Better Wine Support

Jason Cox

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For beer, I really like your calculator but already had BeerSmith so just continue to use it. I want to be a paid customer for you, but can't because of the poor support for wine :) . (Check out VinoTrac for example).

+ Add wine yeasts / cider yeasts (there is another feature req out there for that).
+ Remove some "required" fields from the beer recipe, make them optional (Boil time for example).
+ Add more fermentables, like different grape varieties

It still would not be perfect, but a data admin can add yeasts and fermentables without a software change, and I could use it for wine (and start using it for all my beer recipes).
 
Hmmmm, I've been making wine for 30 years, and only brewing for about 15, and I've never had the notion to use brewer's friend or Beersmith for wine recipes. I use some simple calculations via wine calc to add sugar to get a desired OG, but I don't see how useful brewing software would be for winemakers or cidermakers. Can you explain how it could be useful, and what you would use it for?

I have pretty copious notes for my acid adjustments/pH readings/ brix/ chapatilization/etc, but it's as whole different thing than brewing. For brewing, I use software to make my recipes and calculate IBUs and water chemistry, which doesn't apply at all to wine so I'm trying to picture what you mean.
 
Hmmmm, I've been making wine for 30 years, and only brewing for about 15, and I've never had the notion to use brewer's friend or Beersmith for wine recipes. I use some simple calculations via wine calc to add sugar to get a desired OG, but I don't see how useful brewing software would be for winemakers or cidermakers. Can you explain how it could be useful, and what you would use it for?

I have pretty copious notes for my acid adjustments/pH readings/ brix/ chapatilization/etc, but it's as whole different thing than brewing. For brewing, I use software to make my recipes and calculate IBUs and water chemistry, which doesn't apply at all to wine so I'm trying to picture what you mean.

I guess my goal isn't the recipe calculation as much as it is the recipe tracking for wine. I keep detailed notes on the wines I make, but do it is different places (namely a notebook). Adding wine yeasts to the database would be awesome. It would help keep all fermenting related logs/recipes/notes in a single place.
The custom yeast is what I can use for now.

Thought:
You have a "My Inventory" section; this area allows me to add custom yeasts/fermentables/hops/etc just like on the recipe builder. Would it be possible to add any custom items in "My Inventory" to the related dropdown on the recipe builder? That way a "custom" fermentables/yeasts/etc would show up and we could select them from the dropdown as if it was any other item. This feature would help beer brewers with custom items, and a side-effect is that it would make it easier to store custom fermentables for wine recipes :).

Personal question: How do you currently store your wine logs? Different software?
 
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I will bring your ideas up with the others, and see what they think. I know we have some mead makers as well.

For me, I have a very old stack of papers in folders. That's my "high tech" log system. Maybe if I was starting out now, I would want it on my computer but I've been making wine for many many years, long before the internet and computers, so it's just the way I've always done it. I spend WAY too much time in front of a screen, including when I brew beer, so wine is my "non screen time" hobby. Even with cooking and soapmaking, I do most of it on the computer except for the actual hands-on stuff.
 

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