August 15th Updates

[Pricelessbrewing]

We always post our changelog in our "learn" pages automatically: https://docs.brewersfriend.com/changelog. In case you may have noticed some new features, this list will show you the entire changelog:


2020-08-15
‌
Updated
‌

• Recipe Builder, Inventory, and Shopping - Added Fruit Juice, Fruit Puree, Specialty Malt and Honey to Fermentables.
  
  
• Recipe Builder, Inventory, and Shopping - Added validation to category and types to improve quality of ingredient database and reduce confusion. Ie no longer able to enter ingredients such as category = fruit, type = base malt. etc.
  
  
• Water Calculator - Added Specialty Malt, Smoked Malt, Gluten-Free Malt for grain types.
  
  
  
  
  
  

 

[Pricelessbrewing]

Specialty malts will follow the common maltster categorization where they include malts that are not quite base malts, but not quite crystal or roasted malts either. Ingredients such as munich, melanoidin, dextrine, carapils, biscuit, and aromatic.

For more examples, see
https://www.brewersfriend.com/fermentables/?filter=Specialty Malt

Adjuncts follow the definition of any unmalted grain, so flaked barley, oats, torrified wheat, etc are all included as adjuncts, while things like malted wheat or malted oats are not adjuncts by definition. Correspondingly, only malted grains are classified as "grain". At some point this will likely be renamed to "malted grain".

For more examples, see the type filter of "raw".
https://www.brewersfriend.com/fermentables/?filter=Raw


For the purposes of mash pH, ingredients of Specialty, or Smoked, will behave as if they're base malts, so you shouldn't see any changes in pH estimation unless the ingredient was previously miss classified as a roasted malt (or another grain in the grain bill was miss classified).

I went through the entire BF fermentables ingredient and did a full audit of grain types, many adjuncts were improperly classified as base malts, some roasted malts were miss classified as base or crystal malts, and some crystal malts were listed as base malts or roasted malts as well. If you notice any changes in mash pH going forward, this is likely the cause. However please do not hesitate to reach out so we can continue to improve.

 

[Megary]

Specialty malts will follow the common maltster categorization where they include malts that are not quite base malts, but not quite crystal or roasted malts either. Ingredients such as munich, melanoidin, dextrine, carapils, biscuit, and aromatic.

Can you explain the decision to put Munich in with the Specialty Malts as opposed to the Base Malts? Like Vienna, it can be used as a Base Malt so I’m just curious as to where the line was drawn in the sand.
Thanks!

 

[Pricelessbrewing]

Can you explain the decision to put Munich in with the Specialty Malts as opposed to the Base Malts? Like Vienna, it can be used as a Base Malt so I’m just curious as to where the line was drawn in the sand.
Thanks!

@Yooper is on your side.

For me, many maltsters classify Munich as a specialty malt, or classify Munich as a category of its own separate from base malts, and I wanted to follow the suppliers classification as much as possible.

Moreover, while many Munich malts are suitable as a base malt, not all Munich malt has enough diastatic power to convert a typical grain bill, or self convert for that matter. Some darker Munich malts can be as low as 20 DP.

Initially I wanted Vienna in there as well, but caved. All of the Vienna malts I found had enough DP to self convert, and we're nearly as enzymatic as more common base malts like two row or pale malt.

 

[Megary]

Ok. I guess I define a base malt as any malt that can convert itself. So for me a standard Munich would be a base malt, but the darker Munichs probably not. I can’t see defining Vienna and Munich as different. Seems sacrilegious.

 

[Black Lion Homebrewery]

Is there a reason that the Country tags were stripped from the non-branded munich malts? I had to turn off all the brands so my phone would load the grain drop-down, It would be nice to be able to specify by origin the malts without into a specific maltster.

Overall with the brands being included, it feels like all the generic non-branded malts could stand to be cleaned up. Specifically things like victory, red x, ashburne mild, ESB malt, etc, thtat are specific to just a single maltster.

 

[Yooper]

Is there a reason that the Country tags were stripped from the non-branded munich malts? I had to turn off all the brands so my phone would load the grain drop-down, It would be nice to be able to specify by origin the malts without into a specific maltster.

Overall with the brands being included, it feels like all the generic non-branded malts could stand to be cleaned up. Specifically things like victory, red x, ashburne mild, ESB malt, etc, thtat are specific to just a single maltster.

I think it was because Munich malt has been changed to "specialty malt" with some of the changes? @Pricelessbrewing ?

 

[Pricelessbrewing]

Hmm, I didn't make any changes to the country or brand properties, so those shouldn't have changed. Unless there's some weird quirk in the code for brands that checks each ingredients category and type, I'll have to followup.

Doing a quick check, it does look like there's an error somewhere in the country data. There are generic versions of both Red X and ashburne mild malt so it should show up via the brand filter (briess for ashburne), and when it's off.

@Yooper Looking in admin, neither of these have a country set. Should I do an audit for generic ingredients, and that country is consistent for supplier? (IE all briess = united states, unless specified otherwise)

 

[Yooper]

@Yooper Looking in admin, neither of these have a country set. Should I do an audit for generic ingredients, and that country is consistent for supplier? (IE all briess = united states, unless specified otherwise)

Hmmm, maybe so. For now though, if we could just add a country to those generic ingredients, that should work. Unless there are a lot of these hanging out there.