Saving Recipes and Sessions

[splashmike]

I just bought the program, but am confused on how to save and view recipes for use in future sessions. I'm also not sure how to see a log of my brewing sessions. For example, I also own Beersmith and I have a file where my recipes are stored which I can then access for use on a particular brew day, which becomes the brew session with data recorded for that particular session. I can then later review my brew sessions in a brew log folder. How is this accomplished with Beer Tools Pro?

[Brant]

As I understand it from messages I remember posted several weeks ago, a recipe browser is on the enhancement request list. For now, you can save your recipe/session files in whatever organizational directory structure you prefer. My personal preference is to simply name the files with the brew date and recipe or style name (e.g., "20070101 - Brown Porter" for the hypothetical brown porter I'm brewing today). Then, using the File / Open browse window, I can scroll through all of my previous sessions, sorted in date order. That's the same approach I took back when I was using ProMash.

Anyway, if I want do the same (or similar) brew later, I just open the old session, and then use File / Save As to create a new file, which is an identical copy of the old file. Then I edit the new file however I see fit.

I hope this helps.

[slothrob]

Sounds like a good system. I've been putting the dates after the name so that they organize first by recipe, then by date made.

I also break the beers into two folders: "Recipes", for the original recipe as I found it, this gives me a shorter list to search thru. Then "Made Beer", for the list of all the recipes I've made with all the real world changes I made for that brew day, those are then organized by dating the name.

I suppose I'll have to rethink it all when logging is added to the program.

[splashmike]

OK. Some good suggestions. Its unfortunate that this newly developed program doesn't have these features built in, but hopefully the developers will provide this later. Thanks.

[KenBoy]

I've set up a whole bunch of templates which I combine to create a session for when I brew.

I store all recipe templates in a "recipes" folder, mash schedule templates in a "schedules" folder and sessions in a "sessions" folder in the file system.

For an APA for example I open a new session, load in the mash schedule template e.g. Single Infusion (Batch Sparge) and then the recipe template for the APA. I then save the merged file in the session folder with a date/time stamp in the filename.

All the templates seem to merge together into the session properly (I haven't had any problems) and is very flexible because I can tailor the session easily for different recipes and mash schedules.

It was a little painful to set up initially because I had to make sure the templates only contained things they should e.g. no style or ingrediants in a mash schedule template, then test they all merged correctly.

I'd be interested to hear if the way I'm using templates is what the BeerTools designers had in mind, I didn't get a very clear picture from the documentation

[slothrob]

That sounds like a very good use of templates, to me.
A very inventive aproach. I do something like this by saving schedules (including water profiles and equipment) as templates. I then load a blank page, type in a recipe, apply a schedule template appropriate for that recipe, edit the schedule info so that it will work, then save that as a recipe. On mash day, I open up the recipe, edit any info specific to that session, then save that in a Made Beer folder.

[notbob]

Those both sound great. I like hearing how everybody else is making things work for them. I love this program so far. I know it will grow. That's the best part.

I never thought about using templates that way. I like the idea of setting up mash schedule templates. Thanks.