Brew Timer for Android

I am downloading it now. Can't believe I just heard of it.

I definitely want an AG timing mode. :rockin:

I'm in the middle of a brew and I can't figure out how to get the alarm to shut off and keep timing to the next event in my boil! Isn't there a alarm cancel button or something???

Opening the notification bar at the top of your screen will cancel the persistent alarm. If you don't want persistent alarms at all there is an option in the preference menu to turn them off. Hope your brew is going well!

Adam

Yep, I figured it out! Just have to open up the notification drop down window on my Mesmerize. I made it through the boil with 3 hop additions, worked great!

Glad to hear it worked well for you. I would love to hear your opinions on how it works and if the interface make sense. Always looking for input to make it work better.

Adam

I really like this timer. It worked flawlessly through this last batch, my only trouble was getting the alarm turned off. Once that was behind me it worked fine. I setup timers for my boil w/ hop additions, a separate one for my mash, another for my mash out, and one more for my aeration.

Now if I just had an app that would show my Beersmith brewsheets everything would be perfect!

just downloaded and will put to use tomorrow. thanks!

humanjoe said:

Glad to hear it worked well for you. I would love to hear your opinions on how it works and if the interface make sense. Always looking for input to make it work better.

Adam

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I will be using it again tomorrow (newest release this time) - I'll be sure to leave a review in the Android Market

Jaysus said:

I will be using it again tomorrow (newest release this time) - I'll be sure to leave a review in the Android Market

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Thanks!!

I am using it right now for my mash... I love being able to pick my alert sounds.

humanjoe said:

Now, on to the topic at hand, so what do you guys want me working next? From previous posts it seems there s a desire for an All-Grain timing mode. Is that still a desire? Is there anything else out there people want to see?
Adam

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I am sure it is completely unnecessary, but I would love to see a home screen of some sort. Something simple that shows icons for the current menu items. It's really just a personal preference of mine, but I suppose it is something to consider.

The app looks promising, and I'm going to use it the first time tomorrow. I'll post about how it goes.

Edit: Downloaded and created the schedule I'll be using tomorrow, and I really like it so far. I like being able to add whatever I want. The interface is easy to understand and use.

Suggestion: How about adding another category of timer for the mash? It seems easy enough to adapt the boil schedule to use for a simple infusion mash, which is what I'm going to try.

solavirtus said:

Suggestion: How about adding another category of timer for the mash? It seems easy enough to adapt the boil schedule to use for a simple infusion mash, which is what I'm going to try.

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Thanks for giving my app a try!!!

I was thinking about this. There several ways I could go with the layout and design. What do people think? Do you want a different "mode" it goes into for mash schedule? Or something different? I would love to hear your ideas. I'm working on an idea right now but still in the design phase.

Adam

I just added another profile for each timer I needed; mash, mashout and aeration. But having a different timer mode that doesn't have the 'MTB', 'MTS, and 'MTE' would be good. What the alarm says at the end of the event could be linked to the profile name, instead of "Boil Complete", "The Boil has ended"?

MTS.. minutes to steep, what is that for? I don't know of anyone steeping their boil?

Thanks for the great timer! I'm going to use it again tomorrow on a Rye IPA.

The minutes to steep (MTS) is used for spices or anything else you want to sit the the wort after the boil ends. A lot of my spiced beers call for cinnamon or something like that to be dropped in when the boil is over and then to steep it for 5, 10 minutes, etc. Some fruits I've added I'll drop in the boil with 1 minute or so remaining and then I'll let it steep an additional 5-15 minutes or so. Does that make sense?

Adam

humanjoe said:

The minutes to steep (MTS) is used for spices or anything else you want to sit the the wort after the boil ends. A lot of my spiced beers call for cinnamon or something like that to be dropped in when the boil is over and then to steep it for 5, 10 minutes, etc. Some fruits I've added I'll drop in the boil with 1 minute or so remaining and then I'll let it steep an additional 5-15 minutes or so. Does that make sense?

Adam

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That makes perfect sense Adam. I can see how it would be beneficial to someone that adds spices, etc.

Alright, so my update after by brew session today:
The app worked really well. Hands down the best brew timer I've used. I"ll definitely be using it again next brew day.

The only negative thing I can say is that it's a little odd that it makes a bunch of notifications instead of just one when an event comes up. That's really minor, but I thought it might be useful. It would make more sense to have single notification in the pulldown menu, with a repeating sound.

