Feature Requests Archive A

[TCBrewguy]

I know this has been requested before, but I've really been wishing that grain bills were scalable. As my brewhouse efficiency has increased over the past year or so, I've been trying to adjust my recipes to take this into account. I would love to be able to just scale the quantities up or down and have the values change proportionally.

[billvelek]

I know this has been requested before, but I've really been wishing that grain bills were scalable. As my brewhouse efficiency has increased over the past year or so, I've been trying to adjust my recipes to take this into account. I would love to be able to just scale the quantities up or down and have the values change proportionally.

That feature is available on my version -- 1.0.16. Check the box next to Final Volume, and then select "scale" from the menu box next to it; then increase or decrease your final volume and you should see your ingredients increase or decrease proportionately.

Cheers.

Bill Velek

[rpoelking]

This has probably been requested but to boost the request numbers.
BTP is a great recipe generator but I'd like to see a Batch Log attached to a recipe. It would track date, measurements, fermentation, notes, tasting notes, etc.

[TCBrewguy]

I know this has been requested before, but I've really been wishing that grain bills were scalable. As my brewhouse efficiency has increased over the past year or so, I've been trying to adjust my recipes to take this into account. I would love to be able to just scale the quantities up or down and have the values change proportionally.

That feature is available on my version -- 1.0.16. Check the box next to Final Volume, and then select "scale" from the menu box next to it; then increase or decrease your final volume and you should see your ingredients increase or decrease proportionately.

Cheers.

Bill Velek

I don't want to increase/decrease my final volume...I want that to remain constant while I increase/decrease the amounts of grain proportionally.

[jeff]

I don't want to increase/decrease my final volume...I want that to remain constant while I increase/decrease the amounts of grain proportionally.

There is a checkbox next to the efficiency box. If you check this box and change the efficiency, the grain bill for the recipe will be scaled to fit the new efficiency. Does this help you accomplish what you need to do?

[TCBrewguy]

I don't want to increase/decrease my final volume...I want that to remain constant while I increase/decrease the amounts of grain proportionally.

There is a checkbox next to the efficiency box. If you check this box and change the efficiency, the grain bill for the recipe will be scaled to fit the new efficiency. Does this help you accomplish what you need to do?

Not particularly. I tried this and the quantity changed in sort of unconventional increments. Also, the change in grain amounts was not reflected in the OG field. I think a really easy way to implement this feature would be to allow users to select multiple ingredients. That way, the quantity field (below the ingredient list) could be used to change the overall quantity in more conventional increments without having to fiddle with the efficiency field. Also, if users had a recipe for which they simply wanted to increase the overall amount of fermentables by, say, 2 lbs., they could just select all the grains and manually enter the overall amount in the quantity field.

[jeff]

Also, the change in grain amounts was not reflected in the OG field.

That's exactly how efficiency scaling is supposed to work. This feature allows you to brew the same beer (same OG) with an efficiency adjusted from the original efficiency used.

[bemert]

Jeff - how soon before we see the "Session" in BTP? It's been awhile since I have run the software so if it is in there then forgive me, but I haven't seen any posts on it yet so I am assuming it is still behind the scenes.

Brian

[jeff]

Jeff - how soon before we see the "Session" in BTP? It's been awhile since I have run the software so if it is in there then forgive me, but I haven't seen any posts on it yet so I am assuming it is still behind the scenes.

Brian

If you are talking about "Session Logging", I don't know when. Trying to get a completely stable version established right now. Seems like we are getting pretty close to that though.

[meancrimson]

Currently BeerTools Pro will install more or less succesfully on Vista with the following relatively minor caveats:

- you can't launch the read me RTF file at the end of the install
- when you run BeerTools you get a warning that vista is dropping out of aero mode (i.e. pretty graphics mode) because a program (BeerTools) is not compatible with that mode

It would be great if both these minor problems could be addressed!

[billvelek]

Currently BeerTools Pro will install more or less succesfully on Vista with the following relatively minor caveats: ... snip

I just bought a new computer a few days before Christmas which has Windows XP Media Center installed but offers a free upgrade to Vista for $10.00 shipping and handling. I therefore presumed that Vista had not been released yet; I guess I need to check into the upgrade.

Anyway, to keep this on topic, I had just naturally presumed that this would run on Vista without any problems; if not, I am going to be seriously annoyed because I don't want to have to keep an older operating system just so that I can continue to run software that I bought just two months ago. I trust that Jeff and company will satisfactorily address the issue.

