Draughtcraft.com - New Online Recipe Tool

Hey Folks,

I'm a professional software developer that loves making beer and loves to tinker with software, too. Months ago, I started looking for available software to create, share, and manage my recipes. I tried out some of the popular solutions (Beersmith, BeerAlchemy, Hopville, etc...), and finally realized I wasn't finding exactly what I was looking for:

1. Dead simple software. The ability to build, tweak, and share a recipe quickly. I don't run a professional brewery, and I don't stress over the details of a recipe; I just want to have fun planning a recipe, not build a space shuttle.
2. Recipes that focus on the *process* of brewing, not just a big list of ingredients. I want software that makes the process of the brew day clear.
3. The ability to easily share and search for new recipes.

There are already existing apps that do some of these things, and they're great options that I've used consistently for awhile. I wanted a bit more control, though, and now a weekend project has blossomed into a free service:

http://www.draughtcraft.com/



A few notes, for now:

* Draughtcraft lets you build and publicly share unlimited recipes online.
* You don't have to sign up to start building a recipe.
* The service is currently in "beta", which means that if you care to give it a shot, it's possible that you'll notice bugs. I plan to regularly resolve known issues and add new features as time allows.
* I may offer premium accounts at some point to recover hosting expenses, and if the service costs money in the future, I plan to at least provide some form of grandfathered state for earlier beta users/adopters.

So give it a spin and please give me your feedback.

Is there somewhere to enter expected mash efficiency, or are you calculating based on ingredients alone? You might add some sort of spinner or something somewhere to indicate when there's ajax processing going on. For slow connections it may be not be as obvious waiting for updates etc.

Looks like a nice tool.:rockin:

Hey carrot,

Some of the settings (mash efficiency, IBU calculation method, etc...) are currently only available if you sign up. As time goes on, I might pull some of these out and make them configurable for anonymous users, too.

Good call on the ajax spinner. For now, the code attempts to save asynchronously in the most unobtrusive and smartest way possible - it waits for a moment it's perceives as you being done making changes, and then is saves to the background, disabling certain page components while it refreshes. So it's actually very possible (especially if you're primarily a keyboard user, like I am) to tab between several ingredients of a recipe, making changes along the way, and have it all save at the end.

Also, for what it's worth, the tool currently assumes 75% for anonymous users.

You might have those features show up as disabled with a tooltip or something to indicate they're member only features. Otherwise, we're left assuming it just doesn't account for it. It'd be a shame for someone to not use your tool because they didn't think it has features that it really has.

I think efficiency is a pretty important one though. At least make it obvious somewhere that that's the hard coded value for non-members.

rpetrello said:

Hey carrot,

Some of the settings (mash efficiency, IBU calculation method, etc...) are currently only available if you sign up. As time goes on, I might pull some of these out and make them configurable for anonymous users, too.

Good call on the ajax spinner. For now, the code attempts to save asynchronously in the most unobtrusive and smartest way possible - it waits for a moment it's perceives as you being done making changes, and then is saves to the background, disabling certain page components while it refreshes. So it's actually very possible (especially if you're primarily a keyboard user, like I am) to tab between several ingredients of a recipe, making changes along the way, and have it all save at the end.

Click to expand...

Sounds smart - I'll make a point to display some of these important stats (efficiency, especially) by default, and make it clear that (for now) they can only be modified if you sign up.

Very, very nice.

A few suggestions - I did a 2.5 gal recipe on there, and when I view my profile, under the beer name it says All Grain, American Pale Ale, 2 gallons - like it's rounding that .5 off.

If I use this site to search for other recipes, and wasn't aware of it doing that, I'd overlook 2 gallon recipes and be looking for ones that said 2.5 - as that's what my system does.

Only other suggestion that would be awesome is some kind of printable view that you could use as a brew-day sheet. Maybe that's already there and I'm not seeing it though?

It really is bad ass though, I love it!

EDIT: nevermind on the summary - I see it!

@Burgs - I'll have a look into the gallons truncating.

There's not currently an official "brew day sheet", but if you just print (File -> Print) the recipe builder page, it gives a pretty succinct overview of the processes and ingredients involved on brew day.

Nice! That's all I was wanting.

I love that this isn't trying to do too much - you've won me over.

