Recipe Editor is broken again and I am over Brewer's Friend

AC

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I am sad to say the endless defects with this site are too much for me and I will be taking my recipes elsewhere.

Every time I edit or attempt to create a recipe, something is changed or broken. Tonight, after a break of 6 months from brewing, I thought I would create a new recipe for an upcoming brew (I find myself at home a lot at the moment). Alas, not so fast, buddy...

First, I find that I can't actually add a fermentable. I pick one off the list from my inventory, add a quantity and go to save the recipe but get an error message saying I need to enter a fermentable. But I just did!

So I take a guess and go to my inventory and add 100 kg of the ingredient. I start a new recipe and go to add my inventory item. It is there but its name is changed. It was "Joe White Wheat Malt", now it's called "Joe White - Search". What? So I can now add the ingredient and save the recipe but it's just wrong. Somehow, adding a quantity to the inventory item has caused its name to go missing.

So I go back to my Inventory, find the entry called Joe White Search (yes, it really is now called that) and edit it back to Joe White Wheat Malt and save it. Nope. Not saved. It's still Joe White Search. What!!?

So I can't create a recipe unless I have a quantity of the ingredient on hand. Really? And when I add a dummy quantity just so I can move on, it breaks my Inventory entry. Really?

But this is unfortunately not an isolated incident. There have been so many defects and changes to the recipe editor and the inventory item picking process over the last two years that I now am scared to change a recipe in case it gets damaged in some way I can't foresee. This is not a good user experience.

And then there was the change to OG calculations last year that broke the OG of every one of my finely tuned recipes and caused me to have to re-calibrate my Brewhouse Efficiency and re-enter all my recipes from scratch. Only to have that change backed out, meaning I had to go and re-enter everything a second time back to their original values. Yes, it happened and I am still annoyed.

The Recipe Editor is the key feature of the Brewer's Friend product and it is so unreliable it is simply woeful - I have no other words to describe it.

I just wanted to add a recipe but spent an hour messing around with irrelevancies simply to add a fermentable. And now I have spent another 15 minutes writing this post.

What a mess. I am a product owner for a software company by profession and if I tried to sell software this buggy to our clients we would be out of business and I would get the sack.

As a Lifetime Member I have invested a significant sum of money into this product. Now I feel that money was wasted (US$200 for effectively 2 years membership!) and I feel let down.
 
I am sad to say the endless defects with this site are too much for me and I will be taking my recipes elsewhere.

Every time I edit or attempt to create a recipe, something is changed or broken. Tonight, after a break of 6 months from brewing, I thought I would create a new recipe for an upcoming brew (I find myself at home a lot at the moment). Alas, not so fast, buddy...

First, I find that I can't actually add a fermentable. I pick one off the list from my inventory, add a quantity and go to save the recipe but get an error message saying I need to enter a fermentable. But I just did!

So I take a guess and go to my inventory and add 100 kg of the ingredient. I start a new recipe and go to add my inventory item. It is there but its name is changed. It was "Joe White Wheat Malt", now it's called "Joe White - Search". What? So I can now add the ingredient and save the recipe but it's just wrong. Somehow, adding a quantity to the inventory item has caused its name to go missing.

So I go back to my Inventory, find the entry called Joe White Search (yes, it really is now called that) and edit it back to Joe White Wheat Malt and save it. Nope. Not saved. It's still Joe White Search. What!!?

So I can't create a recipe unless I have a quantity of the ingredient on hand. Really? And when I add a dummy quantity just so I can move on, it breaks my Inventory entry. Really?

But this is unfortunately not an isolated incident. There have been so many defects and changes to the recipe editor and the inventory item picking process over the last two years that I now am scared to change a recipe in case it gets damaged in some way I can't foresee. This is not a good user experience.

And then there was the change to OG calculations last year that broke the OG of every one of my finely tuned recipes and caused me to have to re-calibrate my Brewhouse Efficiency and re-enter all my recipes from scratch. Only to have that change backed out, meaning I had to go and re-enter everything a second time back to their original values. Yes, it happened and I am still annoyed.

The Recipe Editor is the key feature of the Brewer's Friend product and it is so unreliable it is simply woeful - I have no other words to describe it.

I just wanted to add a recipe but spent an hour messing around with irrelevancies simply to add a fermentable. And now I have spent another 15 minutes writing this post.

What a mess. I am a product owner for a software company by profession and if I tried to sell software this buggy to our clients we would be out of business and I would get the sack.

As a Lifetime Member I have invested a significant sum of money into this product. Now I feel that money was wasted (US$200 for effectively 2 years membership!) and I feel let down.


