Awesome New Updates for January 2019!

[Yooper]

We've been working very hard to make our Brewer's Friend brewing software better and more advanced than ever before. I'm so excited to tell you about some of the latest features, enhancements and updates!

This includes showing devices (like a Tilt) as well as temperature entries done by hand as a graph from your brew session.

We also have made some visual improvements for recipe stats on a new addition to the homepage:

We added the ability to enter more than one yeast strain per recipe, especially adding bacteria for sours as well as saccharomyces:

We added the ability to choose brands for your ingredients, and users can contribute to the ingredients and the equipment (and more will be coming every day!):

You can contribute your favorite brand of malts by clicking the "add to catalog" to keep it in the dropdown, and add it for other brewers as well.


In the brew session feature, you now have the option to toggle off (or on) your current brew session step so it's always on your screen without scrolling or changing screens:

More of the latest updates include features to "my inventory" and "my shopping list". Easily add from your recipe to your shopping list, and the inventory you have will be shown as well. This smarter inventory and your shopping list make for an easy way to be ready to purchase the ingredients you need, then add them right into the inventory.

Check them all out today, and let us know what YOU think!

 

[thunderwagn]

Huge thanks from me for adding 'calories' the way you did to the brew log history! May not be a big feature for most, but I add the est. calories to Myfitnesspal for all my brews. Now it's nice and handy!

 

[GFHomebrew]

Cheers to the brewersfriend admin/software team top work All. The improvements to the site in the few years ive been comming here has been awesome. Glad to be a member of this fine site!

 

[Onobrewco]

You all are awesome. I love Brewersfriend. As a professional brewer, I think Brewersfriend is the best brewing software on the market. You all have done a great job with the whole software package. I love how responsive you are with updates and new features. Keep up the great work!

 

[Jeremiah White]

Looking really good guys, always know what I need in brewing software before I do.

 

[Nimit Bier]

Great job!

 

[Werral]

While I do appreciate the ability to add more than one yeast strain per recipe, the search for yeast strains is very bad now. If I type Omega into the search it doesn't provide me with a list of the omega yeast strains, it just provides the company name and nothing else. I'd rather have a better search function and add the additional yeast to my own notes section...just my opinion.

Cheers!

 

[Timothy Slocum]

Thanks for the updates.

 

[Yooper]

While I do appreciate the ability to add more than one yeast strain per recipe, the search for yeast strains is very bad now. If I type Omega into the search it doesn't provide me with a list of the omega yeast strains, it just provides the company name and nothing else. I'd rather have a better search function and add the additional yeast to my own notes section...just my opinion.

Cheers!

We saw this, and I wanted to let you know that it is coming to be fixed in the near future, probably going to be released on beta tomorrow. It has to do with the other updates with adding the brands, and this one just isn't quite finished yet. We're working on it, and it should be ready within the next 48 hours, after some beta testing to make sure it's working properly,

 

[Chaos home brewing]

Very nice, thanks!

 

[Black Lion Homebrewery]

Regarding users contributing to the inventory, Will someone be verifying the correct info before it's put in the public database?

 

[Yooper]

Regarding users contributing to the inventory, Will someone be verifying the correct info before it's put in the public database?

Yes. We look at all of them to ensure accuracy (plus spelling and names). It goes fast though, since others are entering them and we're just checking them over.

 

[Black Lion Homebrewery]

I hope this is another transitional state, but fermentables are currently not showing country of origin like it did previously, or brands. A bit confusing when you search for Munich and get 5 options with only just SRM to differentiate.

 

[Yooper]

I hope this is another transitional state, but fermentables are currently not showing country of origin like it did previously, or brands. A bit confusing when you search for Munich and get 5 options with only just SRM to differentiate.

Do you want to check out the beta site where we've made some changes in this, and I think it's better? (We are making sure everything is perfect before we push it to the live site). There are "generic" fermentables, like before, and then specific brands to choose from.

 

[Black Lion Homebrewery]

Do you want to check out the beta site where we've made some changes in this, and I think it's better? (We are making sure everything is perfect before we push it to the live site). There are "generic" fermentables, like before, and then specific brands to choose from.

I'd be happy to help where I can, I've sent you a private message.

I saw that there are still generics, but when searching in recipe creator. I don't see country of origin on the generics anymore (see screen shot below). There's a generic pilsner at 1.7 srm, 1.4 srm, 1.9 srm and two more when I scroll down but nothing to differentiate these generic malts.

 

[onesecondglance]

Appreciate the update. However, custom fermentables are now working less well than before.


