Homebrew Excel Sheet/Software

Hi. I wanted to share with you a sheet that I created that is truly unique when it comes to brew sheets. It's 100% free to use and I just want some feedback on how to improve it.

http://www.homebrewhedonist.com/software/

Let me know what you think.

I gave this software a try yesterday, and it is really slick. Do you have a timeline for addressing the issues raised in r/homebrewing with an updated version?

I have to go through them all to see which I will tackle first. Some of them are going to be really easy fixes, and I've already addressed a few.

The ones that may take a few days is adding new ingredients because of the auto-complete feature that I created for the drop-downs, and also, I have to figure out how to create a message box that has fields you can input into.

I was very grateful for the feedback I received, and the positive encouragement.

Beaudoin said:

Hi. I wanted to share with you a sheet that I created that is truly unique when it comes to brew sheets. It's 100% free to use and I just want some feedback on how to improve it.

http://www.homebrewhedonist.com/software/

Let me know what you think.

Click to expand...

what is truly unique about it?

i have been using pro mash but I will give this a try.. just downloaded it

really really wish it was in the english system.. I wont even attempt to use this at this point due to that
Looks kinda cool otherwise though

Leblais said:

really really wish it was in the english system.. I wont even attempt to use this at this point due to that
Looks kinda cool otherwise though

Click to expand...

I originally created this sheet for my own use. It was only last week that I decided to share it.

I'll give some thought about making a toggle button but this won't be easy. There are instant conversion areas everywhere to show you what the units are in the old English system. So it's do-able.

Yeah... It wasnt a judgement. I mean you did a great job and you took a ton of time (im sure) to do it, so KUDOS and thanks. Just thinking that if it doesnt make my life easier , i prob wont switch.

Leblais said:

Yeah... It wasnt a judgement. I mean you did a great job and you took a ton of time (im sure) to do it, so KUDOS and thanks. Just thinking that if it doesnt make my life easier , i prob wont switch.

Click to expand...

No offence taken.

I was thinking about this and I figured out a relatively easy way to do this, so I will certainly do a toggle to enable English units. I know that the US is a huge majority when it comes to clients, and I'm certainly willing to accommodate.

Ok... Let me know when u have it worked out and IL give u my honest opinions

First off- Impressive, thank you. Truly a wealth of info!

So I added my go to Saison Recipe Bucket 7 but for some reason your FG has it at 1.012 with 3711 I usually find it finishes at 1.005, I then noticed your attenuation numbers are different than Wyeast (Attenuation: 77-83%) so I went to adjust it and found your pages are password protected could you unlock them or make more fields editable like hops AA, adding new yeasts and such?

Beaudoin said:

I'll give some thought about making a toggle button but this won't be easy.

Click to expand...

Actually it is quite easy assuming you used Excel. The quick but sloppy way is to have a cell at the top of the sheet and instruct "enter 0 for metric, 1 for english". You then change any cell which displays a result to, for example,

=if(a0 = 0, sum(b1:b7), 2.2*sum(b1:b7))

assuming a0 is the signal cell and cells b1 through b7 contain weights in kg. The spiffier way is to have a check box or radio button which puts a 1 or 0 in the signal cell according as to whether the user selects it or not. This is done through the Developer tab.

dbals said:

First off- Impressive, thank you. Truly a wealth of info!

So I added my go to Saison Recipe Bucket 7 but for some reason your FG has it at 1.012 with 3711 I usually find it finishes at 1.005, I then noticed your attenuation numbers are different than Wyeast (Attenuation: 77-83%) so I went to adjust it and found your pages are password protected could you unlock them or make more fields editable like hops AA, adding new yeasts and such?

Click to expand...

Thanks. I'm out of town for the weekend, but I plan on doing a major update this coming week. I'll add yeast editing to the mix of things to do so that you can edit yeast attenuation. Keep the feedback coming because if you notice that something is not right , I need to know so that I can make a fix. This is a good example of that.

ajdelange said:

Actually it is quite easy assuming you used Excel. The quick but sloppy way is to have a cell at the top of the sheet and instruct "enter 0 for metric, 1 for english". You then change any cell which displays a result to, for example,

=if(a0 = 0, sum(b1:b7), 2.2*sum(b1:b7))

assuming a0 is the signal cell and cells b1 through b7 contain weights in kg. The spiffier way is to have a check box or radio button which puts a 1 or 0 in the signal cell according as to whether the user selects it or not. This is done through the Developer tab.

Click to expand...

Yes. I thought of this but my real problem is that I save everything in metric so if a user is imputing data in US units, I'll have to translate that on the code too. Not a big deal but something I have to think about.

Could you add Kai Troester's yeast calculator? http://braukaiser.com/blog/blog/2012/11/03/estimating-yeast-growth/

dbals said:

Could you add Kai Troester's yeast calculator? http://braukaiser.com/blog/blog/2012/11/03/estimating-yeast-growth/

Click to expand...

Good idea. I put a lot of work studying yeast. I'll do this at some point.

does it Do metric conversion

Beaudoin said:

Good idea. I put a lot of work studying yeast. I'll do this at some point.

Click to expand...

The reason I bring this up is that his calculator is closer to the actual counts I get with my hemocytometer when compared to other calcs out of the bunch.

Thanks,
Daniel

I think this is really cool. I think what you can do that Beer Smith doesn't is a true brew log. I have a spreadsheet where it lists the brew I did, the brew date, racking date, bottling date, est OG, measured OG, est FG, measured FG, est ABV, measured ABV and cap label. There is another homebrewer that gave me the idea of that kind of brew log, so I know there are people that would like it.