As far as a mash schedule timer, I would think something similar to the boil timer would work pretty well. The only thing is that during a mash, there are a lot of different methods that don't take predetermined times (a decoction step which depends on equipment, or a fly sparge that might go fast or slow depending). In that way, it might a little tough...

Had to stop using this timer and go back to my laptop and Brewery Timer.

Had a mash timing with a step time for my flame on to get my sparge water up to temp. I didn't get an alarm at the step and missed that by 5 minutes (good thing I was watching the time). Then at the end of the mash time there was no alarm and the icon in the notification window just went away at the end. All my alarm volumes were good.

I've had problems with mine too lately ever since the last update...it freezes, missed addition times...idk what happened... this did rock

Hmmm did you get crashes? Or did it just not fire off an alarm? Is it the most recent version (0.9.45)? I haven't seen any behavior like that. If you don't mind could you give me an idea what your profile was like and what had happened during the session.

Thanks and I'll start figuring this out ASAP.

Adam

Oh, that reminds me, I don't think I got an alarm for the end of the boil when I used it. My profile was pretty simple, about 4 events for adding hops, irish moss, chiller, etc. It was a 100 minute boil time. I was watching it at the end anyway, so it didn't cause any problems.

So I thought about this on my drive home from Maine tonight. A couple of things to check on to see if they could be causing these symptoms. First, if an alarm is going off in Brew Timer and another notification is fired (gmail, Twitter, etc.) the Brew Timer notification sound is ended automatically. This is the way the Android OS works. I've had an alarm go off in my testing and then an email came in a second later and killed the Brew Timer notification so I ended up never hearing it. The second thing is that if you are talking on the phone it seems Android represses the notification sounds. I'm not 100% sure on this one but my testing has shown it to be true.

Now if the first reason above is what's going on then it's not necessarily a bug but rather a scenario that I need to think out more. One idea I have is to have dialog that pops up for each notification. This dialog will keep updating the notification (every 10 seconds or so) until you dismiss it with the ok button. That way if an email does cancel the notification sound then within a few seconds it should be restarted. This will continue until you acknowledge the event.

Im really sorry that you guys ran into this issue. I really have enjoyed writting this app and it ticks me off when there's a problem that could screw up your brew day. Thanks a lot for reporting this to me. I'll get on this and try to figure out what is going on. If you guys could please give me as much information as possible on what was happening when you noticed something was amiss that would be fantastic.

BTW, for the notification that didn't make any sound, did you confirm that the notifications had gome off and was in the notification window?

Thanks again,

Adam

mine was freezing...it just wouldn't start the boil timer...or I'd get no alarm. if look at it and it would just continue on to the next event as if nothing was happening.

like I said this is just with the new addition...I had no problems before...

solavirtus said:

it's a little odd that it makes a bunch of notifications instead of just one when an event comes up.

Click to expand...

now that you mention it, I recall that happening to me for one of my alarms during my last brewday. I had been messing with the settings mid brew (specifically the single vs continuous alert option), after I noticed the multiple notification icons, i set the alerts back to how they were, and it did not reoccur.

I had either 5 or 6 entries on the schedule I used. I just wrote it off as a fluke at the time.

solavirtus said:

The only negative thing I can say is that it's a little odd that it makes a bunch of notifications instead of just one when an event comes up. That's really minor, but I thought it might be useful. It would make more sense to have single notification in the pulldown menu, with a repeating sound.

Click to expand...

Jaysus said:

now that you mention it, I recall that happening to me for one of my alarms during my last brewday. I had been messing with the settings mid brew (specifically the single vs continuous alert option), after I noticed the multiple notification icons, i set the alerts back to how they were, and it did not reoccur. I had either 5 or 6 entries on the schedule I used. I just wrote it off as a fluke at the time.

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So when you guys say there are multiple notifications do you mean if you had an event like “Aroma Hops” that there would be 5 or 6 entries for “Aroma Hops” in the Notification Menu? If that is so, I have seen that before in my testing but was never able to reproduce it. I thought it might be something related to my testing but it seems like it might be something more. Does it affect the results at all or is it just an inconvenience?

Bitterbrush said:

Had a mash timing with a step time for my flame on to get my sparge water up to temp. I didn't get an alarm at the step and missed that by 5 minutes (good thing I was watching the time). Then at the end of the mash time there was no alarm and the icon in the notification window just went away at the end. All my alarm volumes were good.

