My HomeBrew Site

[Shmohel]

I was thinking, I was looking at people's signatures with notes on what they have bottled, and what is fermenting, and what's next, etc. (particularly at andre the giant).

Then I was thinking that it would be a nice idea to keep a journal of all of my beers. Then, realizing that I am a fairly decent web developer, it would be best to do so with PHP and a database so that it would be easily accessible and customizable.

It was at this point that I got my idea. What do you all think of a site where you can save your past recipes and tasting notes for your brewed beers? Any ideas or suggestions? Anyone interested in working on the project with me?

I am fairly new to this forum, perhaps one of the admins would be interested in adding this to this site. Let me know.

 

[andre the giant]

I thought I sensed someone eyeballing me...

I guess a lot of people keep Promash files of their brew. I can't because Promash doesn't run on Macintosh computers without Virtual PC. So I do it the old fashioned way. I keep detailed notes of every batch, even when it's a repeat of a previous batch, and I keep everything in a file folder. I've found it an invaluable tool when troubleshooting why batch 24 sucked, but 25 rocked... that kind of thing. It also makes it easy to tweak the recipe to your tastes.

As far as a site for posting recipies and notes, that would be nice. I frequently browse recipes on the "Cat's Meow Recipe collection" It's not the best interface, and I don't know when it was last updated.

 

[Shmohel]

I have been to that site several times to browse around. And you arre right, the interface is not the greatest.

I was thinking that it might be a useful tool mostly for tracking one's own brews. But, I see no reason why there could not be a functionality for searching through others as well.

 

[Janx]

I think searching through others would be the best part about it. A really well organized recipe database would be really cool. There are a few efforts of this sort out there. tastybrew.com is pretty good. I don't know if any of them can accept output directly from ProMash, but dang that would be cool.

It would be really nice if you wanted to build it, if it was associated with this site so as to focus the community in one place. Posting recipes to threads is fun, but not as effective as a really well organized database that is highly searchable. One field I would suggest in particular is a cloneof field so that you can search for recipes that clone a brew you'd like to make. Also, you could search on gravity ranges, SRM color, IBUs, style, ingredients....

OK, the geek in me is starting to drool. I think it'd be really cool.

Cheers

 

[Shmohel]

I think searching through others would be the best part about it. A really well organized recipe database would be really cool. There are a few efforts of this sort out there. tastybrew.com is pretty good. I don't know if any of them can accept output directly from ProMash, but dang that would be cool.

It would be really nice if you wanted to build it, if it was associated with this site so as to focus the community in one place. Posting recipes to threads is fun, but not as effective as a really well organized database that is highly searchable. One field I would suggest in particular is a cloneof field so that you can search for recipes that clone a brew you'd like to make. Also, you could search on gravity ranges, SRM color, IBUs, style, ingredients....

OK, the geek in me is starting to drool. I think it'd be really cool.

Cheers

hmmm.... i like your ideas. Let me do some thinking and put some ideas together. Would you be interested in working on the project with me? At least with some possible ideas.

Who is the admin of this site?

 

[Janx]

TxBrew is the admin, and I bet he'd be really stoked to have something like this project affiliated with the site.

I'm happy to help you kick around ideas. Work is absolutely nuts for me right now and I have to do some travel back east over the next couple weeks. But when I have time available, I'm happy to help kick around the design of the project. I have database and web programming skills, but until I get my work days under 10 hours a day, I really can't commit to doing a lot of work on it. I will probably have time to give feedback on data design, features, etc.

So, yeah, I'd love to help as time allows. Cheers

 

[El Pistolero]

I've been working on something like this for a while...it started off as a recipe db mod for a different forum software, then later when I discovered beer I started adding in some brew session tracking like Pro Mash has.

I'd love to compare notes if you like...I think the database design I have is pretty close to complete, but I have a long way to go yet on the interface.

 

[Shmohel]

Janx, I would be very appreciateive of suggestions/ideas. Coming up with design/functional use of a site is always the easy part for me. It is usually the content that I like having ideas.

