Chapter 2: General Concepts

Brewtarget maintains a database of recipes, ingredients, etc. If brewtarget should crash unexpectedly, you will be prompted to either restore the changes made last session or rollback the database to discard the changes in the last session.

Inventory

Brewtarget can keep track of how much of each brewing ingredient you have available. The mechanism is straight-forward. Open up the item you want to record your inventory, say "Briess 2 Row Brewers Malt". Towards the bottom of the left hand side, enter the amount you have in inventory. On any recipe you have used this malt, you can now see what you have in inventory.

Every time you use the "Brew It!" functionality, the amount in inventory is reduced by the amount the recipe uses. Be somewhat careful; brewtarget does not warn you if a recipe calls for 2 kg of crystal 80, but only 1 kg is available in the inventory.

Trees

A tree is a hierarchical view of ingredients, recipes, and other items.

The application window is split into three major panes: the trees, the recipe and the ingredients. The tree pane is a set of tabs that displays your recipes, equipment profiles, fermentables, hops, miscellaneous items and hops. You can sort any of the trees on the displayed fields.

Double clicking on any item in the tree will open up the appropriate editor for that item. Double clicking a recipe will open the recipe in the main window.

There are 6 tabs:

  • Recipes - this tree shows all your recipes. You can drag and drop the recipe onto the main window and that recipe will be loaded. Each recipe will also show any associated brewnotes.

  • Equipment - this shows all your defined kit. You can drag and drop a piece of equipment onto your recipe which will have the same effect as changing the equipment via the dropdown box.

  • Fermentables, Hops, Misc and Yeast - these show all of your ingredients. Dragging an item onto the main window will add that item to the recipe.

You can drop recipes, styles and equipment profiles onto the recipe pane; you can drop fermentables, hops, miscellaneous and yeast onto the ingredients pane.

You can right-click almost anywhere on a tree and get a menu of options. The menu allows you to create a new item or a folder. The item you can create depends on the tree you clicked in. If you right-clicked in the miscellaneous tree, for example, you can create a miscellaneous item. Otherwise, the menus are identical for each tree.

You can select multiple items, right-click and then perform an action on the entire selected list. The only exception is the "Export" function. Limitations in the BeerXML format do not allow recipes and ingredients to be exported at the same time.

Folders

Items in trees can be organized into folders.

  • The folder separator is "/". You can create many subfolders, like "/IPA/BYO/2012/Sept", as long as you use forward slashes (/) to separate them.

  • Empty folders, or folders that contain only more empty folders, will be removed after restart. If you want a folder to be preserved, make sure to put at least one item in the folder.

  • Deleting a folder deletes its contents too. You will only be prompted to delete the folder, not each item in the folder.

  • Be careful when dropping a folder. There is a space between items that is not a valid drop target. Nothing will happen if you drop it there, which will can be frustrating.

Brew Notes

If you right-click a recipe, you can select an action called "Brew It". If you select this action, a new entry will be created below the recipe and a new tab will be opened in the main window. This new tab allows you to record important information about your beer during brewing (sg, volumes, temperatures, etc.). This allows you to track performance over time and adjust equipment and efficiencies to better predict what you brew.

The values are preloaded based on the recipe as written. As you move through your brewday, you can record the actual numbers. The calculated values in the middle of the screen will change based on those inputs. For example, if you expected an SG of 1.036 but only got 1.032 the projected OG, ABV and ABV will all change to reflect the lower SG.

There are four main sections on the brewnote tab.

Table 1. Brewnote Fields
Field Description

Preboil

SG

Specific gravity of the collected wort

Volume

The volume of wort that made it into your boil kettle

Final temp

The temperature of your mash after dough in

Postboil

OG

Specific gravity of the wort after the boil

Postboil Volume

The volume of wort in your boil kettle

Volume into Fermenter

The volume of wort in your primary fermenter

Pitch temp

The temperature of your wort when you pitched the yeast

Postferment

FG

Specific gravity of the wort after fermentation

Volume

The volume of beer bottled or kegged

Date

The date the beer finished fermenting

Notes

Notes

Any notes specific to the brew day

Adding Ingredients to a Recipe

Method 1: Editors

If you are looking for a fermentable with a specific SRM or a yeast from a specific lab, this approach allows you to sort on any column you want.