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Just because I want to make sure I’m addressing everyone’s concerns I want to make sure I get the information on what is happening. So it seemed like all the events happened on time but the event sounds weren’t playing?

hadabar said:

I've had problems with mine too lately ever since the last update...it freezes, missed addition times...idk what happened... this did rock

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hadabar said:

mine was freezing...it just wouldn't start the boil timer...or I'd get no alarm. if look at it and it would just continue on to the next event as if nothing was happening.

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This is the one that bothers me. I have never seen any freezes at all in my testing. Can you tell me what phone you use? What version of Android is running on it? Does it come back after a freeze? If you could give me a description of what was happening during the freeze I’ll try to replicate it.

On a side note, if you guys are seeing any crashes you can enable the crash reporting in the App’s options. When a crash happens it sends a me a report that was the trace of what the app was doing, your Android version and phone model. If information can help me figure out exactly where the app crashed and fix it.

All my events were timing down and ending OK but I was not getting any alarms. There was only one icon in my notification window and that was for the brew timer. When the event ended it did not add another icon to the notification window and sound an alarm like it did the first time I used it, before the update. When the event ended it just went on to the next like it should. When the timer was finished it didn't alarm and the icon in the notification window disappeared.

well I'm using a samsung captivate...

I would start my boil timer and it does its count down letting you know it is beginning...it would start...if look a few min later and its back at 60 and no buttons work on it...this hadn't happened every time just 2. I do run app killer. could that do something? I have it setup not to auto kill..

I have just 4 additions staggered though out the boil nothing crazy...

I don't want you to stress too hard...I'm not mad at you.

btw...

i897UJH7 -base band version

2.1 - update 1, firm ware version

humanjoe said:

So when you guys say there are multiple notifications do you mean if you had an event like “Aroma Hops” that there would be 5 or 6 entries for “Aroma Hops” in the Notification Menu? If that is so, I have seen that before in my testing but was never able to reproduce it. I thought it might be something related to my testing but it seems like it might be something more. Does it affect the results at all or is it just an inconvenience?

Click to expand...

For me, it was as you described here. There would be 5 or 6 entries in the notification menu. No problems caused, just a minor inconvenience. It definitely won't stop me from using the app again.

I really appreciate the work you seem to be putting into this!

Bitterbrush said:

All my events were timing down and ending OK but I was not getting any alarms. There was only one icon in my notification window and that was for the brew timer. When the event ended it did not add another icon to the notification window and sound an alarm like it did the first time I used it, before the update. When the event ended it just went on to the next like it should. When the timer was finished it didn't alarm and the icon in the notification window disappeared.

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Does it do this every time you use it? Have you tried to create a new profile to see if it still happens?

hadabar said:

well I'm using a samsung captivate...
I would start my boil timer and it does its count down letting you know it is beginning...it would start...if look a few min later and its back at 60 and no buttons work on it...this hadn't happened every time just 2. I do run app killer. could that do something? I have it setup not to auto kill..

Click to expand...

Was the App Killer set up to not kill it the 2 times it happened? I could see the App Killer causing some problems. The Brew Timer is meant to stay as real time as possible since it’s a timer. Killing it mid process could cause issues. I’ll get some of the stats on the Captivate and see if I can set up an emulator to replicate the problem. I’ll also see what happens if I hit it with an app killer..

hadabar said:

I have just 4 additions staggered though out the boil nothing crazy...
I don't want you to stress too hard...I'm not mad at you.

Click to expand...

Not stressed (much) I just to make sure this thing is running right for you guys.

solavirtus said:

For me, it was as you described here. There would be 5 or 6 entries in the notification menu. No problems caused, just a minor inconvenience. It definitely won't stop me from using the app again.
I really appreciate the work you seem to be putting into this!

Click to expand...

I have seen that before. I’ll start trying to figure this one out.

Thanks again guys,
Adam

it runs always but I always allow it to bypass the brew timer....

would it cancel notifications too?

humanjoe said:

Does it do this every time you use it? Have you tried to create a new profile to see if it still happens?


Thanks again guys,
Adam

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I just made a test profile with one event and the alarms worked perfectly. I don't know?? I appreciate all your work on this Adam, just not sure if I can trust it.. I want to use it but man I was frustrated when the alarms didn't go off with the mash yesterday. I had to run in the house and get the laptop and quickly setup the timer on it before my boil started.. I don't think I even cussed.

hadabar said:

it runs always but I always allow it to bypass the brew timer....

would it cancel notifications too?

