(DONE) Pounds and ounces when entering fermentable weight?

[LarryBrewer]

Several brewers have asked for the ability to enter pounds and ounces for fermentable weights in the recipe editor.

This presents a screen real estate challenge but we will see what we can do.

For my part, the scales at the local home brew stores work in pounds, so 7.5 ounces is 0.46 pounds. I have become accustomed to that way of thinking about grain weights.

As my brewing as progressed, I have realized that what matters is the percentage of a grain in a batch more than whatever the weight in ounces comes out to.

An extra field adds complexity to the interface, which is generally a negative from a usability perspective. However, forcing users to do it 'our way' is a greater evil. Perhaps this will be a per-user option, we can let each user can decide for themselves?

Anybody else want to give their thoughts?

 

[Dan.Castanera]

Re: Pounds and ounces when entering fermentable weight?

Sorry to those who have asked for it but I have to agree with Larry. Do the calculation and put it in pounds. Cluttering up the UI with unnecessary extras can be more confusing than helpful.

 

[cearum]

Re: Pounds and ounces when entering fermentable weight?

I'll agree when things are over at least a pound, so you're getting 1.5, 8.3, 15.3 lbs, but when it's less than a pound I like to give the weight in ounces. So I'll have 8 ounces of whatever. I know it's a half pound, but it's just the way I think. Could there be a way that when you enter in say "8 oz" it converts it into 0.5 lbs? I figure you'd just need to look for the oz, then truncate it, then convert. It's just a thought, not a necessity.

 

[Tore]

Re: Pounds and ounces when entering fermentable weight?

As long as this doesn't affect the metric UX i do not care. If you have problems with your system of weight i can recommend switching to metric, its very intuitive.

 

[JAMC]

Re: Pounds and ounces when entering fermentable weight?

As long as this doesn't affect the metric UX i do not care. If you have problems with your system of weight i can recommend switching to metric, its very intuitive.

:lol:

 

[LarryBrewer]

Re: Pounds and ounces when entering fermentable weight?

What's not intuitive about 128 ounces per gallon, but keep in mind only 16 ounces per pound, 4 quarts per gallon, 12 inches per foot, and 5280 feet in a mile??

JK :lol:

 

[Paithen]

Re: Pounds and ounces when entering fermentable weight?

What do you mean imperial or US Gallons, or 20oz pints!!!

Don't complicate the editor screen, but it might be ok as part of the suite of stand-alone brew calculators, so if you need to look at a scale marked in pounds and ounces and you need to be really really accurate, you could use the BF calc. from your smartphone.

When brewing 5gal or more,
Round your recipes to 1/4 lb intervals and its all divisible nicely without a calculator or better yet make your LHBStore get a metric scale

Paithen

 

[LarryBrewer]

Re: Pounds and ounces when entering fermentable weight?

I was just using the recipe editor, and one of the recipes called for 6oz of a grain. Then I had to grab my calculator and do 6/16 = 0.375, that was a pain. We should be able to do it without cluttering the UI if we make the little 'oz' label into a mini drop down. It will be hard to notice, but maybe some kind of mouse over effect can help it be more intuitive.

 

[LarryBrewer]

Re: Pounds and ounces when entering fermentable weight?

This is being worked on, it actually won't complicate the UI at all for the recipe editor. There will be a small down arrow next to the 'lb' label that you can use to change it to 'oz'.

I was also thinking for metric brewers, maybe you want to be able to specify a grain weight in grams?

At the same time, a brewer emailed me and said he wanted to do hops in oz or grams, even though he uses US units to brew. So we are looking at putting that in while we are at it.

This feature is currently being worked on, and will go out in the next release!

 

[JAMC]

Re: Pounds and ounces when entering fermentable weight?

I was also thinking for metric brewers, maybe you want to be able to specify a grain weight in grams?

I can see why this would make sense for specialty grains, where it's quite common to see 100g, 250g or 500g being used. The great thing about the metric system of course is that even a mathematically stunted person like me can convert from one to the other in my head just by moving the decimal place three spaces to the left.

Others may disagree, but I think this is unneccesary at the moment - particularly when there are other requests for functionality that people have made which should clearly be a higher priority. The only time I think it would help is when we're extracting recipes out of the editor and it's neater to see "50g" written in text than it is to see "0.050kg".

 

[Tore]

Re: Pounds and ounces when entering fermentable weight?

i second JAMC. Metric is so simple it should not warrant any sort of specialty features, you would just introduce corner cases and more things to test across devices.

 

[LarryBrewer]

Re: Pounds and ounces when entering fermentable weight?

It wound up fitting very nicely to do Kilograms / Grams for fermentable amounts, while we were also doing Pounds / Ounces. I can see it being used for specialty grains now and then. Yes it is a bit more testing.

We are also going to allow hops to be entered in ounces or grams, with the default being whatever the recipe is set to.

This will go out in the next release, probably this coming Wednesday!

 

[LarryBrewer]

And this feature is now live.

Yeah, having ounces is nice:
http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/r ... erimental-

You can also do grams or ounces on hops. For metric recipes, you can do kilograms or grams for the grains.