WhoBrew.com -- Free Online Recipe and Brew Session Management -- Beta Release!

Hello everybody,

I am excited to introduce everybody to a project I have been working on in the world of brewing software: WhoBrew.com.

Computer software is huge in the brewing community. If you all are like me, you have a bunch of different software suites that you use to locate new recipes, build recipes, assist in brewing sessions, and store brews and recipes. There are a number of great, free solutions out there that do one or two of these things. But I have been unable to find a decent solution that allows me to do all of these things without a charge. That's why I created WhoBrew-- to allow brewers to accomplish all of these tasks (and more) at one place, for free.

Run-down of Features
You can use WhoBrew to formulate your recipes by selecting ingredients and examining the IBUs, color, etc. You can then use it to assist you in brewing your recipe, by helping you with your efficiency, final IBU and gravity calculations, etc. You can use WhoBrew as a brewing journal, and save this information so you can refer back to it later. you can also look up other users' recipes, and if you find something you like, you can use WhoBrew to help you brew that very recipe. You can also ask questions for other users, whether it be general or specifically tied to one of their recipes or brew sessions. You can use a list of personal ingredients to help you in building recipes restricted to ingredients you already have. That's a basic run-down of what is available in this Beta release, but more features are coming fast! :rockin:

Again, none of the features listed above are features you've never seen before. But what makes WhoBrew a great tool is that you can do all of this in the same place. And it's free.

Here are some of the advantages to using WhoBrew.com for your brewing needs:

• It's Free - You don't have to pay anything to use this website. There is no "free" account and "paid" account where you are second-class. It's all free. No hoops. I'm not trying to make any money here.
• It's Cloud-Based - Using WhoBrew allows you to store your recipes and brew sessions online which means you can easily share recipes with friends, or access your brews from multiple locations. Ever have a recipe idea while at work and have to write it down so you can enter it into your software at home? Ever have a fellow brewer ask you to share parts of your brewing log? Just point them to your recipe on WhoBrew!
• See who has brewed your recipes - Find a recipe you like on WhoBrew? Brew it. WhoBrew will relate your brew session to the recipe you brewed. If you've ever posted a recipe online and wondered if anybody else brewed it, or what they thought of it, you are going to like this.

Beta Release
When I started this project, my goal was to provide the features listed above. Now that I am at that point, I am ready to release this to the world. I have spent a solid amount of time testing WhoBrew for problems, and I have used my development version to help me brew many recipes over the last few months. So I feel that it's definitely ready for use. You should be able to use it just fine-- if I was worried that you weren't able to use it, I would have waited to release it.

However, in my experience programming, you always have a few kinks to work out when you release a brand new product, which is why I'm referring to it as "Beta" at this point. Please keep an eye out for any of these "kinks", and if you happen to come across any problems let me know. If you have any ideas for improvement, those are also very much appreciated. There is more information on the site itself on the best way to address those. You are welcome to post feedback in this thread, of course.

The main thing I ask of you with this Beta release is for your patience. If you choose to check out WhoBrew, you will see that it is a great utility. If you do come across a problem or two, please just keep in mind that the reason I am releasing it now as a beta product is so we can find those problems and fix them. Fixing bugs is my #1 priority with this site right now. Above everything, I want this site to be stable and easy to use going forward.

Thank you all in advance for checking it out! Please make sure that any feedback you have makes its way to me. This site is still young and I want to make sure that it becomes the best it can be for all of you!

Thanks,
Scott

Here are some screen shots.:

What a recipe looks like

What editing or creating a recipe looks like

What setting up a brew session looks like

Dougan, congrats on the site.

Couple of thoughts:
1. Instead of a popup screen to select a hop from the templates, how about a selectbox?
2. An option to make a recipe private vs. public? This might help keep out the clutter for recipes that are new/being fine-tuned.
3. Are the Est. IBU values off? I'm getting 7 figures for the line items.
4. Can you make the esc key hide the "add window" for line items?
5. Question: are template items site-wide? so as users add items they become available to other users?

specsman said:

Dougan, congrats on the site.

Couple of thoughts:
1. Instead of a popup screen to select a hop from the templates, how about a selectbox?
2. An option to make a recipe private vs. public? This might help keep out the clutter for recipes that are new/being fine-tuned.
3. Are the Est. IBU values off? I'm getting 7 figures for the line items.
4. Can you make the esc key hide the "add window" for line items?
5. Question: are template items site-wide? so as users add items they become available to other users?

Click to expand...

Thanks for trying it out! I will definitely take your input into consideration in planning my move forward.