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The App Killer should not cancel notifications. Which App Killer do you use? Can you shut the App Killer down down and see if Brew Timer is affected without it running?

Bitterbrush said:

I just made a test profile with one event and the alarms worked perfectly. I don't know?? I appreciate all your work on this Adam, just not sure if I can trust it.. I want to use it but man I was frustrated when the alarms didn't go off with the mash yesterday. I had to run in the house and get the laptop and quickly setup the timer on it before my boil started.. I don't think I even cussed.

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I'm sorry for the problems, I understand completely. I've been running tests and still haven't been able to replicate what you're seeing. I'll keep cracking on it and hopefully will find out what is going on.

I used the timer for the first time on a new phone (Droid X2) and ran into some problems. The timer process would stop without any way to tell. I would open the app and notice that the timer had stopped. I could restart it, but after a time, it would do the same thing again.

Still a good app, just need to figure out how to keep it running.

solavirtus said:

I used the timer for the first time on a new phone (Droid X2) and ran into some problems. The timer process would stop without any way to tell. I would open the app and notice that the timer had stopped. I could restart it, but after a time, it would do the same thing again.

Still a good app, just need to figure out how to keep it running.

Click to expand...

Interesting. What version of Android are you using? When the timer is stopped, do the timers still go off? Do you have any app killer applications running? What other applications are you using at the time? I have a crazy work schedule for the next couple of weeks, I'll try to set up a test once I know your OS version. Thanks for the feedback, I'm hoping to start adding a mash mode this fall and some other features.

Adam

Version: 2.2.2
When the timer was stopped, there were no alerts. During the times the timers were active, the alerts worked fine. I don't have any app killers. At the same time, I might have also been using the web browser, Handcent SMS, maybe a brewing calculator app like Brewzor.

I'm looking forward to some of those additional features!

Wow, it's been way to long since I updated this app. Been a whirlwind couple of years with my twins, moving, etc but I'm settled now and have some time to work on this (and to brew! Got a Foreign Extra Stout in the fermenter now.). I just posted a new version of the app to the Google Play Store (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brewtimer&hl=en). The new features for the Brew Timer are:

- Added feature (fixed bug!) so the alarms sounds while on a phone call. Previously, since notifications are ignored while on a call the phone wouldn't alert you. Now I read your phone state when an event is triggered and if your phone is not idle I send to alarm to the audio player so the alarm can be heard.
- Added ability to change the font size of the events and button text. When I released this app Android Tablets were few a far between. With the advent of tablets and higher resolution smartphone screens I needed to do something to make things easier to read.
- Optimized the landscape UI layout. Changed around how the screen is used so things fit better while in landscape mode.
- Cleaned up the UI a bit.
- Fixed several small bugs.

As always, I'm interested in what you think and any bugs, features, additions you'd like to see. This is a free app and I am not going to put ads into it. It's just a labor of love because I needed a better timer for myself while brewing.

Give it a shot and tell me what you think!

EDIT: Forgot to mention that my next update (other then any bugs that are found) is the ability to import a recipe from BeerSmith into Brew Timer so you do not need to enter all the information by hand.

Thanks,

Adam

Looks like I picked a good day to join this forum researching software and mobile apps to help with brewing. App looks good and helps my decision to go with BeerSmith knowing I will be able to transfer recipes in the future. Thanks!

I am still using this app every time I brew!

Jaysus said:

I am still using this app every time I brew!

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Great to hear! I'm hoping everything is working well. If you have any ideas for future updates, etc. drop me a line.

Adam

I have been using this app since Feb 2011 and have recommend it to all my friends.

One feature I have always wanted to see was a "Mash Timer Mode"

We typically think of the boil as a single long process with events happening at specific time remaining. Where as we think of the mash as a series of different steps.

The mash mode would change the concurrent timers to consecutive timers. Each time wouldn't run at the same time but instead trigger the next one to start.

Great app keep up the good work.

FDillon00 said:

One feature I have always wanted to see was a "Mash Timer Mode"

We typically think of the boil as a single long process with events happening at specific time remaining. Where as we think of the mash as a series of different steps.

The mash mode would change the concurrent timers to consecutive timers. Each time wouldn't run at the same time but instead trigger the next one to start.

Click to expand...

I was thinking about a mash timer just last weekend as I was watching my mash sit. I think that is something I would love to add after the import. Need to start thinking about how to integrate it into current tool without disrupting things too much.

Thanks