  1. Choose the appropriate tab in the main window (Fermentable, Hops,…​).

  2. Click the "add" button in the tab.

  3. Select any column of the row of the ingredient you wish to add.

  4. Click "Add to Recipe".

Method 2: Drag and Drop

This is a simpler method, as long as you don’t mind the default sorting

  1. Open the appropriate tree in the left pane.

  2. Click on the item you wish to add.

  3. Drag it to the ingredients pane on the main window, and drop it

  4. The tabs will change if required. E.g., if you drop a hop onto the "Fermentables" tab, the focus will change to the "Hops" tab.

Importing Recipes

You can import other BeerXML recipes (such as from Beersmith) by using File->Import Recipes. However, be aware that Beersmith and other software do not strictly adhere to BeerXML or XML standards in general, so you may have some trouble importing recipes from time to time. Brewtarget tries to maintain strict compatability with the standards.

Exporting Recipes

This option will export selected recipes to BeerXML.

Database Backup and Restore

For many reasons, you may want to back up all your recipes, ingredients, and everything else. To do this, go to File->"Backup Database" and select an empty directory. Restoring the database is just as simple.

Important
 when you restore a database, everything in your current database will be replaced.
Important
 Restoring a database will cause brewtarget to automatically restart.

Sharing Recipes

Brewtarget offers two different methods for posting your recipes in simple readable formats.

Method 1: Recipe to Clipboard

This tool makes a text version of the recipe so that you may post it online or pretty much anywhere else. To export a text version, Tools->"Recipe to Clipboard as Text", then click paste where you want the recipe text to be pasted.

Method 2: Recipe to HTML

Another way you can share you recipes is to export them to HTML, which is viewable in any web browser. Use File->"Recipe"->"Save to HTML". You can export either the recipe or the brewday instructions.

Supported Units

Brewtarget supports SI, Imperial, and US customary units. To switch between these modes, go to Tools->Options->Units, and check/uncheck the appropriate box. It also supports auto-conversion. For example, if you are in US mode, and you enter "0.50 gal" into a text field, it will appear as "2.000 qt". You may also enter units from the other unit system if you like. If you enter an unsupported unit, Brewtarget applies a default unit (which is usually SI). For example, if you enter "20 asdf" into a volume field while in US mode, you will see "5.283 gal" because Brewtarget assumed you meant "20 L" and then converted to US units. Always use a valid unit suffix to avoid unit confusion.

Controlling Default Unit and Scale

You can control what units are used in the display and how they scale. In any field where it makes sense (volumes, weights, temperatures and gravities), you can right-click the associated label and be presented with the unit and scale menu. Selecting one of those options will cause that field to be displayed in the selected unit. So you can, for example, display Boil SG and OG in Plato, but FG in specific gravity.

You can also select the scale for any volume or weight field. You can use this to, for example, cause your target batch size to be displayed in quarts instead of gallons. You can do the same thing in any of the ingredient tabs by right clicking on the column header. This will allow you to display your hops in grams, but keep your fermentables displayed in pounds.

Volumes will present you with the options "default", "SI", "US Customary" and "British Imperial"; weights will present you with the options "default", "SI" and "US Customary"; temperatures will present the options "default", "Celsius" and "Fahrenheit"; gravities will show "default", "Plato" and "Specific Gravity".

Caveats

With US and Imperial units, people have a tendency to sometimes put a trailing "s" or a period at the end (hrs, hrs., etc.). Brewtarget only supports singular no-period units to be consistent with the metric system. The units supported, and the exact unit abbreviation you should use are given in Supported Units.

Supported Units

Table 2. US Customary and Imperial Units
Unit Abbreviation

Mass/Weight

Pounds

lb

Ounces

oz

Volume

Barrels

bbl

Gallons

gal

Quarts

qt

Cups

cp

Tablespoons

tbsp

Teaspoons

tsp

Temperature

Fahrenheit

F
Table 3. SI Units
Unit Abbreviation

Mass/Weight

Kilograms

kg

Grams

g

Milligrams

mg

Volume

Liters

L

Milliliters

mL

Temperature

Celsius

C

Kelvin

K
Table 4. Shared Units
Unit Abbreviation

Time

Days

day

Hours

hr

Minutes

min

Seconds

s

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