El Pistolero, I would love to hear more about what you have been working on.

I will get in touch with TxBrew, see what he has to say, and go from there. Ideally, I would love to make it an extension of this community, since the forums and community aspect are already in place.

 

[AlaskaAl(e)]

I've tinkered around with this idea a little as well. I've been using Microsoft Access to create a little program with all the recipes by ingredient more than anything else. Up here the ingredient availability is sometimes lacking so I make whatever sounds good with what's on hand. I can plug in whatever ingredients I have and it gives me all my recipes (by % match) that I can make with it. I suppose I could program in more buttons to search for different stuff. Let me know if you think I can help.

 

[Shmohel]

Again, thanks for all the interest. It sounds like there are so many ideas/projects of this nature going, it would be nice to put something comprehensive together. Hopefully by the end of the week I can put some ideas together to start bouncing off of you guys.

 

[homebrewer_99]

I think this is a good idea, HOWEVER....

I'm leary of a lot of recipes on-line because the recipe owners fail in the follow-up note section.

I, for one, do follow-on notes that actually critique my brews after they are ready and while I am actually drinking them.

This critique is helpful in deciding how closely the last recipe will be followed next time I brew it or what I think should be tweaked. I do this every time.

 

[Shmohel]

I think this is a good idea, HOWEVER....

I'm leary of a lot of recipes on-line because the recipe owners fail in the follow-up note section.

I, for one, do follow-on notes that actually critique my brews after they are ready and while I am actually drinking them.

This critique is helpful in deciding how closely the last recipe will be followed next time I brew it or what I think should be tweaked. I do this every time.

Hmm, well perhaps we can think of some sort of "reliability rating" for the beers. I guess it would be more for the brewers. We could rate the members based upon their number of recipes brewed, tasting notes, etc. Perhaps even allow members to rate brews the made off another's recipe.

Another idea would be to "clone" someone else's recipe, than tailor it for yourself. This could create a chain of brews. This way, someone could find a recipe, and find others that stem from the same basic recipe.

 

[ian]

This would be very cool. Shmohel refered me to this thread.

I like the idea of follow up to go with the recipes. It would be a good idea to have a way for someone to note that they had used a recipe and to rate it (I'm thinking a radio button to indicate that they have used it and then a text input for the comments. That could be a separate sql table that links to the recipe table by a common recipe id. It would of course record the "rater/user" by the user's login/user name. Then you could search by a "rater/user" to see if they are harsh or fair when rating, etc.

This could get pretty cool and very useful. And, I like the "homebrew" nature of developing this outside of the "plug and play" of a typical bulletin board. Not that there's anything wrong with VBulletin, I think its one of the better ones out there. But, we're all tinkerers here or we would just go and buy beer. . . . Right?

 

[Shmohel]

This could get pretty cool and very useful. And, I like the "homebrew" nature of developing this outside of the "plug and play" of a typical bulletin board. Not that there's anything wrong with VBulletin, I think its one of the better ones out there. But, we're all tinkerers here or we would just go and buy beer. . . . Right?

Good point. I have been speaking with the Admin, and trying to gather my ideas. I will be away this weekend, but plan to start putting this project together on Monday.

I definately want to build this outside of vBulletin, but tie it in with the logins. Also, we could tinker some of the profile fields, perhaps in addition to displaying # of posts, it will display # of recipes in the system, etc.

 

[ian]

Began working on the design of my "Brew Blog" last night. There is not much here yet, just an outline of how it might look. I built the db tables and have now recorded the ingedients and particulars of our now two brews. But, I haven't done any work on getting database data to the page yet. More to come!

I'll give updates if anyone is interested.

Check out the link below:

Brew Blog

 

[Shmohel]

I plan to begin working on this section of this website sometime later today. Will keep you all posted of my progress.

 

[brewhead]

let me know if you need bandwidth and/or server space

 

[ian]

let me know if you need bandwidth and/or server space

guess not . . .

I think he's proposing an addition to this site. I think its a good idea. But, I don't know if that would mean hosted off the same server or what . . .