I've been using Brewfather exclusively for months now and I'm pleased with the software. My membership is due here, but I've moved on. After using Brewersfriend for years, I finally just decided that it wasn't fitting my brewing needs any longer.
 
I haven't tried anything since the upgrade but if it is indeed as bad as you say, I may switch as well. On the other side, who knows what kind of code the developers are dealing with.
 
Sorry to hear of your frustration.
I haven't done any recipe editing since yesterday's update either.
There was a huge fiasco last year with bugs and changes, but for me it all seemed to get worked out.
I had switched to brewfather for a bit, but have been back using BF for several months now and everything as worked well for me to date.
Cheers
 
I honestly can't speak to any issues on the latest updates. It was frustrating enough for me a few months back, that I just moved on. I thought things were working better, but just kept running into little annoyances and Brewfather was working better for me and for less $$.
 
My bet is old code is blowing up as new features are added. I'm also betting the coders aren't brewers or they would catch some of this. Still, I was on the verge of pulling the trigger on Beersmith the last round of blow-ups. I still haven't encountered the issues others are reporting so I'm still here, for now.
 
I am sad to say the endless defects with this site are too much for me and I will be taking my recipes elsewhere.

Every time I edit or attempt to create a recipe, something is changed or broken. Tonight, after a break of 6 months from brewing, I thought I would create a new recipe for an upcoming brew (I find myself at home a lot at the moment). Alas, not so fast, buddy...

First, I find that I can't actually add a fermentable. I pick one off the list from my inventory, add a quantity and go to save the recipe but get an error message saying I need to enter a fermentable. But I just did!

So I take a guess and go to my inventory and add 100 kg of the ingredient. I start a new recipe and go to add my inventory item. It is there but its name is changed. It was "Joe White Wheat Malt", now it's called "Joe White - Search". What? So I can now add the ingredient and save the recipe but it's just wrong. Somehow, adding a quantity to the inventory item has caused its name to go missing.

So I go back to my Inventory, find the entry called Joe White Search (yes, it really is now called that) and edit it back to Joe White Wheat Malt and save it. Nope. Not saved. It's still Joe White Search. What!!?

So I can't create a recipe unless I have a quantity of the ingredient on hand. Really? And when I add a dummy quantity just so I can move on, it breaks my Inventory entry. Really?

But this is unfortunately not an isolated incident. There have been so many defects and changes to the recipe editor and the inventory item picking process over the last two years that I now am scared to change a recipe in case it gets damaged in some way I can't foresee. This is not a good user experience.

And then there was the change to OG calculations last year that broke the OG of every one of my finely tuned recipes and caused me to have to re-calibrate my Brewhouse Efficiency and re-enter all my recipes from scratch. Only to have that change backed out, meaning I had to go and re-enter everything a second time back to their original values. Yes, it happened and I am still annoyed.

The Recipe Editor is the key feature of the Brewer's Friend product and it is so unreliable it is simply woeful - I have no other words to describe it.

I just wanted to add a recipe but spent an hour messing around with irrelevancies simply to add a fermentable. And now I have spent another 15 minutes writing this post.

What a mess. I am a product owner for a software company by profession and if I tried to sell software this buggy to our clients we would be out of business and I would get the sack.

As a Lifetime Member I have invested a significant sum of money into this product. Now I feel that money was wasted (US$200 for effectively 2 years membership!) and I feel let down.

AC, I was happy to "see" you in the forum again, and so dismayed to see that what brought you to us was a disappointing set of problems.

I understand your anger and frustration, and I appreciate your honesty. I'm going to send you a note that if you have time to respond to would be very helpful, as we want to hear from you. I've involved the site owners and the developers in your issue, and I'd love to get all the details that we can to fix this properly and forever.
 
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I saw the same exact issues tonight. So frustrating!
I haven’t been brewing for about 6 months now. I hope to brew my first batch after relocating this weekend and thought I’d play with a recipe this evening. My last experience with Brewers Friend involved some bogus gravity calculations that I questioned, starting my distrust with Brewers Friend. Now, I can’t even save a recipe because I “haven’t added fermentables”!! I tried to add a fermentable to inventory, but it saved as some six digit number, not as Weyermann Pilsner as intended.
At this point I’d rather learn a new software than always wonder what bugs I’ll find that will keep me from using the software I’ve paid for, and from brewing beer! Seems like I have just enough time before renewal to download my history and part ways with the platform that got me brewing all grain beer in the first place.
 
AC, I was happy to "see" you in the forum again, and so dismayed to see that what brought you to us was a disappointing set of problems.