How about a partygyle calc?

It looks really informative but appears to be for all grains and I'm still into extracts. Once I get into all grains I'll be sure and test it out

Yes. This is true. But I released a new version a few days ago where you can add your own ingredients. Give it a try.

Finally got around to taking a look. Good calculations, seems accurate from what I played with.

Some comments:

Mash Performance has a graph of attenuation vs time, I'm pretty sure that's supposed to show conversion (%) vs time (min) but could be wrong, I didn't look at the source data too carefully. Where did you get the data for this, as many brewers see complete conversion much earlier depending on mash methods and grain crush?

Mash Performance has a graph of Attenuation vs Temp, again x-axis doesn't have a unit. The graph doesn't really have any details, what exactly is this supposed to show?

Volumes: Why is it still showing a sparge/add water volume when I have plenty of room in the kettle still for the example mash? Volumes seem a little off still. Why don't you do temp correction for thermal expansion, it's a pretty simple equation in comparison to the others you have in place? I'd suggest reordering the calculated data section, as it reading it out of order is slightly off putting. For yeast degredation I assume that's supposed to be per month, not per day.

Calculations: I would combine the real extract, alcohol, and refractometer calculations into one. No point in having three places to enter the same information;OG, FG (hydrometer) or FG (refractometer) and output the "real extract" ABV, and true FG.

The thing I was most looking forward to seeing data on was the yeast attenuation vs time, which appears to be missing and a miss labelled graph of mash conversion vs time. Being able to predict fermentation schedule would've been amazing, but appears to not be there. Perhaps over time the brewbug users will be able to provide such a database based on temp, yeast strain, yeast cell count, and OG.

I downloaded & tried opening the SS with OpenOffice, all it does is hang the program when loading the SS. I have tried several times, no go. Will this only work with MS Office, or am I just missing something??

EDIT: Found out that .xlsm is not compatible with Openoffice. So I opened the file on another computer with MS Office, tried to save in .ods format, MS Office said: "the workbook is password protected", other formats would not work either (too outdated). I have tried to find a converter, no luck there either. It looks like a great tool for brewing, but I'm unable to use it with Openoffice. If you ever get it in .ods format let me know...

Yes. You are right EJM3. Unfortunately, it's not backward compatible, and unfortunately, it won't save to other formats and still work the same way. There are some pretty hefty functionality going on in there that just doesn't translate well to other formats or previous versions.

I know that this is a severe limitation. I tried to create this in Google Sheets so that everyone could access it but GS is much less functional than Excel is. GS wouldn't save the formatting correctly and kept reverting to a previous state. It got annoying and I couldn't continue.

Google has recently updated their online spreadsheet software and I'm going to have a look at it. Already I've noticed that it doesn't do dynamic range naming which is a real bummer, and a severe limitation that I'd have to work around. The way that Excel 2010 deals with named ranges is a very significant improvement over previous versions and I'm able to do so much more with that functionality.

.xlsm files indicate there are macros in the Excel file. And those don't convert to generic "Office" apps (Open Office etc.,).

I agree that functionality of Google Sheets is way less than Excel. The "named and protected ranges" in G-sheets are just a sad joke. Now for many (most) people Google docs are just fine, and it's easy to share or collaborate. But for the expert there's little that beats native Excel.

My biggest peeve with Excel (and M$ apps in general) is that stupid Ribbon Bar. I wish it died a fast death. Or give us power users the option to activate the old-fashioned menu bar with its (ever so retro) drop-downs instead. Once you get past Excel's basic use, no-one needs a Ribbon bar, that's just for dummies and people who have time on their hands doing nothing productive, 99% of the workforce from what it seems.

I doubt porting to M$ Cloud will retain the Excel functionality either. I tried it out and got very frustrated with the interface, and bailed soon after.

For example, I run our DC Area Group Grain Buy on Google sheets and it's a mixed blessing. No way would I open it up for everyone to place and edit their orders, although manageable protected ranges could make that possible. But I've been able to build in enough functionality to keep things organized, and give an overview for everyone participating to see what's ordered and what's due.

This looks really nice. I just downloaded it and it looks awesome. I'll take it for a spin later.

New Version (1.4) is now up.

I just finished a major upgrade to the sheet. These upgrades include the following:

• You can now export and import your recipes to support future upgrades. You won't have to tediously input all of your recipes from a previous version. Unfortunately, however, this is not backward compatible, and it will only work from this version onward;
  
• Supports selecting between Celcius and Fehrenheit;
  
• When using U.S. Customary units, you can select which unit you want as your small unit. I've noticed that some people, although using U.S. Customary units, will use grams for very small amounts. But, you can always default to the U.S. grains / minims (as is the proper small units), or even drams if you're so inclined. I've never actually heard of these before embarking on this project so I wasn't sure if Americans actually used these themselves;
  
• Supports selecting between SRM or EBC colour system. This is to acknowledge all the European users out there;
  
• The volumes now account for thermal expansion. Although the amounts will be minimal, it's for all of you hard-core purists;
  
• You can now calculate your evaporation rate or simply input one. The evaporation rate depends a great deal on the amount of heat that your heat source produces and the efficiency that transmits into your kettle;
  
• Hop uses now support First Wort and various types of Hop Rest (and the accompanying bittering values to go with it).