1) I was a little weary about the popup screen. I did it as a time saver and the template selection is the only popup in the whole program. My plan is to phase that one popup out if people seem to not like it (as seems to be the case ). So yes, I will make removing this popup a plan.
2) This is a future update I have on my list already, actually, and it has a high priority. While I would encourage everybody to make their recipes public for the world to see, I know everybody (myself included) has recipes they want to keep secret. Honestly, I have some recipes I don't want to share because they are awful, but still want to keep track of so I can refer to them when I improve them later. So this is definitely in the works. I'm also planning to add an option to make the recipe "secret" (ie nobody but you can ever see it) or just "hidden" so it won't show up on search results, but if you link it to a brew session you want to share, then people can see it there. So, that "hidden" level of privacy would allow users to hide bad recipes from search results without removing them from their brew session information.
3) I took a look at your recipe and it appears the reason your IBUs are calculating weird is because your recipe has zeroes in the "Potential" property of the grain. Did you enter it this way, or do you think an error zeroed out your values? I just now added a warning message to let users know why their IBUs aren't being calculated. But if those zeroes weren't intentional, let me know, and I will have to explore what caused that.
4) I don't see why not. I'll work on this when I get a chance tomorrow or Friday.
5) Not at this very moment, but that is the plan. I plan to have a site-wide base list of templates that I will create for everyone, and then each user can have his/her own list. I intend to allow users to use other peoples' lists. This is something I want to accomplish before I remove the "beta" tag, so it should happen soon.

I also want to build upon the ingredient templates to allow users to add quantities to their inventories, because I know some people use that. That might occur a little later, but if you guys want it sooner, let me know.

Dougan said:

3) I took a look at your recipe and it appears the reason your IBUs are calculating weird is because your recipe has zeroes in the "Potential" property of the grain. Did you enter it this way, or do you think an error zeroed out your values? I just now added a warning message to let users know why their IBUs aren't being calculated. But if those zeroes weren't intentional, let me know, and I will have to explore what caused that.

Click to expand...

Ah, ok. No it didn't zero it out, I put in a zero because I didn't have the information on my netbook. Which is one reason I asked about the private/public since I'd prefer to keep it private at least until I finish updating all the data.

While you are taking suggestions, how about an "export" option. To get all your recipes emailed to you at once? Or exported as a .csv?

Dougan - I tried using this with Chrome, but to no avail. So I switched over to Firefox and the grain and hop popout menus were blank - no public grains listed. Am I doing something wrong?

beerspitnight said:

Dougan - I tried using this with Chrome, but to no avail. So I switched over to Firefox and the grain and hop popout menus were blank - no public grains listed. Am I doing something wrong?

Click to expand...

I've done a couple once-overs with Chrome but no extensive testing. I will have to go more in-depth. Thanks for the heads up.

As far as the hop/grain popout screens go, they are blank because they don't have any data yet. I haven't added any "site-wide" ingredients yet, and you also don't have any of your own yet.. So you aren't doing anything wrong. For now, if you just enter in the data about your ingredient and click "Save as Template" it will create a new ingredient in your inventory.

I think tonight or tomorrow I will go find some datasheets and fill up the master list of ingredients. I think this would also address specsman's issue of not knowing the potential of his ingredients because they could have been based off of a template.

specsman said:

While you are taking suggestions, how about an "export" option. To get all your recipes emailed to you at once? Or exported as a .csv?

Click to expand...

Sure. I have plans for the BeerXML format in the works, but I had not thought about CSV. Would CSV exporting be more useful for spreadsheet brewing?

Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Unknown MySQL server host 'whobrewdb.db.7757799.hostedresource.com' (2) in /home/content/99/7757799/html/index.php on line 7
cannot connect to database

Click to expand...

Problem

socalboomer said:

Problem

Click to expand...

I just got that too. It seems to have gone away now, though.

That problem is actually caused by my web host's database server going down. Hopefully that doesn't happen often... I am using a mainstream host so you would think it wouldn't happen often. Hopefully this was just a fluke. Otherwise I will have to switch hosts. I have enough stuff to worry about without having to worry about my host going down. Thanks for the heads up.

no problem - it's up now.

cheers

I've populated the database of hops and grains to use. You can still add your own, or build off of the site's main templates. Sorry those weren't available yesterday to those who could have used them.

Thanks to everybody who has used WhoBrew so far!

beerspitnight said:

Dougan - I tried using this with Chrome, but to no avail. So I switched over to Firefox and the grain and hop popout menus were blank - no public grains listed. Am I doing something wrong?

Click to expand...

Hey,
I just ran through it witch Chrome and wasn't able to come across any problems. Could you provide me some more information with what wasn't working for you? What OS were you using (I was using WIndows XP for this).

Thanks!

I have done some more work to the site this weekend, including adding the security levels that specsman was asking about, and also adding a "My Ingredients" screen so you can more easily update and see the ingredients you have available in your personal inventory.