I understand your anger and frustration, and I appreciate your honesty. I'm going to send you a note that if you have time to respond to would be very helpful, as we want to hear from you. I've involved the site owners and the developers in your issue, and I'd love to get all the details that we can to fix this properly and forever.

Thanks Yooper. I have received your email and will respond.
 
Every time I edit or attempt to create a recipe, something is changed or broken. Tonight, after a break of 6 months from brewing, I thought I would create a new recipe for an upcoming brew (I find myself at home a lot at the moment). Alas, not so fast, buddy...

First, I find that I can't actually add a fermentable. I pick one off the list from my inventory, add a quantity and go to save the recipe but get an error message saying I need to enter a fermentable. But I just did!

I saw the same exact issues tonight. So frustrating!
I haven’t been brewing for about 6 months now. I hope to brew my first batch after relocating this weekend and thought I’d play with a recipe this evening. My last experience with Brewers Friend involved some bogus gravity calculations that I questioned, starting my distrust with Brewers Friend. Now, I can’t even save a recipe because I “haven’t added fermentables”!! I tried to add a fermentable to inventory, but it saved as some six digit number, not as Weyermann Pilsner as intended.
At this point I’d rather learn a new software than always wonder what bugs I’ll find that will keep me from using the software I’ve paid for, and from brewing beer! Seems like I have just enough time before renewal to download my history and part ways with the platform that got me brewing all grain beer in the first place.

We found the issue. Thanks for posting your experience, because this is what put it together for me. Both of you are members, and haven't used the software in a while. Both of you built a recipe from inventory, and had similar issues. I couldn't recreate this at all- but my inventory is "fresh" and I just brewed again the other day. That led me down the path to find out what happened with the inventory, where the grains "went", and we've pushed out a fix for this.

Unfortunately, in order for us to find it and fix it, we had to have someone experience it. I'm so sorry that this happened to both of you. I know my apology doesn't mean much, but it is very sincere. I also have to send you thanks for taking the time and coming to the forum and posting about it- so that we could fix it for any other users that were experiencing this but not contacting us about it.

I'd really like to continue discussions about this, and what we can do here at Brewer's Friend to make it right. You deserve better, and this should not have happened.
 
I am having a similar issue with inventory not being deducted when I start a brew. The malts have been deducted but no the hops. See image for error message. I edited the hops inventory and saved them and tried again. Any figure it out. Not the end of the world, I just deducted them manually but quite tedious.
 

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I am having a similar issue with inventory not being deducted when I start a brew. The malts have been deducted but no the hops. See image for error message. I edited the hops inventory and saved them and tried again. Any figure it out. Not the end of the world, I just deducted them manually but quite tedious.

Can I have a link to the recipe so I can see the issue?
What browser are you using and what device? I want to dig into this with whatever you're using.
 
@44forge @Yooper

I took a look at the recipe. For some reason the recipe ingredient isn't linked to the inventory, perhaps it was added to the recipe before being added to inventory? Not sure on the exact cause, but opening the hop addition dropdown in the recipe, then selecting the same ingredient again from inventory fixes the issue.
 
It is possible that the hop in your inventory is a different hop than you have in your recipe.
Screenshot_20200802-124314_Chrome.jpg
 
Or Yooper may have figured out that there is some kind of glitch...
 
Hey thanks for the replies. The hops had been added a few months before I created the recipe yesterday. When I created the recipe and selected the hops it showed my correct amounts for my inventory so I am certain the link worked there. When however starting the brew session I got the error which I attached that they could not be found.
 
@44forge @Yooper

I took a look at the recipe. For some reason the recipe ingredient isn't linked to the inventory, perhaps it was added to the recipe before being added to inventory? Not sure on the exact cause, but opening the hop addition dropdown in the recipe, then selecting the same ingredient again from inventory fixes the issue.

Strange. like I mentioned in my previous reply the hops where added before the recipe was created. What’s confusing to me is that when creating the recipe my inventory quantity showed up correct. Did you start a test brew session and it deducted it correctly? Maybe it was just a fluke then don’t know
 
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This is still an issue. I´ve tried deleting and re-adding the ingredients. Re-writing the recipes, but noting works. Still about 1/4 of the ingredients is "not found" at brewing...
 
This is still an issue. I´ve tried deleting and re-adding the ingredients. Re-writing the recipes, but noting works. Still about 1/4 of the ingredients is "not found" at brewing...

Sorry about that, but we do appreciate you bringing it back up!

Thanks for the report, I'm adding this reply to the existing ticket and will get some examples from your account.
 

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