Cheers.

Bill Velek

[ColoradoBrewer]

Currently BeerTools Pro will install more or less succesfully on Vista with the following relatively minor caveats: ... snip

I just bought a new computer a few days before Christmas which has Windows XP Media Center installed but offers a free upgrade to Vista for $10.00 shipping and handling. I therefore presumed that Vista had not been released yet; I guess I need to check into the upgrade...

I'm sure someone will correct this if it's wrong, but I believe Vista was released for business customers only. It won't be available to the general public until sometime around March.

[lathe]

Currently BeerTools Pro will install more or less successfully on Vista with the following relatively minor caveats: ... snip

If the two mentioned issues are the only issues they are definitely workable. Vistas GUI runs in three modes: Aero, basic, and standard. While all of these modes will work fine, some look better then others. Based on reports the "Aero" mode will be fairly demanding for many machines. In fact Windows Vista Starter and Windows Basic will not include the "Aero" mode. As for the "Read Me" file... yeah that would need to be fixed...

I only say this because if BTP stopped development today (and these are the only known issues). Many of our users wouldn't even have a copy of Vista that could run BTP in Aero mode. The "Read Me" file could be easily addressed though.

This is all hypothetical because we aren't going to be stopping the development of BTP any time soon.

Oh and Vista comes out for consumers late Jan 07.

[meancrimson]

Currently BeerTools Pro will install more or less successfully on Vista with the following relatively minor caveats: ... snip

If the two mentioned issues are the only issues they are definitely workable. Vistas GUI runs in three modes: Aero, basic, and standard. While all of these modes will work fine, some look better then others. Based on reports the "Aero" mode will be fairly demanding for many machines. In fact Windows Vista Starter and Windows Basic will not include the "Aero" mode. As for the "Read Me" file... yeah that would need to be fixed...

I only say this because if BTP stopped development today (and these are the only known issues). Many of our users wouldn't even have a copy of Vista that could run BTP in Aero mode. The "Read Me" file could be easily addressed though.

This is all hypothetical because we aren't going to be stopping the development of BTP any time soon.

Oh and Vista comes out for consumers late Jan 07.

As the originator of this thread, I wanted to emphasize that these are VERY minor issues and all other aspects of BeerTools Pro (seem) to work just fine with VISTA: I did not mean to create any undue alarm!

BTW, I can also add that the second issue - dropping out of aero mode - does not happen on one other Vista computer I have. The (only) difference is the amount of graphics RAM available on the graphics card - the computer with the lower graphics RAM drops out of Aero mode. HOWEVER, I do not believe that BeerTools Pro is inherently a demanding graphics application - I think this there must be some very minor setting to adjust to prevent this. If you need a beta tester for Vista, I'm your guy.

Thanks for the great software!

[billvelek]

When you folks eventually get around to considering implementation of some of these suggested new features, even for a paid upgrade if necessary, I'd really like to see an inventory feature integrated into BTP that would work something like this:

In the 'ingredients' display, besides the 'Browse' and 'New' buttons, you could also have an 'Inventory' button which would work similarly to 'Browse' and 'New' in that a drop-down menu would have you select the major category of ingredient; but with the 'Inventory' display, instead of getting a very long list of ingredients -- 95% of which the average homebrewer does not have in stock at any given time, -- it would display a short list of the malts, hops, etc., that the user has listed in inventory. Also on that panel could be an "Add/Adjust" button which would permit the user to then select from the full 'Browse' display, followed by a quantity value, to build the inventory list and make adjustments as needed.

Selecting particular ingredients and quantities from the Inventory list for the Ingredients list would automatically adjust the inventory; when new supplies are purchased, the 'Add' button (above) would be used. Finally, if you were to add a 'flag' feature of some sort for items that a user want to add to his inventory, or for an item that is running low on supply, a menu command might allow printing of a shopping list, too.

Not only would such a feature make finding ingredients for recipe creation much easier compared to the very long lists now appearing on the Browse button, but it would also be extremely handy and convenient -- and help users to avoid the problem of thinking they still have something in supply only to discover on brew day (or just before) that it is missing. I currently maintain a separate inventory record in a notepad file, but sometimes forget to change the values when I brew, so a feature that would do that automatically for me would ROCK!!!

Hope you and other brewers think this would be worthwhile enough to implement.

Thanks for a GREAT program so far.

Cheers.

Bill Velek