1. They no longer sort properly within a recipe by weight. This might be due to the brand, however, I don't really care about brand, so it's unhelpful for my inventory management to have to add this. I don't want to have my recipe require two different amounts of pale malt just because I picked up stock from different homebrew stores. And yes, it's a pain in the arse to have the amounts out of order in the recipe.


2. The colour calculations are different than they were prior to the update - especially since when I click "sort" in a recipe, upon which apparently random numbers appear against my custom fermentables. Half the point of using customs was because your default colours were incorrect.

If you've improved the colour calculation then great, but right now I have no idea if it's more accurate - it's just different, so I'm second guessing recipes I'd built prior to the update. That is not helpful. I'm seeing 3-4 EBC different between saved recipes and what the editor shows upon edit. That's huge, and not mentioned at all in your patch notes.


3. Diastatic power - which had been pulling correctly from my inventory - is now blank and has to be re-added in the recipe.


Separately from custom fermentables, the pH calculation is still double-counting acidulated malt. TBH I'd rather you'd fixed that than doing anything with brands, which I'd guess is at the root of the screwiness around custom fermentables. I can see you're trying to improve the fermentables database, but breaking my existing recipes and inventory management along the way is not acceptable given I pay for this service.


Basically, your update means I trust the calculator less than I did before. Not good.


EDITED TO ADD: With a little more testing I can see you've completely broken custom fermentables. Whereas the items I'd added to my inventory used to appear at the top of the search in the editor, now they're completely absent, and searching by the malt name only brings up from your factory database, not my entries. As mentioned above: your factory database is full of inaccuracies. I'd already fixed that for myself by adding custom inventory. Now you've f***ed it up.

Fix bugs, add new features, but leave the basic shit alone. I'm not paying to have to refactor recipes every time I open the f***ing site.

 

[Yooper]

Appreciate the update. However, custom fermentables are now working less well than before.


1. They no longer sort properly within a recipe by weight. This might be due to the brand, however, I don't really care about brand, so it's unhelpful for my inventory management to have to add this. I don't want to have my recipe require two different amounts of pale malt just because I picked up stock from different homebrew stores. And yes, it's a pain in the arse to have the amounts out of order in the recipe.


2. The colour calculations are different than they were prior to the update - especially since when I click "sort" in a recipe, upon which apparently random numbers appear against my custom fermentables. Half the point of using customs was because your default colours were incorrect.

If you've improved the colour calculation then great, but right now I have no idea if it's more accurate - it's just different, so I'm second guessing recipes I'd built prior to the update. That is not helpful. I'm seeing 3-4 EBC different between saved recipes and what the editor shows upon edit. That's huge, and not mentioned at all in your patch notes.


3. Diastatic power - which had been pulling correctly from my inventory - is now blank and has to be re-added in the recipe.


Separately from custom fermentables, the pH calculation is still double-counting acidulated malt. TBH I'd rather you'd fixed that than doing anything with brands, which I'd guess is at the root of the screwiness around custom fermentables. I can see you're trying to improve the fermentables database, but breaking my existing recipes and inventory management along the way is not acceptable given I pay for this service.


Basically, your update means I trust the calculator less than I did before. Not good.


EDITED TO ADD: With a little more testing I can see you've completely broken custom fermentables. Whereas the items I'd added to my inventory used to appear at the top of the search in the editor, now they're completely absent, and searching by the malt name only brings up from your factory database, not my entries. As mentioned above: your factory database is full of inaccuracies. I'd already fixed that for myself by adding custom inventory. Now you've f***ed it up.

Fix bugs, add new features, but leave the basic shit alone. I'm not paying to have to refactor recipes every time I open the f***ing site.

These are all fixed- we've listened to your feedback and others and made the changes asked for. Please let me know if you have more feedback. Thank you so much!

 

[Magpi17]

I don't think it is fixed, I tried to build a recipe tonight and no way, if this is what I have to go through in the future with my custom malts Im out of here. Went to another one no probs at all, it used to be so simple

 

[Josh (Brewer's Friend)]

I don't think it is fixed, I tried to build a recipe tonight and no way, if this is what I have to go through in the future with my custom malts Im out of here. Went to another one no probs at all, it used to be so simple

Hi Magpi17, I'm sorry we didn't update this thread - but we have a set of fixes ready to be deployed today. We're doing one final round of testing and should have these live asap. And don't worry, these are strictly fixes - no new features, so the goal is to get everything working 100%. We're doing extra due diligence in making sure they're perfect before going live.

 

[Craigerrr]

Josh
Good to see all of the bugs getting worked out, thank you for your hard work.
Craigerrr