Love the interface! Very clean. Signed up and subscribed to this thread - looking forward to see how this develops and if it can dethrone my current favorite (hopville)

The ajax background updates still need tweaked a little bit. I've been interrupted 3 times trying to type mash notes in (and I'm pretty quick on the keyboard) - and it's refreshing to a 403 error.

Just signed up and tried entering BYO's Founder’s Brewing's Breakfast Stout Clone. I will list the issues i found in order. Keep in mind, I am still a noob.

1. Briess light, unhopped, malt extract. (I need DME and LME) Not on list
2. Is there a place to enter how long of a steep similar to the boil length?
3. Can you make Crystal Malt 120 show up after the 90 so they in numerical order instead of alphabetical?
4. When I add items to the fermentation, nothing happens.... When I click fermentins on the top of the page, it just takes me to a screen showing the beer's properties. This recipe calls for a secondary and adding ground coffee to it.
5. After clicking ground coffee, is there a way to specify (a blank feild apperas maybe?) what kind of coffe? Same thing for chocolate additions.
6. Maybe add a section for recommended priming solution for bottling?

I did not publish the recipe becuase I am not certain on how to finish this out properly. I do not want an incomplete recipe on there.

Nice tool overall though.

Burgs said:

The ajax background updates still need tweaked a little bit. I've been interrupted 3 times trying to type mash notes in (and I'm pretty quick on the keyboard) - and it's refreshing to a 403 error.

Click to expand...

This would be a significant change, but I'd have the ajax return a json object with the properties and manipulate only the necessary elements that have changed via javascript. For instance, if I add a period to the description, it shouldn't have to repaint an entire form or div. Again, I know this is a significant change, but it's less data over the wire, less expensive on the DOM, and would eliminate the jumpy action you sometimes see when repainting entire sections of html during an edit.

Don't mean to nitpick! I really like what you have so far.

Noticed one more thing not in the ingredients list: the Dehusked Carafa I-III varieties. I likes my black beers, you know...

Great feedback, everyone. I'll be cataloging this stuff and making improvements...

carrotmalt said:

This would be a significant change, but I'd have the ajax return a json object with the properties and manipulate only the necessary elements that have changed via javascript. For instance, if I add a period to the description, it shouldn't have to repaint an entire form or div. Again, I know this is a significant change, but it's less data over the wire, less expensive on the DOM, and would eliminate the jumpy action you sometimes see when repainting entire sections of html during an edit.

Don't mean to nitpick! I really like what you have so far.

Click to expand...

It really doesn't like backspaces either. I realize backspace is a keyboard shortcut for Back in a web browser, but... not when you're in a text box, normally. I keep trying to backspace in the mash notes section and I jump back 2-3 pages in my browsing history.

With a few tweaks to this already good tool, I'll be ready to abandon all the other stuff I use - so yeah, hopefully you take this as us doing our jobs as beta testers rather than nitpicking.

Nope - I write software for a living, so I have thick skin. Nitpicking is good - helps me find issues that I can resolve. Beta test away .

Wow, great feedback so far .

Here's a handful of specific responses:

@stompbox:
Regarding 1-3, 5&6 - Great feedback/ideas. I'll make note of all of them.

Regarding "When I add items to the fermentation, nothing happens.... When I click fermentins on the top of the page, it just takes me to a screen showing the beer's properties. This recipe calls for a secondary and adding ground coffee to it."

Can you elaborate on this a bit more? I'm unable to reproduce. What browser are you using?

@Burgs: I'll make note of the need for Dehusked Carafa I-III. Also, I think the "accidental backspacing" issue is related to some of the background saving issues @carrotmalt has brought up.

@carrotmalt: You're right about the full content area AJAX refreshes. I think there are certain components (basically, almost anything that's not an ingredient) that doesn't really call for a page refresh after a background save. It's really annoying that the page reloads as you type into <textareas>. This should just auto-save in the background without bugging you. Great feedback.

rpetrello said:

Regarding "When I add items to the fermentation, nothing happens.... When I click fermentins on the top of the page, it just takes me to a screen showing the beer's properties. This recipe calls for a secondary and adding ground coffee to it."

Can you elaborate on this a bit more? I'm unable to reproduce. What browser are you using?

Click to expand...

Browser:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101203 Firefox/3.6.13

Note: Even though I am using FIrefox, I still get the message on the homescreen that says:

You Appreciate a Quality Brew Why Not Try a Quality Browser?

The program you're using to browse the web is a bit...stale.