Just went there a minute ago and the site was up.

How are you doing on the implementing the suggestions? What language did you write it in? I may be able to offer assistance in development/testing/bug fixes (depending upon language), if you are up to it.

avidhomebrewer said:

How are you doing on the implementing the suggestions? What language did you write it in? I may be able to offer assistance in development/testing/bug fixes (depending upon language), if you are up to it.

Click to expand...

I'm getting there . It's summer and I do have other things in my life , but as you can see by the list of updates on the main index page, I've been pushing out updates somewhat steadily. A lot of the suggestions I've received have been implemented, but there are also a lot that I still have to get to yet.

At this point in time, while the website is still green and growing, I think it would be best to keep this site closed to other developers. I have a pretty good vision for the next few steps I want to take with the site and I think that those steps would best be done without collaboration.

However, once the site has gained a little more maturity, I don't have opposition to the idea of allowing help from other programmers. In fact, I have a few general ideas for future features that would definitely benefit from collaboration.

So in short, at this time I am not looking for help, but at some point in the future, the direction I plan on bringing the site definitely could benefit from it. I'll make sure to let you know if/when that point happens. Thanks for your support!

Alright!

It looks like the migration went successful. I've run through the site and haven't had any problems. Looks like some of you have gone through and posted some more recipes already, which is awesome!

I've got a lot of feedback from you guys, both here and on the site, and it has helped a lot. I have not had a chance to make all of the updates you all have requested, but I am getting there, and I have already made some big changes in response to your suggestions. There is a full list of changes on the main page of www.whobrew.com, but here are some highlights:

• Renovated the way ingredients are added to a recipe or brew session - Added a good arsenal of yeasts, grains, and hops for you to use and changed the way they are added to the recipe so it is much easier.
• BeerXML support - Import and export your recipes! This will allow you to use your favorite recipe software to create the recipe, and share it on the internet with ease. Also, you can download recipes stored on whobrew.com and load them into your favorite recipe software!
• New features on recipes - When I first created this thread, there was a lot of functionality missing when it came to home brew recipes-- such as miscellaneous ingredients or recipe notes, just to name a couple. Several new attributes and features are now there!

Again, I want to point out that WhoBrew.com is still in "beta mode" meaning that, while perfectly usable, changes will occur often and it still may be a bit rough around the edges. I think you guys will enjoy the changes I've made so far, and even though I have a number of suggestions that I still need to address, I would love to hear more suggestions.

The site is usable right now and I have been using it as my exclusive means of formulating and tracking recipes and brews for awhile now. Please feel free to use the site to your heart's desire.

The biggest thing you can do to help my development right now is to upload your personal BeerXML recipes to the site. This will help out in two ways-- First, it will test the BeerXML importing process. While BeerXML is a standard format, each brewing program has its own little quirks and there easily could be situations out there that I have missed. Upload your recipes and then verify that they uploaded alright. If there was an error, let me know, and I will fix the problem. Second, uploading recipes will provide the site with a longer list of recipes. Once I've caught up on user suggestions and some other critical changes, I want to make some improvements to the way you search for recipes, and it will be very helpful for me to have a good stash or recipes to base this on.

Thanks for all the feedback, and please keep it coming!

This looks like something a programmer would make. That is not a bad thing, but if you want people to adopt it, you should consider finding a designer to beautify it.

As a former programmer (havent really done any in years), I always had a very hard time with design and would make straightforward sites like this. When I had non programmers use my applications, they were less than enthused.

I cant think of a single successful professional site (other than CL) that has very little graphic design to it.

Food for thought, keep on keepin' on. Good stuff.

HHP said:

This looks like something a programmer would make. That is not a bad thing, but if you want people to adopt it, you should consider finding a designer to beautify it.

As a former programmer (havent really done any in years), I always had a very hard time with design and would make straightforward sites like this. When I had non programmers use my applications, they were less than enthused.

I cant think of a single successful professional site (other than CL) that has very little graphic design to it.

Food for thought, keep on keepin' on. Good stuff.

Click to expand...

One of the reasons its still in beta . Visual improvements will come but I want to wait until the site is a little further along for that. things are changing too much at this point.

You are absolutely right. I am a programmer and have zero graphic design skills.

HHP said:

As a former programmer (havent really done any in years), I always had a very hard time with design and would make straightforward sites like this. When I had non programmers use my applications, they were less than enthused.

Click to expand...

Took you up on your advice and added a few basic graphic design change to the site. It's definitely nothing flashy but I think it sort of cuts down on the in-your-face blandness the site had before. It'd be nice to get some better graphic design in there, but this will do for now. Thanks for the feedback!