Web Application for Brewing and Wine Making

I'm interested in developing a web application for brewing and wine making. I've got some basic things done already, but would like to know
What main features do the "pros" think are missing in home brew applications?
What would make you more likely to use a computer program to augment your brewing or wine making?

I intend to give public access to the application free of charge, maybe with a premium membership feature just to balance out some of the maintenance costs.

Also, I'm looking for people who are willing to take what I have for a spin and provide feedback; I would like to have a closed alpha release for some basic functionality/organization feedback. Let me know in this thread if you're interested.

Last, I've found way too many formulas that contradict eachother. Where can I find the most correct formulas for conversions and calculations related to brewing?

First, this should be in the brewing software section of the forum...

One thing that most of the existing free to use brewing software lacks is inventory management. I should be able to have my inventory of ingredients and if I pull up one of my recipes I should get a notice of what I don't have available. When I brew a recipe the software should deduct the ingredients used from the inventory. Bonus points if I can schedule several brews in the future and it alerts me to inventory shortages on those future brews.

Edit: It goes without saying that there are a lot of competitors in this space. Brewblogger and Beer Calculus on the web and many stand alone applications. Few of them have any wine specific things though so that might be something to emphasize in your app. Of course that might be because I don't really do wine so I just might not be aware of that great wine making software.

I'm sorry! I figured since this is a DIY project I was to throw it there... forgot about the separate forum. Do with this thread as mods see fit!

camiller: Thanks for those points. I'll be certain that they're incorporated! What would you think about it automatically recommending recipes to brew given a set of ingredients available?

Brewblogger is great, but it isn't a hosted solution -- it's not friendly to people who have little technical knowledge. My goal is build something that people could use easily, even without a computer (mobile-device only).

Beer Calculus is a very, very well put together utility. But it isn't an entire system. It's fantastic for what it is, but not the same sort of tool as I'm developing.

Thanks for the reply!

211 said:

I'm sorry! I figured since this is a DIY project I was to throw it there... forgot about the separate forum. Do with this thread as mods see fit!

camiller: Thanks for those points. I'll be certain that they're incorporated! What would you think about it automatically recommending recipes to brew given a set of ingredients available?

Brewblogger is great, but it isn't a hosted solution -- it's not friendly to people who have little technical knowledge. My goal is build something that people could use easily, even without a computer (mobile-device only).

Beer Calculus is a very, very well put together utility. But it isn't an entire system. It's fantastic for what it is, but not the same sort of tool as I'm developing.

Thanks for the reply!

Click to expand...

Yep, recommending recipes I have the ingredients for would be a great option.

Being able to access from a smart phone would be great.

Think about your "use cases". Here are a few to get started.

1. Recipe Creation

Personally (unless I'm stuck in line at the DMV) I am unlikely to do this from my phone. I might tweak an existing recipe but not do one from scratch. So in this case a PC interface would be best.

2. Recipe tweaking

If I am at the LHBS and they are out of a particular specialty grain I might want to tweak a recipe on a mobile device to gauge the impact.

3. Brewday Log

Would like to be able to manage brewday events and make notes from a mobile device. Bonus points if you incorporate timers for events to occur during mash/boil. Since I usually do two brews on brewday I'd like to have two (or more) sets of timers.

4. Adding ingredients to the ingredient databases.

Again something I'm not likely to do on a mobile platform since I will be researching the specifics. For example, when a new yeast strain comes out I typically add its specifics to the yeast database of the software I currently use to keep track of recipes.

camiller said:

Yep, recommending recipes I have the ingredients for would be a great option.

Click to expand...

Sounds good! I have a project for this weekend! Gotta classify each recipe by style and style by categories (bitterness, alcohol content, color, etc) to provide for "similar" recipe recommendations too!

camiller said:

Being able to access from a smart phone would be great.

Click to expand...

Right now I've got everything iPhone and android friendly with the browser, maybe apps will come later.

camiller said:

Personally (unless I'm stuck in line at the DMV) I am unlikely to do this from my phone. I might tweak an existing recipe but not do one from scratch. So in this case a PC interface would be best.

Click to expand...

Everything is all web-browser based, with different interfaces for mobile vs desktop. As such, it is accessible both ways. I totally agree, but some don't have internet at home or might go to the DMV every now and again

camiller said:

If I am at the LHBS and they are out of a particular specialty grain I might want to tweak a recipe on a mobile device to gauge the impact.

