Homebrew Recipe Planner/Tasting Journal

[jonpack]

Hey all!

Long time lurker, finally decided to take the dive and become a member. After getting a handful of brews under my belt, I had an idea and wanted to run it past some folks for some feedback.

When I'm not brewing, my actual job is UX design for a web design/marketing firm, which basically means I spend my days creating flowcharts, wireframes and interactive prototypes for web projects. Wanting to combine my love for UX and beer, I was considering designing a nice, sleek homebrew recipe planner, and tasting journal. I won't get into an incredible amount of detail, ( although I seriously have a flowchart of 50+ things I want to include) but it would allow you to record your steps, ingredients, tasting notes, efficiency, conversion/formula guides, etc. for each recipe, along with a separate section for just jotting down your personal reviews of beers you taste.

I'm considering going through Kickstarter for this project, as I have quite a bit of experience managing campaigns for other people. This is very much in the planning stages, but I wanted everyone's opinion: would you be interested in something like this? I know we all live and breathe by spreadsheets and BeerSmith for recipe creation, but would a sleek, well designed recipe book/brew notebook interest you?

Thanks for the input!

 

[blakelyc]

Most. Definitely. I use ibrewmaster2 for recipe planning, but I very much enjoy pen-and-paper. My favorite thing so far is a small passport-sized tasting journal that I got with a beer-of-the-month club. I liked the form factor, and it was thin and somewhat discrete.

What I didn't like was that it was not somehow expandable or combinable. My OCD requires that everything be the same, so I haven't committed to a record-keeping system outside of ibm2 yet.

I think you should totally go for it. And I am in NYC every day, so we should discuss over a beer

 

[jonpack]

Good to know! Yes, the idea with something like this is it would be a very uniform design, with room for 75 - 100 complete recipes and notes, and separate dedicated sections for personal beer reviews/notes, conversion guides, formulas, etc. It would be no thicker than a moleskine, as I want the sizing to be very convenient.

 

[blakelyc]

...and i would love it even more if it had a lay-flat design. I hate it when things like this get jacked up on the spine because I have to smash them with something to get them to stay open. And then they don't close again.

At one point I considered making my own pages for the levenger circa notebook system, but I find that the ring attachment system isn't very durable.

 

[jonpack]

Completely agreed, a lay-flat design is a must for this. Fortunately I have some relationships with book binding companies in the city, so that is absolutely doable. Would this interest other folks? Having an understanding of just how well this would do in the homebrew community dictates whether or not a run on Kickstarter would be feasible.

Thanks!