binder. After the brew I also put notes into the recipe I my calculator. It is nice to have a hard copy plus the computer file.

I grab an 8.5x11, unlined piece of paper from my printer, a sharpie, and a pen. Recipe gets recorded as I brew, then I put it in a folder with the others.

Nice use of stickies. Good idea. I just started and bought a composition notebook from staples for a buck and have all my notes in it so far.

tjpfeister said:

I too use Beersmith. Prior to that it was all hand written notes in a little black journal. I still save the journal for making notes that are not specific to one beer. Such as when I calculate how many quarts per inch my boil kettle holds, that gets jotted in the journal. Everything else; Beersmith.

Click to expand...

I do the same thing.

I was using BeerSmith for everything, but it doesn't really have a system to handle re-brewing the same beer other than just making a copy of the recipe, so I've just started using Braukaiser's brewing log since it's the most extensive one I've found. http://braukaiser.com/documents/brewing_logbook_english_US_units.pdf

I'm not filling out all the sections in it yet since I haven't touched water adjustments for anything other than pH. I think it will be very useful for keeping track of my process and the effect that changes have on the recipe. For instance I just rebrewed my brown ale for the first time as an all-grain, ended up mashing low, and wound up with a FG of 1.009 instead of the 1.013 that I got last time. Now I can take notes on the differences in flavor, and whether I like it more or less so that in the future I can see if the low mash temp was an improvement or not.

I have them in a 3-ring binder, and I'm planning on getting some of those tabbed dividers so that I can make a section in the notebook for each recipe as I rebrew it and easily track the changes.

i use a little journal style book, and later back it up to a document on the computer just in case my book gets wet, burned, or flies away.

I put down the brew date, name of beer, OG, FG, steeping grains, fermentables, hops, yeast, and any other additions, like spices, whirfloc, irish moss, etc. I also add date of secondary, if used, dry hops if used, date it was bottled, and then will add tasting notes

I enter all the data into the brew sheet during the session and after the brew day is over all the info goes into ProMash.




Cheers,
ClaudiusB

I have a large journal with recipes, brew notes, fermentation notes per batch, etc. Then pressed into the back I have assorted printouts, etc.

Beersmith, all else is folly. Yes, i've been drinking.


_

tjpfeister said:

I prefer being able to physically leaf through information sometimes.

Click to expand...

l1ranger said:

i use a little journal style book, and later back it up to a document on the computer just in case my book gets wet, burned, or flies away.

Click to expand...

msarro said:

I have a large journal with recipes, brew notes, fermentation notes per batch, etc. Then pressed into the back I have assorted printouts, etc.

Click to expand...

Having been a science major late 80's/early 90's and trained in taking lab notes, I keep a bound book with everything msarro does including time of day, various other observations, and even tasting notes (when I remember) and all in pencil - yes pencil because it will not run when liquids are spilled on it.

Loose pages get lost easily. I thought I lost one of my books (yep, not a page) a week or so ago and FREAKED OUT...I found it and plan to scan to a backup file for safe(er) keeping.

I do have BeerSmith but use it for recipe formulations and calculating OG/FG, etc. Even when I use it, I transcribe to the bound book.

As long as you are able to refer back to what you did 100 batches ago, however, to each his own!

I print a brewsheet out from BrewSmith and jot notes on it through the mash/boil then transfer those notes to BeerSmith. I'm a little skerd to bring my MacBook near the process. Being an IT guy I of course backup my BS file to the cloud

I used Evernote for the first few batches before buying BS.

I write literally everything in BeerSmith. I periodically back up my BeerSmith files too, just in case.

Beer notes are important!

I use iBrewMaster for the iPad. It's lovely. It does a nice job managing recipes and batches separately. I tried using BrewSmith for a while, but the fact that I couldn't get it to manage recipe rebrews easily (as others have mentioned) got annoying.