While we work to add support for your browser, we recommended any of these (free) alternatives:

Click to expand...

Elaboration:
On the right side of the screen there is a greenish vertical bar, within that bar it says "Add to Fermenter" with 3 drop down menus to select from. When I choose "Coffee Ground" the website does a refresh (flashes) but nothing changes.... at all. I was expecting a new group of ingrediants/steps to show up on that screen similar to the wort stage and the boil stage.

Since nothing happened, I clicked on "ferment" thinking that is where it would show up. But when I click on that, it only shows:

Estimated Statistics Targets for Style Other Notes
Original Gravity: 1.080 1.056 - 1.075
Final Gravity: 1.019 1.010 - 1.018
ABV: 8% 5.5% - 8%
Bitterness: 49 IBU 30 - 70 IBU
Color: 54.3 º SRM 30 - 40 º SRM
Publish Changes or Cancel

I don't understand what is going on.

Also, it would be nice to have a box to check to automatically log me in.

@stompbox

Interesting...

I'll see if I can get my hands on a copy of Windows Firefox 3.6. It looks a bit old, though, which might be what's causing some of the issues you're seeing - looks like 3.6 came out last January:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_3.6

...so you might consider updating .

I'm currently running Firefox version 6, and they just released 7 this week, and am not experiencing the same issue you're seeing. In the meantime, though, I'll see if I can find an older version and get to the bottom of your issue.

rpetrello said:

@stompbox

Interesting...

I'll see if I can get my hands on a copy of Windows Firefox 3.6. It looks a bit old, though, which might be what's causing some of the issues you're seeing - looks like 3.6 came out last January:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_3.6

...so you might consider updating .

I'm currently running Firefox version 6, and they just released 7 this week, and am not experiencing the same issue you're seeing. In the meantime, though, I'll see if I can find an older version and get to the bottom of your issue.

Click to expand...

FYI: My home PC has Firefox 6 and it works fine.

Also, another change: This recipe calls for chocolate added at flame out. Chocolate is not a choice under fermentables or misc.,, unless i missed it?

Great work, I will definitely be using this.

A brew day sheet would be great, but I would say make it better!!!

Here is what I have not seen yet. An interactive brew day sheet.

Instead of printing out the brew day sheet, put the sheet right on your program, add timers with audio alarms, and even allow us to add notes that record times, and specs on the sheet, and then save the sheet in a journal.

Let us add as many timers as we like.

Example:

Steep grains, 155 degrees: 30 minutes
Add extract and bring to boil,
Start boil timer:
Add 1st hop, 60 minutes
add 2nd hop, 30 minutes
add 3 hop, 15 minutes
Add Immersion cooler, 15 minutes
Add Irish Moss, 15 minutes
Knock on wood, 10 minutes (Let me add anything)
Add 4th hop, 5 minutes



Speak "Friend" and enter,
Grossy

@stompbox:

I did a bit more research into the Briess options:

http://www.brewingwithbriess.com/Products/Malt_Extracts.htm

You sure what you're looking for isn't their CBW® Pilsen Light extract? I've got that included in the ingredients list.

Could I request a group page or someone to be part of a local club and add receipes?

@milldoggy - You mean the ability to specify your local homebrew club (or something similar)?

More to have a homebrew club, that we could post reciepes under and they would appear at reciepea for a club, but owned by a user, does that make sense?

Sure, so the ability to show your recipes in a group with other members of your homebrew club (sort of like a profile for a *group* of brewers)?

Yea, we want to start managing club receipes and your software looks like a great way to do that. Wha about a tagging system, so I can tag my entry and you can sort or filter on tags.

@milldoggy - Sounds interesting - I'll think on it .

Personally, I think it'd be pretty cool to be able to organize groups and aggregate everyone's recipes together.

Hey Everyone,

Thought I'd make mention of a maintenance update I pushed tonight:

* Fixed a bug that caused volumes for recipes to round incorrectly on user profile pages.
* Updated the look and feel of the homepage a bit, and improved various page titles throughout the app.
* Resized some interfaces so that recipes with long names wouldn't overflow their containers.
* Fixed a bug in the way users' full name and username are printed throughout the app.
* Now when you edit mashing instructions and recipe notes, the recipe content area doesn't constantly refresh itself as you type, which helps resolve some of the "jumpiness" complaints I've heard.
* Added shortcut links into the recipe building UI that redirect you to brewhouse efficiency and IBU formula settings.
* Now recipe ingredients are sorted in "natural", not "alphabetical" order. This means that ingredient names like Crystal 120L will come *after* Crystal 90L in the list.
* Adding Carafa I-III, and Carafa I-III (Dehusked) Special into the ingredients list.

