Christmas in September

Hey all, I figured I'd FINALLY share an extremely important facet of my brew day, my brew worksheet.

I've been tweaking this for about a year, and have added many new features to it. I compile all of the data a day or two before brew day and then print it out and place it on a clipboard and keep track as the brew day progresses. It has spaces to keep track of recipe specs, mashing specs, checkmark boxes to keep track of hop (and other ingredients) additions, and formulas that will figure out BU:GU ratio, how much strike water you'll need, % of yeast attenuation, alcohol %, approximate boil-off rate, efficiency, and even a gravity to ° plato conversion.

It is tweaked towards an AG brewer, but could easily be used for extract brewers as well. I mainly created it so I could go back a year from now and see every little detail about a brew from start to finish (recipe planning-brew day-tasting).

I've made it available to download, please feel free to edit it as you feel the need. If you figure out anything cool to add or whatever, let me know! I figure it will always be a work in progress!

Couple of notes if you want to use it--the gray fields have formulas in them, so don't type anything in these boxes. As you add info in other places, the gray boxes will fill in themselves.

I am an excel novice, so I went with the flow the best I could. If anyone has any questions on how to use it, I'll try to answer them in this thread.

Here it is (I even included a filled in version with a recipe for Lake Walk Pale Ale!):
:rockin:

Brew Worksheet

Hey that's an impressive spreadsheet. I'll have to save a copy for use when I go AG. Nice work!

That beats the living snot out of my lame brewlogs in excel format.

Good job, that reminds me I need get my act together and start keeping better records. Mine does include a forumla (dechiperable only by me) for calculating IBU's for hop additions.

Yeah . . .that's cool. Thanks! Do you have a handy resource nearby from which you get all of your numbers? For instance, when you add grains to your grain bill, your spreadsheet contains gravity readings for them. Where do you get that information? My bags of grain don't have it, but I do get it automatically with Promash.

I would prefer to use your spreadsheet. I think that I may add a section on Sheet 2 that contains all the information about the grains I have in stock, etc. I just need to know where I can get the info without fishing through Promash for hours.

Any ideas?

Right now, I just use the Eval copy of Promash - seeking a cheaper alternative.

That's really well-layed out and organized, Dude. I don't have Excel. It displays on my Linux system, but I'm not sure all the calculations work.

beer4breakfast said:

That's really well-layed out and organized, Dude. I don't have Excel. It displays on my Linux system, but I'm not sure all the calculations work.

Click to expand...

Can you somehow load that spreadsheet into the new Google spreadsheet program? I thought that was supposed to be Excel-compatible (haven't used it myself, just a thought).

EDIT: That seems to work, if you don't have Excel.

Geesh, when I think I get a good hold on extract/mini mashing, I read something like Dudes spreadsheet and already, I start worrying because I know that at some point, I will go AG. It's just a matter of time. But after reading all that info, it's like sensory overload, but a challenge as well. Nice flow on the spreadsheet. Good, easy layout. Boy, going AG is, well, a lot of work. But, nothing comes cheap these days and you have to work at it to perfect the craft. After being on this site, I have even more respect for brewers. It ain't like Mr. Beer, which, I almost bought until doing some searches on the 'net.

You can download a free openoffice software program that will work with Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc. documents.

http://www.openoffice.org/

Thanks a lot Dude! Now I have to brew again right away to try this bad boy out. You suck.

sonvolt said:

Yeah . . .that's cool. Thanks! Do you have a handy resource nearby from which you get all of your numbers? For instance, when you add grains to your grain bill, your spreadsheet contains gravity readings for them. Where do you get that information? My bags of grain don't have it, but I do get it automatically with Promash.

I would prefer to use your spreadsheet. I think that I may add a section on Sheet 2 that contains all the information about the grains I have in stock, etc. I just need to know where I can get the info without fishing through Promash for hours.

Any ideas?

Right now, I just use the Eval copy of Promash - seeking a cheaper alternative.

Click to expand...

Like you, I get all of my numbers from Promash. For a few of the entries where it isn't given, I guesstimate it. For example, I had to find a value for Mt. Dew once. I used my refractometer.

I use the spreadsheet as just another tool to help me become a better brewer. Sometimes it is a lot of work to input all of that data, but planning beers is sometimes half the fun. Making geeky spreadsheets is fun as well.

glibbidy said:

That beats the living snot out of my lame brewlogs in excel format.

Good job, that reminds me I need get my act together and start keeping better records. Mine does include a forumla (dechiperable only by me) for calculating IBU's for hop additions.

Click to expand...

LAME?????

See, yours is exactly why I mentioned earlier that if anyone had any cool improvements to share them. I love the tabs at the bottom of yours. I love how you can just flip back and forth to different areas. How do you do that?

I also like your tabs for hops inventory and IBU calculator. I want to do something similar where I could easily reference frequently used numbers.

Good work on that man. Help me out!

Dude said:

LAME?????

See, yours is exactly why I mentioned earlier that if anyone had any cool improvements to share them. I love the tabs at the bottom of yours. I love how you can just flip back and forth to different areas. How do you do that?

I also like your tabs for hops inventory and IBU calculator. I want to do something similar where I could easily reference frequently used numbers.

Good work on that man. Help me out!

Click to expand...

Dude, yours already has the tabs at the bottom, just double click them to name, right click-insert to make more. Then you could keep more than one as well.

Dude, what do you use to create/manipulate the mash graph and the gravity scale?

Chairman Cheyco said:

Dude, what do you use to create/manipulate the mash graph and the gravity scale?

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Can you clarify?

All I do is click on the lines and move them to where I need them. I like goofy little gadgets like that. All of the info is in text format somewhere else on the sheet, but the pictures look pretty.

Oh, I got you now, I didn't realize you could click on them. And here I was beginning to write another spreadsheet to make the graphs. I like your way better...

Chairman Cheyco said:

Oh, I got you now, I didn't realize you could click on them. And here I was beginning to write another spreadsheet to make the graphs. I like your way better...

Click to expand...

Cool. Glad you got it.

Dude said:

I also like your tabs for hops inventory and IBU calculator. I want to do something similar where I could easily reference frequently used numbers.

Good work on that man. Help me out!

Click to expand...

Thanks

I'm working on getting the formulas for the IBU calculations embedded into the spreadsheet. I'm not a promash user so this is all I work with for creating my brews. Ideally I would like to be able to link the hops inventory to each spreadsheet to calculate my inventory levels. The same could be said for my malt.

for some reason i cant open the file that's on the original thread. And i realize that its an older thread but hopefully someone still has it laying around and if so if someone could send it to me in an email i would be soooo thankful!

I sent it to you--I hope you can use it.

I mainly just used it as a tool to help me keep good notes. I print one off on brewday and annotate any changes I make, and write down notes as I go along. Then I can keep track of what I did wrong, LOL.

Holy ****balls, is this a DUDE sighting? We've missed ya, man!

Dude said:

I sent it to you--I hope you can use it.

I mainly just used it as a tool to help me keep good notes. I print one off on brewday and annotate any changes I make, and write down notes as I go along. Then I can keep track of what I did wrong, LOL.

Click to expand...

Would you mind sending me a link to your spreadsheet? Thank you.