Recipe ingredients displaying inventory availability

[SeanYYC]

Would be great when looking through recipe ingredients if it would list weather you have them in your inventory or not. The inventory feature is great but this would really streamline it!

 

[Craigerrr]

Plus 1 I made this request some time ago, it didn't get any traction. For my most recent brew I had to have two windows open and go back and forth to see what I needed to order.

I will see if I can find my post and revive it, I actually showed a screen shot of what I thought would work.

 

[Craigerrr]

I found my post, my request was different, but I like this idea too.

 

[Yooper]

All of your inventory items show up in the Recipe Builder, at the top:

So you can see at a glance that I have no Briess 2-row, but I do have some Rahr and unbranded "American" two-row. I have only a pound of Thomas Fawcett dark crystal, but I also have a pound of Baird's to sub with. ETC.

I find that very handy. How would you change this to make it easier (and definitely NO two windows open!!!!) than it is? We love suggestions!

 

[SeanYYC]

I guess I mean specifically when viewing already created recipes, not new recipes your creating.

So when you click a recipe you've already created and you're viewing the recipe it would list beside the ingredient how much of it you currently have in your inventory.

Example currently it shows:

Amount -- Fermentable -------------- PPG -- °L ------ Bill %
8 lb ------- Canadian - Pale 2-Row -- 36 ---- 1.75 ---- 80%

My idea would be to add a column at the end that shows current inventory status like:

Amount -- Fermentable -------------- PPG -- °L ------ Bill % -- Invetory
8 lb ------- Canadian - Pale 2-Row -- 36 ---- 1.75 ---- 80% --- 55 LB

 

[Jeremiah White]

This new update has been quite useless to me without any type of inventory to recipe check. I think a basic functionality to compare inventory to recipe and to search your recipe collection to see what you can brew without ordering or buying more ingredients is highly needed. Right now it's so focused on buying from an online source you are directly impacting local homebrew shop's bottom lines imo.

In recipe view you should be able to just click it and it will tell you the basics. You will need a basic and advanced version. The basic version will precisely match it in your inventory: checking against it for the manufacturer for Malt, Yeast, Hop strain etc. It will tell you if you have it in stock only and display it clearly at the top of any recipe. The advanced version would allow you to make a snapshot of the recipe with the rough ingredients you have and tell you exactly how much you have on hand: allowing malt manufacturer differences or an option to substitute a similar Malt, recommended hops with descending similarities in flavor and aroma in your inventory, and cross referencing yeasts for the same strain but not the same manufacturer.

This functionality is severely lacking in Brewer's Friend and I hope you guys can improve this.

 

[Craigerrr]

I think he means in recipe view mode.
It would be quick and easy to make a shopping list if inventory was listed in the recipe view mode.

 

[Pricelessbrewing]

I think he means in recipe view mode.
It would be quick and easy to make a shopping list if inventory was listed in the recipe view mode.
View attachment 7866

I think this is an easy solution. I would add the column to the left between Amount and Variety though, so the amount in the recipe and the amount in inventory are adjacent.
Adding to the info on the recipe editor is a bit more complicated, but the recipe overview when it's completed definitely has the space available.

Do you think that's doable @Yooper ?

 

[Mark Farrall]

Personally I believe it's already in the right place. I don't care about inventory until I go to brew. I've created recipes that have been sitting there for ages, so inventory on the recipe screen is more noise on a screen that's already full of information.

The first screen in the new brew session screen gives me that inventory view. Before I click create I add the items to the shopping list. Though it might be useful to have that as a tab in the brew session that's created so you can go back to it later.

 

[Jeremiah White]

Not all of us go buy ingredients after deciding what to brew. I keep the basics and more on hand. There's 300 lbs of grain and 24 lbs of hops in my house. I'd like to know at the sweep of my eyes which one of my 120 some recipes is immediately brewable tomorrow without having to go shopping.

 

[Yooper]

I think this is an easy solution. I would add the column to the left between Amount and Variety though, so the amount in the recipe and the amount in inventory are adjacent.
Adding to the info on the recipe editor is a bit more complicated, but the recipe overview when it's completed definitely has the space available.

