Brew Day Organization

I am starting this thread to learn what people do to be prepared and stay organized on their brew day and beyond.

I'm a fairly new brewer (5 AG batches) and I have done a poor job of record keeping. I am starting to get more organized and hopefully this will improve my end product.

To start I have started a notebook for brew days and tracking beyond. Attached is a sample of what I use, It contains the recipe, water temps required, space to record gravity readings, room for notes, all kept in a three ring binder.

I'd like to hear what other people do or if anyone has suggestions on how to improve record keeping. Or is this just a waste and should just get beersmith or something of that nature.

I do all my planning with Beersmith and pieces of paper,( to help figure out my own recipes). Used to use a notebook to keep notes, but now I use Beersmith for that too. If your really serious about this, I would highly recommend Beersmith or some other software. You won't regret it.

Beersmith is the way to go. I have a notebook that I fill with the brew sheets I create each brew day. I take all my notes, including 1st, 2nd, 3rd wort gravities, sg, temperatures, etc. on my actual brew sheet. Then whenever I am looking for a specific beer that I have brewed in the past, or if I'm trying to put together a recipe, brew schedule, etc... I pull out the notebook, check the brew sheets from previous brews and make adjustments. With the software and the notebook, it's kinda hard to go wrong.

another vote for beersmith. makes recipe construction much easier as well.

Definitely some brew software! But my best brew days (and best products) have come from pre-measuring and pre-sorting my grains & hops, and charted out my water additions. Brewing off the cuff has led me to miss meh target numbers, and then the final product suffers.

Another vote for Beersmith here. I make the recipe in beersmith, and print out the brew sheet for brew day. Then I take notes on that as needed: mash start time, actual mash temperature, mash pH, boil start time, OG, volume into the fermenter, FG, ABV, initial tasting notes, etc. Anything I need is all on that one piece of paper.

I also have an XLS sheet with the overall brew day schedule. Since I normally brew two beers, mix up a batch of Apfelwein, and then keg the three batches made the previous session, it helps to have it all laid out what to do and when. So I also print that sheet and take a few overall brew day notes on it: start time, beers brewed, end time, etc.