Click to expand...

Once again sounds like the backbone of this will be recommendation based on categorizing/tagging information and analyzing previous actions. Definitely an ongoing task.

camiller said:

Would like to be able to manage brewday events and make notes from a mobile device. Bonus points if you incorporate timers for events to occur during mash/boil. Since I usually do two brews on brewday I'd like to have two (or more) sets of timers.

Click to expand...

I actually already have the core for this implemented. This is something that'll be fine tuned though, it isn't pretty yet.

camiller said:

When a new yeast strain comes out I typically add its specifics to the yeast database of the software I currently use to keep track of recipes.

Click to expand...

Right now it's setup so that users make their beverages (wine and beer) under "associations." Each association has a shared set of data; by default, when you create new information, you have the option to submit it to the global database; that way, when something new comes out and people like you add it, you can submit it to the DB and it'll be available to everyone (pending admin review, of course).

Right now I'm just going to focus on beer. I have about 3 brewing books in the mail, I'm really new when it comes to this. Hopefully after reading these I'll get a few new ideas.

Cheers and thanks for your input!

this is very interesting as i do a lot from my droid being able to tweak recipes while at lhbs would be a great feature. im not very good at figuring out my own mash schedules so something that helps with taht wold be awesome. being browser based this would work with mac correct? thats my ony gripe with the current brew software is i havent found a decent one tat works on mac.

Something else that would be awesome is providing realistic final gravities based on mashing schedules. I don't know how feasible this is, or how consistent it would be, but it is definitely something that is lacking in current brewing softwares.

For what it's worth, I was actually just debating writing some web tools in PHP a few weeks ago, so if you are looking for any help let me know. I haven't put a whole ton of thought into it yet, was just an idea I've been playing around with as a new programming project, but if I have any ideas too I'll toss them your way.

devilishprune said:

Something else that would be awesome is providing realistic final gravities based on mashing schedules. I don't know how feasible this is, or how consistent it would be, but it is definitely something that is lacking in current brewing softwares.

Click to expand...

Definitely something that will be incorporated. As more data is collected, it will become more accurate; it's just something that'll depend on the numbers behind the algorithms. Consistency theoretically will be good; if the system provides good instructions on how to brew it, and the user provides input on the result, then that data can be used to drive predictions for that recipe/ingredient list.

worstbrewing said:

For what it's worth, I was actually just debating writing some web tools in PHP a few weeks ago, so if you are looking for any help let me know. I haven't put a whole ton of thought into it yet, was just an idea I've been playing around with as a new programming project, but if I have any ideas too I'll toss them your way.

Click to expand...

Sounds great, shoot me your e-mail address in a PM. It's your lucky day, I'm using PHP and CodeIgniter.

masterchief1112 said:

this is very interesting as i do a lot from my droid being able to tweak recipes while at lhbs would be a great feature. im not very good at figuring out my own mash schedules so something that helps with taht wold be awesome. being browser based this would work with mac correct? thats my ony gripe with the current brew software is i havent found a decent one tat works on mac.

Click to expand...

Sounds good re the droid, thats what I've been primarily testing the interface on for mobile devices. Since it's a web application, it's definitely mac friendly. I'm primarily using Linux, so this will definitely be a versatile "come-as-you-are" app that will work on anything that can go to a website.

I'm slowing my pace down on this, as I've realized that I don't know enough about this yet to get a good enough product. I have 4 brewing books coming the mail tomorrow, so over the next week I have a lot of reading to do! All of your input is helping a lot, so anything else you guys can think of please keep it coming! Hopefully here in two weeks or so we'll have a base product for a few people to play with (definitely wont have all of the data yet, I was trying to import yeast information to the DB last night and there is a whole lot more than I expected!).

Your assignment: tell me what brands of brewing supplies you use. I mean anything from Rubbermaid for coolers to White Labs for yeast. Anything you use in brewing, tell me the product's brand and category of their products offered.

Last, I'll need some people here in a few days to do just that: data entry. Is there anyone specifically interested in helping build a database? I'm not going to use any pre-existing ones because I don't like how most of them are organized (their full of too much junk).

Hope everyone has a good friday! Look for a development blog coming tomorrow morning.

Did this ever get going? I'm still looking for a decent program or app to help me manage and document my brewing (wine, mead and beer)

I use brewtility. It's not a bad tool as a storage database for recipes. There havent been any changes in a while but if there are motivated devs here, maybe community participation can help.