Do you think that's doable @Yooper ?

I like it! But to think about @Mark Farrall ’s point as well, can we consider a toggle to turn if off/on without overcomplicating the view?
One of the things customers have loved about BF is the intuitive UI and “clean” interface. The biggest complaints come when we make things more complicated, so I would like to be sure that it’s intuitive and non-intrusive.

 

[Pricelessbrewing]

I like it! But to think about @Mark Farrall ’s point as well, can we consider a toggle to turn if off/on without overcomplicating the view?
One of the things customers have loved about BF is the intuitive UI and “clean” interface. The biggest complaints come when we make things more complicated, so I would like to be sure that it’s intuitive and non-intrusive.

Definitely. Do you think we could do the same thing on the shopping list page?

 

[Yooper]

Definitely. Do you think we could do the same thing on the shopping list page?

Hmm- maybe so! Do you have some suggestions (or any of the members) of how you’d like that to work?

 

[Pricelessbrewing]

Hmm- maybe so! Do you have some suggestions (or any of the members) of how you’d like that to work?

Personally, I would just create a column between amount and the ingredient name for "inventory", or similar. Then create a settings icon either in the top right section (displayed as a cog/gear) to be able to toggle it.

 

[Mark Farrall]

Not all of us go buy ingredients after deciding what to brew. I keep the basics and more on hand. There's 300 lbs of grain and 24 lbs of hops in my house. I'd like to know at the sweep of my eyes which one of my 120 some recipes is immediately brewable tomorrow without having to go shopping.

So maybe something like the recipe suggestions in the inventory tab, but just for your recipes?

 

[Jeremiah White]

So maybe something like the recipe suggestions in the inventory tab, but just for your recipes?

Yes that would be great!

 

[Yooper]

So maybe something like the recipe suggestions in the inventory tab, but just for your recipes?

How are you picturing this? I mean beyond recipe suggestions since the ask was to display inventory availability, @Pricelessbrewing I'd like to get an idea of what we'd like it to be like before putting in the request, if that makes sense.

 

[Nosybear]

How are you picturing this? I mean beyond recipe suggestions since the ask was to display inventory availability, @Pricelessbrewing I'd like to get an idea of what we'd like it to be like before putting in the request, if that makes sense.

Dang, I've been trying to solve this problem with all the partial bags of grain in my basement. With little success. It is possible to have a recipe suggest grains but to have a grain suggest recipes... Just think of the number of base malts. If we stick to kind of the basics, pale 2-row, pale 6-row, Pilsner, Vienna, Munich, wheat, we start with six. Just adding a touch of crystal at the next step and limiting it to American varieties (I'm going with 8), we now have 48 potential recipes without considering amounts. Now let's add in the dark malts, say eight more, we're at 348 possible combinations.... Even if we stick to BJCP styles, middle-of-the-road recipes for each style, that's 100 recipes not counting the experimentals and fruit beers. Plus there's not a lot of difference between a Pilsner, a Kolsch, a Golden Ale.... The problem becomes very difficult very quickly. I'd suggest some guidelines (offered me a long time ago by a very good Denver brewer, Bill Eye of Bierstadt Lagerhaus): No more than five malts, no more than three hops, basic selection of American, German, British, Belgian yeasts. In other words, to solve the problem, we'll have to constrain the suggestions.

 

[Mark Farrall]

I was just thinking that the recipe suggestions in the inventory page could have a radio button that would restrict the search to my recipes only. https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/myinventory/suggestions Not really anything more involved than that.

As I'm only keeping hops on hand I'm probably not the best to talk about it in more detail than that. The other questions I'd have would be would users want to see recipes with only partial matches? Ignore yeast matches? Maybe sort the recipes based on how much is matched? So maybe it's just the existing suggestions functionality with an extra radio button to restrict the results to just the brewer's recipes.

 

[Pricelessbrewing]

Let's set aside the recipe suggestions for now, and come back to that separately later.

I'll see if I can make a quick mockup tomorrow night for displaying inventory on recipe overview page, and the shopping list page and see what everyone thinks.