I keep all of my recipes, notes, thoughts, and brew day pictures at http://beer.hexkrak.com

I used to keep everything in a three ring binder using a standard fill-in-the-blanks worksheet I made up in Excel. Then I discovered brewing software and kept everything on the computer. After two computer crashes and a theft that left me with no notes or any recipes, I've decided to do two things: a) Back up my computer files much more often and b) keep a hard copy printout in a 3 ring binder.

My problem right now is that I don't realy like the format of the print out from the software, so I'm seriously considering getting a hardbound journal-type notebook and hand writing in all of the recipes that turn out reealy well (i.e. the "keepers") Given my recent track record, the notebook won't have to have too many pages in it ;-)

I keep a 3 ring binder,and I print off sheets from Radical Brewing. It's something Rand Mosher put in his book, and has a PDF on his website. It was especially helpful to me when I first started brewing to keep things in order.

Beersmith. I don't understand what others mean by not being able to re brew though. Just increment the recipe name with a number added.

All of my brewing notes are inside Beersmith as well.

I, too, use the BrewDudes brew day log sheet. I like having the three-ring binder to flip through from time to time. I like the way the ink smears a bit when it gets wet. Someone needs to come up with an app for that.

I use a Basic Brewing Logbook it's a must have!
http://basicbrewingshop.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=1

I use these sheets Printed out. Wish they were in fillable format so I could keep them on the PC as well.

Recipe Template

Brewing Checklist

I like the look and layout.

I THINK I take WAY too many notes to use any standard template or software (which bums me out) and i've tried a couple of times to build something in Excel to track my notes and just have never gotten anything to work (damn Excel for Mac with no macros!!!)

I am constantly jotting down my temps in all three vessels, when I'm adding heat to where... I basically take a note every three or four minutes.

It may sound like insanity but i don't mind the work... I'm not doin' anything else and I have found it to be a HUGE help in adjusting my process here or there or tweaking recipes.

I keep everything in an app on my old iPhone called Brew Pal.

I'd like brewsmith, but I don't have the money to buy it, I'm using brewzor for the phone, and I jot things down on a paper notepad, as well as some random blog site.

Whatever method you use, make sure you back it up. There was a post earlier about someone who had a fright when his binder logs were put somewhere.
I've mentioned it before, working in a datastorage industry, that you want multiple backups. The company I work for has multiple data locations and daily backups for at least a month. Paper(binders), electronic(scanned, word doc, pdf, brewsmith), online(blog, email, google docs), or online backup (mozy, carbonite)
The issue with physical is destruction and physical misplacement, electronic (on only one computer) is a possible computer failure losing data.
I like multiple online sites. Don't trust one email location either (yes, you can email things to yourself like recipies or backed up brewsmith files) but recently, hotmail had lost some people's email, so have a hotmail and a gmail, a wordpress, a blogspot.
So have some redundancy.
Beer is important!

My wife made me a "brewing notebook" for Christmas. Nice leather cover, preformatted pages, etc.

MX1 said:

I use these sheets Printed out. Wish they were in fillable format so I could keep them on the PC as well.
...

Click to expand...

I was recently in the same position as you. So I went looking and found this website!

It allows you to fill out any PDF file. just click where you want to type and a little box appears. You can adjust the size to the text to fit the boxes and after your done typing, if you click off to the side of the input box you can drag the text around to center it where ever you want it.

Just make sure you click the little "save" diskette before you go to download it!!

Enjoy!

I currently am really bad about keeping records. My last 2 batches, I didn't take notes at all. I've regretted that a time or two...That said, once I finally start taking notes I'll use rite in the rain sheets and pencil. They're made for surveyors - you can take notes with the sheets soaking wet. I'll keep the notebook in my beer freezer. Ill have an electronic copy somewhere on google so that when I loose the notebook not all is lost.

Randy Mosher's brew log.

You can print the pdf's here:

http://www.radicalbrewing.com/rbws1.pdf

I use Beersmith for recipes and calculations. Print out the brew day sheets and use that for notes. Then I copy the notes back into Beersmith later and keep the paper copies as back up. I need to get a binder to keep things organized

I've used a log from the get go. I have beersmith that I have my recipes in, but I can't seem to get away from writing in my log. Force of habit I guess...