SailorTodd
Well-Known Member
How do all of you keep notes? How detailed are the notes? Are they electronic or on paper?
When I started brewing I got a notebook to keep my beer recipes and notes in, also using beersmith for recipe building (but just that). It worked well for a while; I got a handful of recipes in there. I was being more meticulous than I care to about keeping the format for my recipes and notes the same, so as to maintain some level of uniformity and repeatability. I think that was my downfall, though. I stopped using the notebook, and my last year and a half, the only aspect of my beer recipes is the bare bones recipes in Beersmith. I don't back fill with tasting notes or impressions during bottling/kegging, don't note any anomalies that may have happened during brew day. It was kind of the intention I had of the notebook to do that, but I think I was keeping a more rigid format than my scatterbrained self could handle.
I need a better system, but writing down my impression about the beer is the last thing I think about when cracking open that first bottle of a batch (or pouring the first draw from a keg...). Maybe I'll go back to the notebook in a more free form way, letting beersmith keep the rigid recipe format while the notebook is just tasting impressions, unique events during brewing or fermentation, etc.
When I started brewing I got a notebook to keep my beer recipes and notes in, also using beersmith for recipe building (but just that). It worked well for a while; I got a handful of recipes in there. I was being more meticulous than I care to about keeping the format for my recipes and notes the same, so as to maintain some level of uniformity and repeatability. I think that was my downfall, though. I stopped using the notebook, and my last year and a half, the only aspect of my beer recipes is the bare bones recipes in Beersmith. I don't back fill with tasting notes or impressions during bottling/kegging, don't note any anomalies that may have happened during brew day. It was kind of the intention I had of the notebook to do that, but I think I was keeping a more rigid format than my scatterbrained self could handle.
I need a better system, but writing down my impression about the beer is the last thing I think about when cracking open that first bottle of a batch (or pouring the first draw from a keg...). Maybe I'll go back to the notebook in a more free form way, letting beersmith keep the rigid recipe format while the notebook is just tasting impressions, unique events during brewing or fermentation, etc.