Also, you may have noticed that I added a feature suggestion/feedback form to the site that's powered by UserVoice (http://uservoice.com/).

Thanks for all of your help spotting bugs, and great suggestions for features - keep it coming!

Just signed up will add a couple of recipes later but looks great.

Very cool, we are a new club, trying to figure out our path. A club reciepe system would be great. Would be cool to limited stuff to registered club members, but a club could allow certain things to be public.

I am a programmer myself, let me know if you want to share source and have other developers contribute.

rpetrello said:

Hey Everyone,

Thought I'd make mention of a maintenance update I pushed tonight:

* Fixed a bug that caused volumes for recipes to round incorrectly on user profile pages.
* Updated the look and feel of the homepage a bit, and improved various page titles throughout the app.
* Resized some interfaces so that recipes with long names wouldn't overflow their containers.
* Fixed a bug in the way users' full name and username are printed throughout the app.
* Now when you edit mashing instructions and recipe notes, the recipe content area doesn't constantly refresh itself as you type, which helps resolve some of the "jumpiness" complaints I've heard.
* Added shortcut links into the recipe building UI that redirect you to brewhouse efficiency and IBU formula settings.
* Now recipe ingredients are sorted in "natural", not "alphabetical" order. This means that ingredient names like Crystal 120L will come *after* Crystal 90L in the list.
* Adding Carafa I-III, and Carafa I-III (Dehusked) Special into the ingredients list.

Also, you may have noticed that I added a feature suggestion/feedback form to the site that's powered by UserVoice (http://uservoice.com/).

Thanks for all of your help spotting bugs, and great suggestions for features - keep it coming!

Click to expand...

Ahhh... much smoother now, very nice. Will play with it more today!

rpetrello said:

@stompbox:

I did a bit more research into the Briess options:

http://www.brewingwithbriess.com/Products/Malt_Extracts.htm

You sure what you're looking for isn't their CBW® Pilsen Light extract? I've got that included in the ingredients list.

Click to expand...

I guess it is not Briess, here is what I ordered for it: https://morebeer.com/view_product/18465//Light_Malt_Extract_

Very awesome! I tried to add a recipe but kept getting an error. So I went to recipes and noticed it was in there twice.

I think what might be also helpful is the diastatic power of a malt in order to gander the conversion to starches. But not completely needed by any means.

I love it already! I like that I can share a recipe and I can build one without needing software installed.

@stamandster

Can you give me some details on what happened, and what you were doing leading up to the error you experienced so I can look into it?

I actually ran into the same thing this morning, and just now again.

Basically, you go to New Recipe, give it a name, click Next and you get a Not Found error. I was trying to create one called "618" and it led me to:

http://www.draughtcraft.com/recipes/154/618/builder/

but with the Not Found custom error page.

If I click my username at the top, it shows up under Drafts and then I can click it and get into the builder.

I really like the clean look of your query feature where you can narrow recipes down by 'all-grain' or 'color' for instance. I'm not sure how to best tie this in with your existing GUI, but it'd be nice if you could add a "contains hop(s)" option. Narrowing down recipes that contain one selected hop type would be cool, and if you can figure out a nice way to incorporate it, multiple hop selections would really be nice.

Seems like I'm always trying to find recipes that match whatever hop combos I have in stock. I haven't seen this kind of feature online, so maybe it'd be a good one to set your site apart from the others.

@Burgs, @stompbox - the recipe creation issue (404) should be resolved now.

@carrotmalt - Really neat idea. Would you mind submitting at draughtcraft.uservoice.com so others can vote?

rpetrello said:

@Burgs, @stompbox - the recipe creation issue (404) should be resolved now.

@carrotmalt - Really neat idea. Would you mind submitting at draughtcraft.uservoice.com so others can vote?

Click to expand...

Done. I signed up and was signed in when I posted it and it still required me to include an email address in order to submit. Don't know if you control this piece, or if it's some uservoice component, but it'd be nice (if you must require email), to pull it from the account already signed in. No biggy if it's out of your control.